This show had it all. Intelligent script, well defined characters, brilliant directing, fine acting, action, suspense that carried you in it's grip from week to week, a clear vision of where it was going to lead to. Each show built on the one before it in a clear storyline with a piece to the puzzle in every episode. Yet each episode was individual and can stand on it's own. This show was well conceived from beginning to end. Bruce Greenwood's acting in this is so fine, I became a fan of him for life. To me, he can act anybody under the table if he wants to. He was the quite common intelligent fast thinking Everyman with something not quite right about him that the character Thomas Veil needed to be.
As we first is it, we see it through Thomas Veil's viewpoint as we see him being the happily married veteran war photographer who was going put on His first major show of his work and made one photograph the centerpiece of it. In the space of a few short hours, his every existence of totally wiped out, marriage and all. And it all centers around that photograph to which he doesn't know why some high powered and well connected covert organization is trying to get their hands on all the copies of it and the negatives. He goes on the run. He starts to investigate every detail he sees in the picture. He eventually learns that what he thought was his real life was nothing but a fraud that involved brainwashing. He slowly starts to realize he had another life. A shadowy life. He starts to question, "Who am I? Who am I really?" And the mystery deepens.
You will get no answers here. Watch the show.
The intrigue, mystery and suspense is so well plotted throughout the episodes that I can rate this on par with an early 60's show that did the same with intelligence, "The Fugitive" and a well qualified succor to it. It is a shame that the UPN network, which aired it didn't see fit, to keep the show running and canceled it while going with the sure cash cows of "Star Trek Voyager". I am not going to belittle Voyager because it makes no sense when there were so many other UPN shows that were far worse than Voyager but they canceled Nowhere Man while they kept shows like "The Sentinel", "Malcolm & Eddie", and "Moesha". Some of them were brain dead series that couldn't reach one quarter of the quality of Voyager, never the less bother to comparing them to Nowhere Man's. But they were low budget, low non-confrontational, safe money makers. In fact, I remember that Nowhere Man was the highest rated show one week. So I ask why was it canceled?????? And yet, I have my answer too.
At least, Nowhere Man had a clear concept and direction from start to finish and did not lose it's direction as "Lost" did or "Twin Peaks" did. "Twin Peaks" was the worst crime because it was a mystery that was made up as it went along. No self-respecting mystery writer today does that. They always write the end goal and solution first and then create the mystery and place the clues throughout. Nowhere Man was clearly constructed like that. Solution first. That is what places it above "Twin Peaks".
What also sets it apart is the in every episode, there was an well drawn conflict and well drawn characters that are unique to those episodes. That was what made everyone of them fresh and individual while being pieces of a larger story.
As we first is it, we see it through Thomas Veil's viewpoint as we see him being the happily married veteran war photographer who was going put on His first major show of his work and made one photograph the centerpiece of it. In the space of a few short hours, his every existence of totally wiped out, marriage and all. And it all centers around that photograph to which he doesn't know why some high powered and well connected covert organization is trying to get their hands on all the copies of it and the negatives. He goes on the run. He starts to investigate every detail he sees in the picture. He eventually learns that what he thought was his real life was nothing but a fraud that involved brainwashing. He slowly starts to realize he had another life. A shadowy life. He starts to question, "Who am I? Who am I really?" And the mystery deepens.
You will get no answers here. Watch the show.
The intrigue, mystery and suspense is so well plotted throughout the episodes that I can rate this on par with an early 60's show that did the same with intelligence, "The Fugitive" and a well qualified succor to it. It is a shame that the UPN network, which aired it didn't see fit, to keep the show running and canceled it while going with the sure cash cows of "Star Trek Voyager". I am not going to belittle Voyager because it makes no sense when there were so many other UPN shows that were far worse than Voyager but they canceled Nowhere Man while they kept shows like "The Sentinel", "Malcolm & Eddie", and "Moesha". Some of them were brain dead series that couldn't reach one quarter of the quality of Voyager, never the less bother to comparing them to Nowhere Man's. But they were low budget, low non-confrontational, safe money makers. In fact, I remember that Nowhere Man was the highest rated show one week. So I ask why was it canceled?????? And yet, I have my answer too.
At least, Nowhere Man had a clear concept and direction from start to finish and did not lose it's direction as "Lost" did or "Twin Peaks" did. "Twin Peaks" was the worst crime because it was a mystery that was made up as it went along. No self-respecting mystery writer today does that. They always write the end goal and solution first and then create the mystery and place the clues throughout. Nowhere Man was clearly constructed like that. Solution first. That is what places it above "Twin Peaks".
What also sets it apart is the in every episode, there was an well drawn conflict and well drawn characters that are unique to those episodes. That was what made everyone of them fresh and individual while being pieces of a larger story.