Screw the cheerleader, pass the genetically modified popcorn

I’m shifting my attention to Eureka, the new sci-fi TV series now airing on Astro.

Some of my friends think Eureka competes with Heroes. I think its a completely different show.

Heroes is a story of good versus evil. The villain is well defined – a power crazed guy who calls himself Sylar that the heroes must stop in order to save the world. Its got a predictable ring to it but is breathlessly entertaining nevertheless.

One thing about Heroes is that you can’t miss one episode and hope to make sense of the series because its one continuous story chopped up into many episodes. Eureka is different. Miss one episode and it won’t matter. Like a comedy, each episode is a separate story.

Shot in British Columbia, Canada, Eureka is the story about the life and adventures of some people in an idyllic small town that houses a secret, like a huge secret lab where they do weird experiments, blow up stuff and take credit for every scientific breakthrough known to the US.

Its got a great cast:- main man and clueless single parent Sheriff Jack Carter, DOD agent Allison Burke who always brings some kind of trouble to Jack, Deputy Jo Lupo who reminds me of J Lo, Zoe Carter who is Jack’s rebellious teenage daughter, and Nathan Stark, head researcher of Global Dynamics that is the town’s the secret lab.

To me Eureka is a sitcom minus the laugh tracks. It centers around the life of a Sheriff who has struggle between 3 things: keeping law and order in a town populated by the most intelligent people on the planet, keeping (and I’m guessing failing at) his parental obligations to his daughter, and managing his emotions with the DOD agent and his fiery Deputy. There seems to be no sign of an arch villain and so I suspect we’ll be seeing a series of funny or dramatic situations that change from episode to episode.

My first impression of Eureka? You mean other than thinking it looks like a cross between Dexter’s Lab and The Truman Show starring Jim Carrey? Its funny and it looks promising. How good is it going to be? I guess I won’t know till the end of the current season but based on what I’ve seen so far I think its fun to watch.