TV Review: Reverie (2018). A scifi procedural with a dreamy premise.

Image courtesy of NBC

Tv Review: Reverie (2018) by Ben Jeffries (5/6/2018)

Season 1 Episode 1 - Apertus (30/5/2018)

44 minutes

Scifi, Thriller, Drama, Procedural

Airs on NBC

This dreamy sci-fi procedural has a solid premise, but plays a bit too safe in it’s opening episode.

Sarah Shahi stars in this high concept Sci-fi Drama as Mara Kint, a former police hostage negotiator who resigned following a catastrophic personal loss. Now working as a lecturer in human behaviour, where we see her teaching a class of college kids about the subtleties of non-verbal communication, Mara is sought out by her former boss, retired police chief Charlie Ventana (Haysbert). He now works for Onira-Tech, a tech company that has developed a fully immersive virtual reality system named Reverie, which allows people to create for themselves a perfect virtual world. Only, if you could close your eyes and live in a perfect world, why would you ever want to open your eyes to leave? Reverie users have begun falling into coma’s, disassociating from the real world to remain in their dream like virtual realities. Ventana asks Mara to come and work for him, entering into the Reveries of these people and using her unique skills to bring them back to reality. Perhaps in helping rescue these people, Mara can find a way to rescue herself.

Reverie moves quickly in it’s opening act, establishing setting and premise, and providing clear relationships for it’s characters. Mara is the troubled former over-achiever and Ventana is the old friend who sees a way to bring her back from the depths of depression. We’re introduced to Alexis Barret (Jessica Lu), youthful tech genius and designer of Reverie, who seems cold and impersonal, more concerned with protecting and developing her invention than in saving lives. Rounding out the core team is dream specialist Paul Hammond (Sendil Ramamurthy), responsible for building the actual realities within Reverie, and Mara’s guide and teacher in understanding the technology and how to use it. While the script does a good job of backgrounding the audience on the rules of how Reverie works and providing the narrative limitations that make for interesting roadblocks in the characters way, it does so with a distinct lack of the subtlety which that early scene of Mara teaching promises.

Mara explains to her young class that “only 7% percent of our communication is based on what we actually say. 37% percent is based on the tone of the voice and the rest, 55%, is based on body language.” It seems like an important fact that should be reflected in Mara’s encounters with her first Reverie patient, but the script isn’t up to that level of subtlety. Conversations that should be confrontational, requiring Mara to use her skills of observation and intuition to successfully navigate, seem to end because Mara knows the secret code word to placate the other characters. Dispositions flip from angry and upset to passive and compliant with little justification other than the time constraints of the episode. These problems aren’t instant turn offs and hopefully subsequent episodes, unburdened with the exposition requirements of a pilot, will find time and space to add those moments of colour and interest missing here, but they are distracting, and they curtail the impact of important moments that could have been highlights of the episode.

What the show seems to want the audience to think are the highlights of the episode are the Reverie sequences. Once Mara actually makes her way into the virtual world we’re given a glimpse of the possibilities inside it. Mara follows a man named Tony Lenton, played by Joshua Britton, through his own personal version of San Francisco, where doorways lead to completely different landscapes and structures as the characters move through a dreamlike setting. When Tony confronts Mara as a disturbing intrusion into his finely crafted reality his desperation to be left alone manifests as a physical tear in the world as the Reverie program begins breaking down around them. The uses a combination of editing, shot composition and camera movement to define the tone and feel of the Reverie sequences, but effects like the tear in reality or a conspicuous blue butterfly, effects which could really sell the conceit, are noticeably limited by budget. While the “obviously CGI” nature of the effects arguably fits thematically with them being aberrant elements of a virtual reality simulation, they aren’t pretty or impressive enough for a show that clearly wants to lean into the down-the-rabbit-hole/waking-dream-sequence hook it’s built for itself. The direction and editing go a long way toward achieving the effect, but the sub-par effects hurt the end result rather more than they support it.

The editing of the episode deserves a special mention. Credited to Alan Cody, it’s the most accomplished single element of the production. Using well timed intercutting, it effectively compresses the induction sequence of Mara getting accustomed to the Reverie software, giving us a visual explanation of Mara’s experience while at the same time allowing us to hear the conversation between her and Paul, without resorting to a cliche training montage. The sequence where Mara encounters her first subject plays as a tense, disorienting foot pursuit through a changeable world without leaving the audience confused or frustrated. It’s the concise cutting and pacing, combined with good visual directing, that kept me from writing the show off as an overambitious swing with no follow through.

Pilots are hard, and genre pilots are harder as a show has to balance the needs of appealing to both broad and niche audiences. Skew too broad and you might find you have a popular show, but you’ll find it hard to keep that audience if you want to get into the deeper implications and concepts of your subject matter. Skew too niche and you could end up with an audience willing to let you do whatever you want, but not enough viewers for the show to remain viable. Reverie plays a little too safe in it’s opening episode, perhaps afraid it would leave too many viewers behind if it came out too strong. Despite that, the show has the bones of a solid high concept procedural, and if it can nail down it’s voice and tone it could be successful going forward. I’m not hooked enough by Reverie to be coming back for episode 2, but I’m interested to check back in after a few weeks to see if the show has found its feet.

If you like high concept procedurals, a la Person of Interest or Almost Human, shows that explore weekly stories through the lens of science fiction premises, give Reverie a shot.

6/10

Reverie Stars: Sarah Shahi, Dennis Haysbert, Jessica Lu, Sendil Ramamurthy, Kai Scott, Kathryn Morris

Created by: Mickey Fisher

Written by: Mickey Fisher

Directed by: Jaume Collet-Serra

A Production from: Extant Storytech, Energy Entertainment, Amblin Television, Universal Television

Distributed by: NBC