Millenium [Series 1]

It’s time for a shocking, mind-bending truth. Are you ready for it? Here it is: When writers are asked to review lengthy DVD sets, a long book, a difficult game or even an album, they often don’t make it all the way through them. It’s true. Sometimes they just can’t be bothered. They’ll watch three episodes from a series, or listen to four tracks from an album, or read the last five chapters of a book, and then write up a review based on those vague reactions.
 
I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve written some CD reviews after engaging in little more than a cursory, half-arsed listen with a finger placed firmly on the skip track button. Whenever I’ve done that, it’s been because the album was so intensely boring that the thought of subjecting myself to the entire thing would start the slow process of my soul dying. One time, a couple of years ago – and certainly not for inthemix – I even reviewed a film that I’d walked out of after half an hour. It’s not right, but sometimes writers do it.

There it is. I make this shocking, outrageous confession because I want to emphasis just how incredibly good watching this first series of television show Millenium really was. I watched the entire series the whole way through. After 22 hours, a couple of bonus features, 6 separate discs and 16 or so hours, I was ready to review it.

For those who can’t remember, Millenium was a mild sensation in ‘96. Created by X-Files mastermind Chris Carter, it made minor waves because of its predilection for gore and brutal murder. The pilot episode, for example, showed a stripper in a dirty little joint cavorting in a shower of blood while a murderous, poem-loving pervert nicknamed ‘The Frenchman’ looked on. It was weird and creepy, and that’s why it was so good.

Each episode in the first series explores the dark corners of the human imagination. Like, seriously. Throats are slit, couples are drugged up, filmed having sex and murdered, young boys are killed, wives are abducted, and good men are hung by the rafters of dark basements. It’s full-on, emotionally draining, and a milestone in television history.

Lance Henriksen plays Frank Black, a hyperintuitive detective working with a private body called the Millenium group. Black, when examining a crime scene or a body, can feel, sense and see flashes of how the crime took place. It is, as he says early in the series, his gift…and his curse.

Henriksen had always been a spectacular member of a supporting cast – as evidenced by his creepy turn as Bishop the android in Aliens – but no one knew that he could prop up a series as a leading man. But he could, and he did it with a brooding existential awareness that few actors could come close to matching.

There are various subplots, conspiracies and worries that pop up throughout the series, but going into them here isn’t necessary. It’s necessary only to emphasis what a ground-breaking show this was, paving the way for other flashback-based detective shows like CSI, Cold Case and Without A Trace. But where those shows lack an emotional care, instead focusing on the means necessary to solve a crime, Millenium continually establishes a relationship between characters and viewer. It’s addictive television at its absolute best. You keep watching, because you have to know what happens to the characters. And, just between you and I, you won’t see many cliff-hangers better than the one that finishes off this series… you’ll be sprinting to buy the second series.

If you watched Millenium all those years ago, take this opportunity to revisit. Few shows live up to how you remember them, but Millenium exceeds those memories, showing just how good television can be. If you missed it in ‘96, perhaps put off by the hype surrounding this new Chris Carter creation, grab this box set. It’s the right thing to do, and I say that after sitting through 16 straight hours of it.

Rating: 5 out of 5

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