DirecTV’s adventure with ‘Wonderland’
DirecTV has dusted off all eight episodes of the 9-year-old ABC series “Wonderland” and will begin showing them tonight on its proprietary 101 Network. (It is home also to “Rock and a Hard Place,” a quiz show hosted by Meat Loaf, and “The Supreme Court of Comedy,” in which real-life disputes are argued by the likes of Jon Lovitz and Tom Arnold.) Like “Friday Night Lights,” whose third season DirecTV has been running in advance of NBC, “Wonderland” was created by Peter Berg; and here as there, he is interested in team dynamics and complicated adults who are capable of acting like adults in spite of their complications. (That is a rarer thing in TV drama than you might first imagine.)
Set in an approximation of the psychiatric ward of New York’s Bellevue Hospital (here called Rivervue), the series lasted all of two episodes in spring 2000, with six left in the can. DirectTV suggests that the show was too “intense” for network television, and it did stir up some controversy -- a coalition of mental health groups, alarmed at the violence and institutional chaos portrayed in the pilot, lodged a protest partly out of concern that the series might discourage sick people from seeking treatment. But whether its cancellation derived from lack of nerve on the part of ABC brass or it was the precipitous drop in viewership from the first week to the second that did it (nearly half), those unseen episodes have now been burnished, in a promotional sense, to look like lost treasure.
Berg spent months visiting Bellevue to research “Wonderland”; he clearly aimed for something a little grittier than your usual doctor show. He did not squeeze all the usual glamour and romance from it -- his sexy cast of headshrinkers includes Ted Levine, Michelle Forbes and Martin Donovan -- but he set them down where Gregory House or Meredith Grey would probably refuse to work. It is busy, close and dissonant: Berg stages his scenes in layers, with active middle- and backgrounds. And, like Robert Altman (whose long lenses and overlapping dialogue he favors), he pushes small bits of business to the front. (Watch the nurses -- they keep it real.)
There are scenes in which it’s clear we’re watching a television show, with standard TV show tropes and talk, and others that feel almost improvised. The second episode, which Berg neither wrote nor directed, is not as good as the pilot, which pushes toward an original tone.
I don’t remember being distressed at the time by the cancellation or the thought of not knowing what would happen to these characters -- Levine’s character is fighting for custody of his kids, and Forbes’ and Donovan’s are facing a possibly compromised pregnancy. But I’m glad these unseen episodes are getting their moment. (Not that I’ve seen them myself -- only the two shown in 2000 were sent out for review.) Berg is an intelligent TV-maker, and time spent with Levine, Forbes and Donovan is usually time well spent. It’s definitely worth a look.
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‘Wonderland’
Where: DirecTV Channel 101
When: 7 and 10 tonight
Rating: TV-14 (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 14)
