Frequency (TV)

Frequency TV show was based on the feature film with the same name, starring Denis Quaid and Jim Caviezel where in the movie, Quaid plays as a firefighter in the 60s with a young son, who becomes a police detective in the 90s played by Caviezel.

In the movie Quaid’s character dies in the 60s while attending to a fire call. 30 years later, his son (Caviezel) is working on a serial murder case that goes back to when his father was alive in the 60s. They connect with each other through time via a special old radio, more like the internet of their time. And during the film, Caviezel’s character start working with his father to find the murderer that was killing everyone in the 60s.

The TV show however, adapted this concept of “connection through time” using the old radio but it changed the character and their lines of work. In the show, the father in the past is also a police detective, not a firefighter, and he has a daughter, not a son. That idea changed the pace of the series completely to a full blown detective show. While in the film the character of the firefighter gave more action and unexpected situations, that wouldn’t work on the tv adaptation in view that, on the tv, the character is also a police cop and has the same privileges of the daughter in the future.

But differences aside, what makes this series one of the worst for me is the story arch. It seems that they could have created a LOT of different stories and cool cases with this adaptation set up, but instead they were working on the exact same case of the film (The Nightingale Murderer) throughout the entire first part of the season 1, which means they took 10 1 hour episode to tell the same story that was already told in the 2 hour film. As an audience, I don’t need 10 hours to watch 1 case being developed if I can see it in 2 hours. It MAY be OK for whoever didn’t watch the film first, but even so, it is still too long, too dragged for my interest. And may have been the reason why they didn’t make a full season, just half of it, and canceled it.