HBO Carnivale anyone?

Looks like HBO has another winner on it's hands:

Good and evil tussle on odd 'Carnivale'

HBO, Sunday, 9:30 p.m. ET/PT

By Robert Bianco, USA TODAY

You know that gratingly pretentious slogan, "It's not TV, it's HBO?" Well, like it or not, with Carnivale, HBO almost comes close to being right.

Not literally, of course. Carnivale was made for TV by people who work in TV and will run on TV for 12 episodes. What else could it be but TV? A duck?

That said, the aggressively, self-consciously weird Carnivale is a sideshow step away from most any TV series you've ever seen. You may find its oddity appealing, or you may find it off-putting, but its distinctiveness is unmistakable. Next to Carnivale, Twin Peaks looks like JAG.

Created by Daniel Knauf (Wolf Lake), Carnivale uses a Depression-era Dust Bowl carnival as a backdrop for the eternal battle between good and evil in some fantasy age before man "traded away magic for reason." The genre it seems to be aiming for is magic realism, a literary form that has always been more popular south of the border than north.

We learn in the show's prologue that we're going to meet a creature of light and a creature of darkness. The first candidate is Ben Hawkins (Nick Stahl), a fugitive who is haunted by bad dreams. When the death of his mother leaves him with no other place to hide, he joins a traveling carnival run by an unseen boss referred to only as "Management."

Ben has always been an outcast, so you'd think he'd fit right in with his co-workers, from the little person (Michael J. Anderson of Twin Peaks) who hires him to the medium (Clea DuVall) who falls for him. But it turns out Ben is freaky even by their standards. We'll let you discover his powers, but let's just say that, when asked whether he'd like to know the past, present or future, Ben responds, "What's the difference?"

The second candidate for the light/dark position is Brother Justin Crowe (Clancy Brown), who is linked to Ben through dreams. Like Ben, he has strange powers that may or may not be divinely inspired. Unlike Ben, however, he's openly religious, which, in modern American culture, rather stacks the deck against him.

Beautifully shot and expertly acted, Carnivale at least in the early going is as much about mood and atmosphere as it is about plot. That might be fine if it were able to maintain that mood, but too often it slips from wondrous to ridiculous. It is one thing to have the medium communicate telepathically with her comatose mother; it's another to have her scream "Will you please shut up?" during a one-way conversation. A little humor is usually welcome, but not when it makes us giggle at the actor rather than the character.

Carnivale has gathered a host of fine actors, starting with Stahl and Brown and including Adrienne Barbeau, Patrick Bauchau, Debra Christofferson, John Fleck and Amy Madigan. The question will be whether Carnivale has enough plot to support the performances, particularly over the course of 12 episodes.

Though the plot becomes more assertive in the third hour, I'm still not convinced Carnivale has much more than atmosphere to offer. The winds of portent blow, but when the dust settles, there may not be that much to see. That may be HBO's idea of magical TV, but it's not mine.

 

The way I look at it everything is just a time waster until Curb Your Enthusiasm starts up again.

 

The only problem is this airs the same time as the Conan O'Brien special.

I'll probably tape Conan so I can zip through the commercials later.