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Highlander: The Raven | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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requent Highlander mischief-maker Amanda Derieux (Gracen) takes center stage in this 22-episode series now out on DVD. In her 1,200 years of life, Amanda has evolved into a master thief, skilled con artist and cunning seductress. Sharing the spotlight with her is Nick Wolfe, an ordinary mortal police officer who's been trying to catch Amanda in the act for some time.
After a showdown with a crooked cop who's framed her for murder, Amanda is shot point blank in front of Nick, who becomes suspicious when she survives unscathed. When he ends up in the way of a deadly immortal assassin, Amanda is forced to share her secret with Nick, and the two form a symbiotic partnership of sorts.
Following the death of his partner in the first episode, Nick resigns from the force and becomes a security expert. His newfound knowledge of immortals comes in handy as he and Amanda use their individual skills to thwart the plans of the malevolent and corrupt, both mortal and immortal. As various figures from Amanda's past reappear seeking power, vengeance or retribution, her misdeeds throughout the centuries are revealed in flashbacks.
As previously established in the Highlander universe, immortals can be killed only if they are beheaded by another of their kind. And to the victor of such an epic battle goes the quickening, an electrifying transfer of the power and strength of the defeated. The Raven also establishes a rule only implied in earlier incarnations: A potential immortal must suffer a violent death in order to fulfill his or her destiny. The saying goes that there can be only one, but by the end the final episode, there will be two.
It's better behind the scenes
"An awful, awful, painful mess." "Like walking through hot coals." "It's amazing we lived through it." These are just some of the words used by the cast and crew to describe the experience of filming the 22 episodes that became the first and only season of this sub-par spinoff series from the creators of Highlander. When the behind-the-scenes stories are far more interesting than anything in the episodes, it's a sure sign that a production is in deep trouble. And that's just based on the stories they tell on camera.
Far from the banal, controversy-free platitudes of most making-of featurettes, the interviews in this set, broken up across several discs, include strikingly candid disclosures and criticisms of everything from the lighting to the music to the actors to the general direction of the show. Gracen comes off as particularly kooky in anecdotes from her relationship at the time with a "psychopath" "Svengali," who convinced her that she got the job to pay off a mob favor, that her co-star was hired to spy on her by Bill Clinton investigator Ken Starr (prior to the premiere of the show, she admitted to having sex with Clinton when he was governor of Arkansas) and that the producers were plotting to phase out her character in favor of Johansson's. Naturally, this didn't make for very good relations between the two leads, who, by all accounts, hated each other from the start.
Viewers who like Gracen's character for her appearances in Highlander will be sorely disappointed in the direction this series takes with her. Although the character didn't previously display any expertise in combat, she becomes as much a warrior as a thief in the course of the season. The audience is supposed to believe she can best an immortal assassin in a swordfight in the second episode, though Gracen is visibly awkward with a blade. And doubtless due to the off-screen tension between them, she has no chemistry with Johansson (and admittedly treated him terribly on the set), so the central relationship on which the show should be built has little appeal.
The set itself comes in the standard Anchor Bay packaging (which means the same bothersome overlapping disc system of the Hercules and Xena collections), but it's well produced, with a quality picture and good sound. It includes both audio and video commentaries, a blooper reel and lots of juicy tidbits for those interested in that sort of thing.
Perhaps it was intended as a pre-emptive strike, but I'd be hard pressed to come up with a valid point of criticism that isn't already made by the cast and crew themselves in the interviews. No one could be harsher on them than they are on themselves. —Cindy
Also in this issue: The Island and Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law Volume-One DVD
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