All things being equal, you'd never want to live near a supermax prison, but there's no place like broadcast television for narrative real estate.

It's easy to understand why. The typical supermax — or whatever prison or facility the creators claim is packed with the worst, most notorious criminals — is like a concrete-encased cornucopia of procedural plot, just waiting to explode.

This is fodder for many people prison Breakand season three heroshort run Alcatraz And any Batman story involving Arkham Asylum. After some twists and turns, its seeds sprouted into some of NBC's most successful shows of the decade, including blacklist and blind spot — The show promised in its pilot that each week would feature a series of the worst villains imaginable, connected by a weirdo in a hat or a mysterious woman with tattoos.

It's a convenient format because you have a gallery of thieves immediately queued up for capture, preferably by a creatively assembled team of protagonists. It's a skeleton that can then be fleshed out in all kinds of clever ways.

Or NBC hunting partyone of the most stripped-down and unimaginative takes on the genre I've ever seen, using oversized backgrounds as an excuse to basically make a less realistic, less interesting version of criminal mind (I have used this show as shorthand for all the repetitive and exploitative stuff in broadcast television). I can imagine the audience watching hunting partyThis is partly due to NBC's sneak peek after the NFL playoffs, and partly due to viewers' generally insatiable appetite for serial killer tropes. But there is absolutely no specific content hunting party Might have contributed to the ratings.

Through four episodes, this was bland and average television, the stuff of neglected summer burns, or, more often, pilots scrapped without ever going to series.

Created by JJ Bailey, the show begins in a remote (Wyoming, but wherever), mysterious (ambiguous) underground prison whose designer had heard of Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon concept, but not really studied. It's filled with the worst, most gruesome serial killers and the likes - I'd say "men", but that's only 98% accurate - who are generally believed to have been executed, except... not. In the first scene, we see a rapid explosion of an unspecified type. It looks bad.

An unknown number of prisoners escape. Shh, unspecified number. If you're on broadcast TV, the number should always be "100," which is based on the old syndication model that makes no sense in today's TV economy. But be sure to tell the audience that you have 100 episodes in your pocket.

Regardless, this leads to the recruitment of Bex Henderson, played by Melissa Roxburgh, who only speaks profiling lingo and is often referred to by anyone seen or recognized ’s brightest profiler, except she now works security at a casino in Portsmouth, Virginia. Why Portsmouth, VA? Who cares! She used to work for the FBI and now doesn't, and through four episodes, the show sends mixed signals about why she no longer works for the FBI. But honestly, again... who cares?

Bex is summoned by CIA agent Jacob Hassani (Patrick Sabungi), who knows more than he's letting on about the secret prison that has just been reduced to ashes. The first prisoner they sought was a serial killer named Richard Harris, who happened to be the killer Bex discovered on her first case - with her then-partner/mentor Oliver O'Dell (Nick Wexler) worked on the case together. We initially only see it in flashbacks, but later also see it in the present.

Also joining the aid is Sean Florence (Josh McKenzie), a former guard at the facility known only as "The Pit" but not to be confused with Max's new medical drama. Petewhich is much better. The final addition is Army intelligence officer Jennifer Morales played by Sara Garcia, who so far has added nothing.

NBC boasts hunting party It's a "high-concept thriller," but it's closer to a "no-concept non-thriller."

Simply put, there is nothing outstanding about this show. If there was something that made NBC executives say "this would be a cool thing to do," it was polished away during development, leaving no trace.

The pit is not an interesting concept, nor is it a logical one in four episodes. There was never a moment of intellectual awareness or curiosity about what these killers were out there doing, about what they were doing. Around the third episode it dawned on me that experimental treatments for the killer were supposed to be part of the bait, but any richness of these insights into criminal psychology was lost. I have a paragraph explaining why this premise is unrealistic, but that's so far down on the list of problems with the show that I won't bother.

Once the killers escape from the ruins of the pit and into the outside world in a very orderly manner each week, what they do is less compelling and less logical, resulting in a storyline without any suspense or mystery at the time of filming Feeling depressed. , faded dimness that never changes.

And the character doesn't come close to having a hook.

Bex is the latest in a line of Clarice Starling-esque investigators whose genius stems from unusual trauma, but he has a dark secret. Oliver has a dark secret. Shane has a dark secret. Jacob has a dark secret. Everyone has dark secrets, but no dark secret is interesting, at least not yet. There are no characters in hunting party Having a certain voice or emotion that never creates momentum or chemistry in any relationship once they start interacting.

So it's no surprise that the actors playing these uninteresting characters aren't all that interesting, or at least aren't given anything interesting to do. Bex is insufferable to say the least, as omniscient, omnipotent profilers on television often do. She's connected to a supporting character whose identity is supposed to be a bit surprising, so I won't spoil it except to say that the relationship is supposed to be human but it isn't (this statement can be applied to other relationships as well) Baker Sri Lanka’s past is not at all humane in the present).

If the show doesn't appeal to the network or viewers, the casting team will feel the same stumbling block. How can you have four episodes of the story of the most notorious serial killer in history, or some crap, and not have a memorable guest star turn in a memorable performance? If nothing else, this is an achievement.

Episode four, while not a season finale, has the feel of a season finale and is the only episode where anything actually happens that hints at mythology or series progression. I promise you, I'll never know if the breadcrumbs in episode four meant anything.