Drama
Chicago Fire
Where’s the fire? In Chicago, it seems. But the flames outside Firehouse 51 are nothing compared to the heat generated inside.
What do you get when you combine Downton Abbey with The X-Files? Agent Scully in a petticoat? A power-crazed, chain-smoking Lord Grantham? Violet Crawley giving large-eyed aliens a firm-yet-witty dressing down?
If only. What we get instead is Houdini & Doyle, a gimmicky period crime procedural that simultaneously features and diminishes two very famous men: Harry Houdini and Arthur Conan Doyle.
Welcome to London circa 1901, an age in which mysticism runs rampant and supernatural crimes are being committed at a rate not seen since Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! Clearly, there’s a felt need for some sort of spiritual task force. And since Fox Mulder won’t be believing in much of anything for another 90 years or so, the London police wearily make do with a couple of local eccentrics.
Harry Houdini, a young, brash, up-and-coming magician from the U.S., is the skeptic of the two (a role he also filled throughout his nonfictional lifetime). As a performer, he knows that what looks like magic can have a very pedestrian explanation. He knows what a deft sleight-of-hand artist can do, and he’s not interested in buying into anyone’s mumbo-jumbo spiritism.
Arthur Conan Doyle, meanwhile, wants to believe. Already famous for his brilliant fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle is a dedicated spiritualist. While he’d admit that not all fortune-tellers can see the future or that all glowing demon dogs are, well, literal hounds from hell, he will not refute the possibility—nay, the likelihood—that such things are possible. (In real life, the friendship of Houdini and Conan Doyle broke over this difference of opinion; Houdini allegedly performed a spiritist illusion so convincingly that Conan Doyle refused to believe that it was a trick.)
But while the two may quibble over whether the Tarot is a window to the future or just a deck with a few extra cards, the two do share one passion: solving crimes and catching crooks. And so, with the help of their police liaison Adelaide Stratton, the dive together into London’s grimy alleys to bring a little more justice to them—and maybe unsheet a ghost or two.
Houdini & Doyle is the result of a three-country collaboration among Great Britain’s ITV, Canada’s Global and, of course, the Fox network in the United States. But more cooks in the episodic kitchen does not a better TV meal make.
In terms of violence and gore, this is more Elementary than X-Files, more Bones than blood. And because the program takes place in a more refined era, the language is a bit more restrained as well. But, frankly, it’s not as restrained as it probably should be, again given the era. Indeed, Houdini & Doyle does what many a half-baked, lightweight, period-themed popcorn-muncher does: It injects contemporary values and habits into its historical concept, giving viewers a false, vacuous program wherein the only real difference between then and now is limited to high-stepping horses and poufy bustles.
That failure to properly communicate extends beyond weird oversights, too, like how Houdini and Conan Doyle sometimes make a “friendly” 20-pound wager over cases (the equivalent of about $2,000 today). It’s also the flippancy with which characters talk about sex or religion, and the effort to make Houdini, Stratton and Conan Doyle relatable to more prurient, more accepting 21st-century audiences.
That won’t sit so well with viewers who still cling to “old-fashioned” values. You know, things like linguistic decorum and the sanctity of marriage. And neither will Houdini’s bristling agnosticism or Conan Doyle’s often-heretical spiritism.
(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at letters@pluggedin.com, or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out.)
A boy shoots a leading London suffragette, shouting, “You murdered me!” as he does so. He tells police that he’s actually a man who disappeared without a trace about 12 years earlier, and he seems to have intimate knowledge of who he is, where he lived—and how he died.
Women’s rights take center stage, with Stratton expressing admiration for the suffragette who was shot and bridling at the over-the-top sexism within the police force. There’s talk of losing one’s virginity, having affairs and illegitimate children. Also, the disparity in how infidelity and promiscuity is viewed for men and women. Houdini, Conan Doyle and Stratton discover drawings and paintings of half-clothed women (which we see). And the boy says, “The female frame is the true work of art.” A man disguises himself as a woman. There’s a reference to French “postcards” (a period stand-in for pornography).
Doyle insists that the apparent case of reincarnation could prove the existence of life after death. Houdini dismisses the idea by way of math. We hear a street preacher talk about welcoming “the Lord Jesus Christ into your heart.”
A woman is shot. A man is shot (several times). The boy bears a wound on his forehead that mirrors the bullet hole in an exhumed skull. We hear that the missing man got into a physical altercation with his wife before he disappeared.
Stratton drinks a beer. Characters say “h—,” “d–n,” “b–ch” and “bloody” once or twice each.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
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