The Dresden Files

When the Sci Fi channel started the show I was pretty excited, I love combining a detective story with either a futuristic premise or a magical one. Purely by accident I picked up a book called Dead Witch Walking by Kim Harrison about a year ago. She created a new modern world where all the magical beings in stories became real and commonplace, and the main character was a detective, I had no idea this was becoming a new genre, but I was hooked. I was planning on reading some more series in this genre when The Dresden Files came out.

I was a bit disappointed with the first episode, not much of a story and not much magic, and Harry was too nice a guy. When I bought the first book just last Sunday (see previous blog) I could tell in a few pages the book was far better than the show. Last night I watched Sunday's show (DVR is great stuff) and it was the book! What a surprise, and it was suddenly good, too. Lots of magic everywhere and Harry suddenly has some edges to him, a main character has to have some edges to be interesting.

I know what must have happened, last Sunday's show was the pilot but some executive, who probably should be handling the money and not the creative end, got scared that it was too far out there. What the hell does he think a sci fi viewer wants, anyway? So the first few episodes were made first to ease people into the magic aspect of it then they showed the pilot, and suddenly this is a good show. I hope they didn't lose too many viewers with the earlier episodes.

They did get a few things right from the beginning, though. The first was Paul Blackthorne as Harry, he does a great job and is probably the main reason I kept watching. The second was taking Bob out of his skull (in the book he's just a talking skull but I've just started it). Having Bob as a real presence for Harry to talk to was brilliant. So now that the series has some teeth to it I'm hoping for some good stuff.