I t’s rare when a TV movie does any of the following:
* Avoids being incessantly mocked by critics.
* Gets on the air during May sweeps without being based on a pandemic or natural disaster.
* Reminds us of what network television could be.
“Jesse Stone: Death in Paradise” accomplishes all three.
The third movie in a series of Jesse Stone TV films on CBS starring Tom Selleck airs at 9 p.m. Sunday on KIRO-TV.
While the Sunday TV movie is usually reserved for massive attacks by crazed locusts, or Category 15 hurricanes converging over large cities, or vampire bats just doing what vampire bats do, the Jesse Stone series has reintroduced the classic TV detective.
| On TV
“Jesse Stone: Death in Paradise,” 9 p.m. Sunday, KIRO-TV. |
And if you haven’t caught the few couple of entries, you’re OK.
Stone is a former Los Angeles cop who went into a kind of semiretirement by taking a job as a police chief in the small New England town of Paradise, Mass. The story is based on a series of novels by Spenser creator Robert B. Parker.
But he’s already found that life isn’t as ho-hum as he expected after a few big cases.
Stone doesn’t have much use for the fancy forensics folks who can be found elsewhere on CBS, or the whiz mathematician, or a PDA on which he can download precise satellite maps in seconds.
The Stone series, you could say, is part “Murder, She Wrote,” part “Medium,” part Jack Bauer on “24.” He’s a small-town guy, and he sees visions of his victim in the night, and we occasionally get to watch him put down his cup of coffee and kick whatever needs kicking.
This time, the story begins with a teenage girl’s body found in a lake. With such little evidence to go on, it takes a while just to identify her, and the mystery unrolls from there.
Meanwhile, Stone is dealing with a domestic violence case and trying to manage his drinking problem, a story line that introduces the always-fun-to-watch William Devane.
The result is a film series that has the perfect home.
The Jesse Stone series would feel pretty average in a movie theater. But for the kinds of thrills we’re looking for on television, it’s a nice release from the techie gadget stuff that’s going on, and Selleck is the prime TV cop for the part.
“When I first came to CBS, I told them I’m not sure I fit in the movie-of-the-week category because I don’t want to do the kind of movies you seem to want to make,” Selleck said. “And you can make them all you want and God bless you, but I want to make them more filmmaker-oriented.
“The point of the discussion was CBS took a real risk and I owe them a lot because they let us be filmmakers … and basically tell a story in a feature film style of storytelling that I truly believe plays just as well on television as it does in movie theaters.”
Well done, Tom.
Victor Balta’s TV column runs Mondays and Thursdays on the A&E page. Reach him at 425-339-3455 or vbalta@heraldnet.com.
For more TV and pop culture scoop, check out Victor’s blog at heraldnet.com/blogpopculture.
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