Jeremiah: The Complete First Season

This terrible MGM series never recovers from the absurd assumptions plaguing its pilot episode. The first assumption is that in the wake of a viral apocalypse there would be a deficiency of goods rather than a surplus. So when the main characters (played by Luke Perry and Malcolm-Jamal Warner) show up at a bar, the people are drinking out of jars instead of glasses. Where did all the glasses go? Gas is scarce, which makes sense, but there aren't any cars lying around either. Where did all the cars go? The story is set 15 years after a terrible plague ravages the world, "killing everyone over the age of innocence." The oldest of the survivors are now in their 30s and struggling to rebuild the world. It's a half-decent premise and there are occasional glimpses of the story that might have been. But the acting is so bad and the world so poorly realised that it's impossible to resist picking away at the inconsistencies of the post-apocalyptic scenario. If a whole generation had grown up without education or elders, wouldn't there be some disintegration of language? Apparently not. Many of the characters even use contemporary references in their speech to things like email and Star Wars. When Jeremiah (Perry) and his friend Kurdy (Warner) discover an advanced group of survivors living in a NORAD bunker, they begin to work with them to help shape the new world. There are some interesting stories involving the politics of the base and its enemy — a group of militarised adult survivors living in the "Valhalla Sector." But the series is heavily padded with filler episodes, in which Jeremiah and Kurdy run random errands for the leader of the base. These episodes do little to move the larger plot along and the production is rarely strong enough to sustain attempts at broadening the scope of the story. The DVD set runs a daunting 15 hours and as such keeps the extras mercifully thin. In their commentary of the first episode, Perry and Warner are incredibly earnest. Ultimately, they are powerless to make the story seem any more appealing. Plus: deleted scenes, more. (MGM)