The Bottom Line: "Superb"
Millenium was the work of X-Files creator Chris Carter, and the show debuted around the time that X-Files was sort of at its peak popularity. It makes sense--television this good never gets greenlit unless it's the pet project of a hot producer riding the wave of something much more popular. The show followed the morbid crime solving adventures of Frank Black, played with sullen perfection by perhaps the most underrated actor ever, Lance Henriksen. Frank is a former FBI agent that burned out and retired after a serial killer (or perhaps a copycat following a similar MO) begins stalking and sending polaroids of Frank's wife and daughter to him. Frank also has a unique ability--he can literally put himself inside the head of a killer, and see what he sees.
At the outset of the series, Frank has moved from DC back to his home area of Seattle, and hooked up with a group of former law enforcement types called the Millenium Group. These folks consult with various law enforcement agencies on particular evil crimes. It's sort of like the Super Friends of criminal profilers, pathologists, forensic experts and investigators. Through the first season, you get to know Frank, his wife and daughter, his assorted cohorts within the Millenium Group (including his most frequent contact, Peter Watts, played by Lost star Terry O'Quinn and his always amazing moustache), and friends within the Seattle PD.
The series starts off similarly to the way the X-Files did. There's an underlying plot with Frank dealing with the ghosts of his past, feeling his way through his membership with the Millenium Group, and trying to figure out who it is, exactly, that's stalking his family. Most of this is downplayed originally, and the episodes are decidedly...well, episodic, in nature. A lot of disconnected cases that range from a deranged pharmaceutical chemist that uses clinical trials to make people crazy, to a geneticist that uses a special technique to create dozens of children in his own image so as to create the perfect society after the world comes to an end in the year 2000 (and is only discovered after some of them start killing themselves via self-immolation, among other things).
While the year 2000 isn't nearly the enigmatic danger that it might have seemed when the series debuted in 1996, it made for a very intriguing backdrop for many of the series' storylines at the time. In fact, the Millenium Group itself turned out to be more than a simple consulting group as the show went on. More and more the show took on intriguing religious prophecies, demonology, and ponderances as to what, if anything, would happen when the year 2000 finally hit. Season 2 probably hit the most right notes when it came to its subject matter, as it took the series into darker, more engaging territory. Season 3 flew off the rails a bit, going into territory that sometimes seemed like a more watchable (but still flawed) version of the X-Files season where Robert Patrick showed up. Saying more than that would spoil the whole outcome of the series, as well as several key twists. But needless to say, Millenium ended well before it should have. The last episode comes almost out of nowhere, and while the conclusion itself is far more satisfying than most series finales tend to be (especially in contrast to the atrocious X-Files finale), you really wanted to know more about the motives of everyone involved in this gloomy tale.
Amid the armageddon prophecies and serial killers, Millenium also had a legitimate heart to it. Scenes of violence and horror are frequently contrasted by scenes of Frank and his family. Henriksen, and Megan Gallagher, who plays his wife, Catherine, have amazing chemistry together. Henriksen often plays Black as a brooding fellow with little in the way of sense of humor, but when he gets around Catherine and his daughter, Jordan (played with utterly non-cloying precociousness by Brittany Tiplady), his ability to warm up and mesh as a father and husband is unbelievably natural. It makes some of the particularly ugly revelations later in the series exceptionally emotional.
Millenium never really found an audience during its three seasons, but it's a shining example of what crime drama can be when done well. It's stylish and substantial, and remains that way throughout. Where the X-Files went on and on and on well past its welcome, Millenium kept it short and sweet. Maybe that was, on some level, purposeful, since the show did end in 1999. But even barring the backdrop of the Millenium, the misadventures of Frank Black could have sustained a series well past the year 2000 gimmick. It's just a shame it never got the chance. If you're the type that likes your crime drama black as a black cat in an unlit midnight hour, and with a little bit of supernatural edge to it, go find Millenium on DVD, and give it the chance it never got on network TV.
This deserves one very massive and loud WHEEEEEEEEEE! Check it out:
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