TV Pilot: Ironside (2013) Reviewed...

One of the many pilots I was keenly interested in seeing was that of Ironside. This is hardly the first reinvention of an old concept – in the last few years alone we’ve had everything from Knight Rider to V to Kojak being pulled out of retirement and offered as a twenty-first retake on cold cases.

As older viewers will know, the 1967-75 version of the character saw Raymond Burr as a detective shot by a would-be assassin and now using his brilliant deductive mind and helpful team to solve crimes from  his wheelchair and the station’s converted loft-space. It was one of Burr’s most memorable roles (the other being lawyer Perry Mason) and is a fondly remembered multi-Emmy-award winning staple of classic shows of the time.

Ironside, the 2013 version, sees Blair Underwood take the original concept and wheel with it... but not really taking it anywhere that interesting. In this case, the convenience of having the department settle his legal costs by renting him an entire building and assigning him a young team (really?) simply doesn’t seem as believable as the high-concept 1960s-era ,especially while its simultaneously trying to be hip, flippant, gritty and contemporary  - it comes across as an obvious clash of styles rather than a solid combination of concepts. 

But the main failure of this pilot is that in its attempts to make the character of Ironside look brilliant, it merely decides to make all the supporting cast look certifiably one-dimensional and stupid.  In a stunning development, our hero manages to see a gun that no-one else has seen – sitting rather obviously beneath a pillow on a sofa - merely because his field of vision is a few inches lower than everyone else… well, it’s hardly Sherlockian.  His team, sent to investigate a victim’s home, merely  - and quite deliberately - ransack the place as though they’re trying to actively show contempt for the occupant, leaving the audience to scratch their heads that these are supposed to be the heroes. Reward for the most ineffectual boss of the year goes to Ed Rollins (played by  Kenneth Choi) whose cookie-cutter role is to stereotypically warn Ironside about his attitude and then to smile wearily when our ‘hero’ is proved completely right. (Oh, you mischeivious suspect-torturing scallywag, you!)

If we’re meant to feel that the loss of Ironside’s legs has changed his attitude, then it’s weird to go with the set-up that he was the kind of officer who would hang people off buildings before and now he’s STILL breaking the rules and quite willing to intimidate criminals with backseat knife-play. In short, it’s apparent he’s always been something of an ass… only this time he gets to do it front a seated position and lay the disability guilt-trip on everyone other than the ex-partner who’s partly responsible for his condition.  If this is a character that the makers hope will be embraced by the public then he needs to be a little more endearing or – if they’re  playing to the audience that liked the acerbic ‘House’ then, ironically, Ironside is just not snarky enough.

Blair Underwood is a decent actor and (with no offence to the late Raymond Burr), NBC have obviously decided to sex up the role – the spinal injury he received may have robbed him of his legs but clearly doing nothing to harm his bedroom deductions. There’s been an obvious decision to rely heavily on flashbacks to a walking, fully-engaged Underwood, at least for the pilot, but in this stylistic choice, it could be that NBC have missed a golden opportunity to have a charismatic disabled actor in a key role rather than giving an actor a set of shiny new wheels and asking him to frown a lot.  Then again, Burr was also an able-bodied actor, so only time will tell. The rest of the cast are vague archetypes with Spencer Grammer looking like she's auditioning to replace CSI:Miami's Emily Procter, from whom she could have been separated at birth both in looks and performance.

But, all in all,  even with some look-at-me, point-of-view camera shots, it feels as if this is a purely opportunistic show, clumsily put together like an elephant by committee. There are lots of potentially interesting ideas, thrown at a wall, someone decided on the most interesting and then ultimately dialled everything back so as not to offend.  A modern cop show... or a stylistic throwback... it can rarely be both and this version of Ironside quickly starts to either alienate or bore depending on your tolerance. With its casual attitude to violence (albeit the primetime variety) and misplaced, unearned arrogance,  this is no Sherlock or Elementary... it’s more Law & Order Special Guilt-trip Unit or CSI-Vagueness.

A preview of what’s to come later in the season suggests more complex difficulties for the detective and his team and we're promised Lethal Weapon's Danny Glover as Ironside Snr.  Glover is a solid actor, but at this pointit smacks of desperate stunt-casting to keep interest going...and they’ll have to be a LOT more interesting for audiences to stick around.

Ironside begins its US broadcast on NBC on October 2nd. Currently there is no confirmed UK buyer or broadcast date.