The Star Online: Entertainment: TV & Radio

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New drama The Bridge connects murder and immigration.

The Bridge is not a tidy little connection between two points, or even two sides of a story. It stretches and bends, bringing in new characters before you've gotten to know the older ones, spreading its narrative from police offices and grimy streets to dry stretches of land along the border between Mexico and the United States. Not even the body that begins its story is simple.

Premiering in Malaysia today on FX, the series follows the investigation of that body, left at the midpoint of a bridge between Juarez and El Paso, with part of it resting in the US and part in Mexico – bringing in law enforcement from both sides. From Mexico comes detective Marco Ruiz (Demian Bichir), an honourable man trying to keep his job (and his life) while working among the cartels and their corrupt associates, some of whom are his co-workers. From the US is Sonya Cross (Diane Kruger), an El Paso detective whose personal challenges include having Asperger's syndrome.

Each has rules, though not the same ones.

And they are part of a larger world that includes, among others, Ruiz's wife Alma (Catalina Sandino Moreno); Cross' boss Hank Wade (Ted Levine); Charlotte Millright (Annabeth Gish), a wealthy ranch wife who is suddenly widowed when her husband suffers a heart attack while on the Mexican side of the border; Daniel Frye (Matthew Lillard), a nasty and troubled newspaper reporter (is there any other kind?) who is drawn into coverage of the case, and others who seem to have interests in the outcome of the investigation.

All of that adds to the pushing and pulling of the central characters. But there are also points at which they step aside to reveal more about the supporting players: Frye's approach to the case, for example, or how Millright is seen by her wealthy neighbours. There's more than a little of Traffic at work here, although that film (and the miniseries that inspired it) moved more certainly forward. The Bridge can at times be very good; Bichir, a best-actor Oscar nominee for A Better Life, is especially effective. It is also strong when it comes to the desperation of life along the border.

But The Bridge loves complexity too much, in the layers of Cross' personality and in the variety of characters and stories it tries to juggle. Still, I was drawn into it, and well into the third episode still wanted to see where The Bridge was going. – Akron Beacon Journal/McClatchy-Tribune Information Services

The Bridge airs at 10pm tonight on FX (Astro Ch 726).

Just forget it

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With Unforgettable, Dylan Walsh hopes to move on from Nip/Tuck, the show that made him a star.

You can hear traffic in the background as you talk to Dylan Walsh. He's been spending a lot of time lately on the sidewalks of New York City.

And as the co-star of the new drama, Unforgettable, he spends his workdays pounding the pavement with Poppy Montgomery, solving murders for the NYPD.

The premise of the show is that Montgomery (Without A Trace) has an absolutely encyclopaedic memory. She can remember every detail of every day of her life.

That means that several times an episode, her character, Carrie, freezes in a kind of trance while viewers see her likeness revisiting the scene of the crime, picking up new details.

That leaves Walsh and the rest of the squad in the awkward position of huddling behind her silently, waiting for her to return to the here and now.

"We laugh about it," Walsh says. "What would cops do while she's staring off strangely? Would they just stop and watch her?"

This type of total recall, by the way, while exceedingly rare, does exist. In fact, scientists have identified – how weird is this? – sitcom actress Marilu Henner (Taxi) as one of the handful of people confirmed with "superior autobiographical memory".

Henner is a consultant on Unforgettable.

"Actually she's working on the set today," says Walsh. "Poppy met with Marilu before the pilot. The rest of us went on faith.

"I was more interested in talking to her husband. Imagine how daunting that must be. She can remember everything that poor man does."

Walsh was hoping to ambush Henner at the start of production, a plan that didn't go so well.

"She and I had met in 1990 while I was doing a show called Gabriel's Fire," he says. "I couldn't wait to test her on it. But she jumped me before I could even start and rattled off all these minute details about our meeting, half of which I had forgotten."

Ed Redlich, the executive producer of Unforgettable, terms the condition "a gift and a burden. If you squint at it one way, it's almost a mental illness."

Walsh doesn't think he could cope with it.

"Marilu makes it seem like fun," he says. "But I wouldn't want that ability. I think our self-narrative requires letting things go. Otherwise it's too much."

Walsh's own narrative has been eventful. His pregnant mother (both parents were in the foreign service) was flown from Addis Ababa to Los Angeles for his birth. Then it was right back to Ethiopia, and many subsequent postings.

"I remember Indonesia and India," he says. "But I don't remember Africa."

Years after the family eventually repatriated in northern Virginia, Dylan's acting aspirations would take him full circle to Los Angeles, where he became a busy TV and film actor.

He's perhaps best known as hectored plastic surgeon Sean McNamara on TV's grotesque guide to vanity, Nip/ Tuck. It was the fevered brainchild of Ryan Murphy, the producer also responsible for Glee and American Horror Story.

The long-running Nip/Tuck was so outrageous and incandescent, Walsh is still trying to escape its shadow.

"You want your series to be successful, so for years you promote it," he says. "Then the last thing you have to do is live it down and move on.

"I'm standing outside on the sidewalk now and people are waving at me," he continues. "They're waving at me for Nip/Tuck, not Unforgettable. That's why I took another series so fast. I want to put it behind me. I need to get Sean McNamara out of my system."

Speaking of cosmetic surgery, Dylan, you look remarkably hale for a 49-year-old. Did you ever ...?

He chuckles without mirth, at a question he's been asked more than once.

"No," he says. "One thing I learned from Nip/Tuck is that that's not the route to take. I do worry, though, that at some point there's going to be some accelerated catching up." – The Philadelphia Inquirer/McClatchy-Tribune Information Services

Unforgettable premieres on July 29 at 9pm on Lifetime (Astro Ch 709).

Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

Ahad, 28 Julai 2013