ifteen years earlier, the old world ended and a new one began when a virus spread through the land and killed everyone over the age of puberty. Now the survivors are grown up and trying to stay alive by living off the scraps of what's left of the old world.
Jeremiah (Perry) really just wants to know the end of the story. Not only what happened to his parents, but what happened to everyone's parents. He remembers that his father and mother seemed to know what was going on when it happened. As they left him and his little brother that last time, they promised they'd be right back to take them all to someplace called Valhalla Sector. They never returned, and in the horrible aftermath of the "Big Death," Jeremiah's brother was lost, too. Now he searches for answers and helps people when he can.
Retrieving fish that were stolen from him, Jeremiah ends up sharing his catch with the hungry thief. Kurdy (Warner) is more concerned with watching out for himself than worrying about other people's problems. However, for Jeremiah, other people's problems are his problems, too.
The next morning, Kurdy steals Jeremiah's remaining fish again and Jeremiah goes after him to a nearby town. Soon after he arrives, bandits try to rob the marketplace, and Jeremiah ends up saving the life of Theo (Kim Hawthore), the woman who runs the town.
She's grateful enough and more than a little intrigued with the stranger. However, there's something else going on. Someone in town has a working radio. When Theo's people find a gassed-up car just outside town, she knows they must be from The End of The World, the one place left on earth where old world still survives.
When Theo finds the owner of the car, a man named Simon (Daniel Gillies), Jeremiah is implicated. Suddenly it's up to Kurdy to save the man he barely knows, despite himself. In a desperate escape, Jeremiah, Kurdy and Simon find themselves on the way to Thunder Mountain, a place that may the hold some of the answers Jeremiah has been searching for.
A familiar world made brave and new
Showtime kicks off its new series Jeremiah with a two-hour movie that sets up the story well, but it's a story that looks more than a little familiar. The idea of survivors of a disaster living off the bounty of the old world isn't exactly a new one. However, Jeremiah has some things going for it, including an appealing cast and the promise that creator J. Michael Straczynski will make this universe as compelling, layered and fascinating as the universe he created for Babylon 5.
Based on Platinum Studios' graphic-novel series by Hermann Huppen, Jeremiah contains the kind of language, brief nudity and subject matter that you can get away with only on cable. In fact, once he finally speaks, Warner's Kurdy has a rather colorful and amusing opening which makes it crystal clear that you're not watching regular censored network TV anymore.
What makes the first two hours of this series highly watchable is Perry and Warner as two men who come together first out of necessity, but later out of respect. The two very different men have an odd chemistry onscreen that seems to work. It's not so much the odd-couple pairing as it is that the foul-mouthed and wannabe tough-guy Kurdy is actually the sweet one, while the quiet, smart and sensitive Jeremiah is actually a bit of a hardass. Neither of these guys is exactly what we expect them to be, and neither one of them is a saint. While their characters are well set up in Straczynski's script, Perry and Warner bring the characters to life nicely and make us concerned about their fate.
The production standards are typical for a cable series, which spends more money on talent than extravagant sets or production values. It's a smart way to go for a series with limited resources.
