David E. Kelley is everywhere. And maybe a little too much. This prolific creator of recent years is present on all platforms (Big Little Lies, Nine Perfect Strangers, The Undoing, Anatomy of a Scandal, Big Shot, The Lincoln Defense, Big Sky). It therefore offers us a brand new original creation and despite all the faults that The Calling may have, it remains a strange and intriguing series. Let’s say that the beginnings of The Calling are promising but that the series does not necessarily manage to keep its promises over the length. The secondary characters all have a bit of charisma to keep a few promises here and there even if the tone of the series is relatively silly and visually it’s not always inspired. Yet the first two episodes are directed by Barry Levinson (Rain Man, Men of Influence). We could then say to ourselves that he brings something but overall it is quite all-purpose and less inspired than what we were entitled to expect from him. But the colors of The Calling are not interesting.
NYPD detective Avraham Avraham begins to question his humanity when a seemingly routine investigation upends his beliefs…
I don’t know the novel from which The Calling is adapted. The Calling tries to be special in its own way but struggles to think outside the box of the detective series. It’s not always well written but the mystery still manages to be interesting. Some scenes are even quite silly when there is, for example, a hostage-taking at the beginning. The way the show tries to give us a vision of faith doesn’t always work. The idea of adding religion to the world of detective series is necessarily an original angle of attack. A detective thriller is even an interesting form of storytelling to explore the different aspects of religion, compared to its social side. It’s not often on the small screen that religion plays its part (except perhaps most recently in Under the Banner of Heaven). Suffering at times from a writing that is too greedy and not sufficiently thrilling, The Calling has difficulty in giving salt to what it tells us. It’s even sometimes a bit too kitsch to cause a stir.
The Calling constantly seeks to link the hero’s investigative work with his spirituality and this is not always done in an ultra-smooth way. The idea that religion is irrational or instinctive is a pretty sanitized version of religion. Too bad The Calling doesn’t try to talk about how Judaism can affect the hero’s secular life. If certain moments on the life impregnated with religion are interesting, it lacks reflection despite everything. I also expected something slightly different in structure, a little closer to what E. Kelley is capable of. I especially have the impression that the creator has lost his talent for writing characters. Where in the past I boasted enormously of his qualities, I am in the process of completely losing faith in him. It’s a shame for a series with a story of faith in parallel. Difficult to defend the scenario of E. Kelly here. Too many generic elements, few surprises and sometimes boring elements. The Calling has a good initial idea but doesn’t know how to make it impactful.
Rating: 4.5/10. In short, an excellent idea spoiled by the mediocrity of the scenario and a rather amorphous staging.
Soon in France