'Eleventh Hour': When Good Television Dies Young

In my last Big Hollywood column, I waxed nostalgic over old television series but there is one modern drama that I wish had not bitten the dust so soon after debuting. That it was cancelled was probably inevitable and I’m not so sure that poor ratings were the decisive factor for its cancellation by the TV programmers.

“Eleventh Hour” starring Rufus Sewell was a remake of the British series with the same name that starred Patrick Stewart. The protagonist is a brilliant government scientist who investigates the experimental perils of modern science. Sewell plays an American scientist working for the FBI and Stewart worked for the Home Office. I found Stewart’s character, Ian Hood, to be somewhat arrogant and dismissive while Sewell’s Dr. Jacob Hood was far more soft spoken and likable.

I also found that every episode led me to the Internet to see how accurate the premise was. Did you know that in some cases, heavy water reduces certain tumors? It can also be used to make things go boom-boom but this was just one of the many fascinating bits culled from the series.

What probably sealed the doom of the show, however, was the moral stance Dr. Hood took in many of the episodes that ran contrary to the liberal bent in Hollywood. In the episode, “Pinocchio,” written by Angel Dean Lopez, Dr. Hood and his FBI cohort tracks down the infamous cloning doctor known as Gepetto (played by Richard Burton’s daughter Kate Burton.)

I wrote an article for Human Life Review entitled: “Exposing the Lies about Stem Cell Research” and added some quotes from the episode:

Dr. Hood: Well, the problem is, cloned babies are people no matter what their origin and some organs can’t be removed without killing a person. If you remove the organ, in order to put it into someone else, the donor’s going to die and that, last time I checked, was murder.

Hood: When I was, am, holding that child, that cloned child, I had a feeling for a second what it must be like to be Gepetto, God-like, and it made me dizzy. I mean, if this is really where we’re headed, if, if we’re really going to be playing God, then I don’t want a part of it.

I had once been able to post a video clip for that show but found that they had all expired and disappeared from the ‘Net. Fortunately, one has surfaced.

Whenever I check my DVR series manager, “Eleventh Hour” is still on the list to be recorded. I should delete it but hope is a hard virtue to give up.