Like a Sexy Joe 90....

Joss Whedon is back! And I'll get this out the way quickly, I am a big fan of his work; Buffy the Vampire Slayer was and still is one of my absolute favourite television programmes of all time. The wit, the monsters, and Sarah Michelle Gellar made pubescent teen Krondas very happy indeed, and continued to do so as we all grew up. (Though the show never quite captured the same magic it had done in its earlier High School based years.) I was also a big fan of slightly more grown up spin-off Angel the sub-text of which rings truer now to me than it did then; 20-somethings trying to find their way in the world whilst fighting demons and averting the apocalypse. Whedon's best work is rooted in the juxtaposition between everyday angst and life threatening demon slaying.

In recent times he seems to have gone for more genre based ideas, the cruelly cancelled Firefly was a tremendous Blakes 7 style space opera that was cut down before it ever had a chance to make it big. And newest effort Dollhouse seems to be a genre show of a very different kind.
The best way to explain Dollhouse is a sexy Joe 90, Eliza Dushku plays Echo, an agent of the secretive Dollhouse who can be programmed to be your perfect date, assassin you name it. The opening episode finds her programmed to be a hostage negotiator who was kidnapped and sexually abused as a child. So far so pretty much every kidnap drama you've ever seen, which would be fine if they did something new with it, something they never quite pull off. My main worry for the show is that it'll become some sort of pick 'n' mix of overused crime and spy storylines...with more sexy dresses, hopefully.

That's not to say it's terrible, Whedon was forced to completely reshoot the pilot so I'll certainly be sticking with it, the character of Agent Dillon who's investigating the Dollhouse programme much to the annoyance of his bosses and Amy Acker's scarred medic are two interesting plotlines that I want to see develop.

It is perhaps Whedon's most accessible show since Buffy on account of the various different genres he'll be deploying throughout the series this may last longer than Firefly. However it is airing in Fox's Friday night death zone slot and I'm not entirely convinced it's good enough to perform well in a slot where better shows such as Wonderfalls haven't. I hope so, because it's great to have Whedon, Eliza Dushku, Amy Acker and Reed Diamond on our TV screens, I just can't help but feel I wish they were in a better, more assured programme. Fingers crossed!