Review: 'Deception'

Despite all of the talk about "Peak TV" and the resulting wealth of great television that wave brings with it, a lot of new shows - particularly on the broadcast television side - are familiar, well-worn concepts that would have worked in 2008 or 1998. I've joking described it as the "9JKL" syndrome, named for the CBS comedy with a timeless premise. And no, that's not a compliment.

ABC's new drama "Deception" seems to be created Frankenstein-style from a seething vat of left-over plot points from shows ranging from "Castle" to "It Takes A Thief." It's a comfortable show, but I'm not convinced that's enough to cut through the clutter of everything else premiering this week.

Jack Cutmore-Scott plays Cameron Black, a Las Vegas illusionist who loses his career after an event which happens at the beginning of the premiere episode. He's now unemployable, but when he sees television footage of an airplane explosion, he realizes it was all part of an elaborate illusion. So, as all leading men do, he and his crew of assistants weasel their way into the FBI investigation. And before you can say "FBI consultant," a new television show is born.

There are a lot of problems with the show, but the core one is that while Cutmore-Scott does a solid job with the magic, he has zero chemistry with Ilfenesh Hadera's Agent Daniels, whose skepticism about magic is a barely-concealed come-on for a future romantic relationship with Black.

Maybe "Deception" wouldn't seem so stale and familiar if viewers were a few years removed from "Castle," which mined a lot of the same unbelievable territory with a lot more finesse and breezy chemistry. And that's also probably the reason why the one thing to recommend the show is its embracing of magic and the ways people can be fooled. But even three episodes into the show (the number of episodes I've seen), the show's formula is already slipping into an increasingly less clever show built around misdirection.

Back in the early 1970s, NBC had a series on called "Banachek," which starred George Peppard as a suave Boston-based insurance investigator who recovered property from seemingly impossible thefts. What made that show work was that the trick was the jumping off point for each episode. Valuable jewels were stolen from a locked room protected by video cameras and dogs, and Banacek would suss out how the trick was accomplished. The misdirections were unusually clever and part of the fun of the show was trying to figure out how it was done before Banacek revealed it at the end of the hour. The average episode of "Deception" flips the model, letting the audience in on the misdirection while they watch it being used to trick the bad guys. Based on what I've seen far, "Deception's" approach doesn't seem likely to be sustainable.

I overall like the cast of "Deception" and there is a show in which Jack Cutmore-Scott could be a solid romantic lead. But this isn't the show for that outcome and when it's over, viewers are more likely to be bored than charmed by the episode.

"Deception" premieres on ABC Sunday, March 11th, 2018 at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT