Posted in: Movies, TV | Tagged: ABC, comic con, entertainment, forever, new york, new york comic con, NYCC, tv

Forever, And A Day At New York Comic Con

By Amanda Gurall

Executive Producer Matt Miller and the lead actors of ABC's Forever (Tuesdays at 10/9 central) visited us this last weekend at NYCC to show a few clips and discuss the show.  Now I usually avoid a lot of prime time shows due to most of them being awful, but I did watch the first episode and found Forever to be interesting, well made and worthy of a season's viewing to see where they will go with it.  The basic premise is that the NYC Chief medical examiner, Henry Morgan, is incredibly astute at finding the cause of death of nearly every challenging case that he comes across largely due to the fact that he is immortal and sometimes uses his own body to re-enact the death and find the cause. He has also been studying death for about 200 years in order to understand his mysterious condition and end it.  Of course we find there is a nefarious shadow character named Adam who is another immortal who seems to be toying with him and an alcoholic widow NYPD detective, Jo Martinez who serves as his almost partner and possible future romantic relationship.

Warning, some spoilers ahead, do not read if you don't want to know some basic plot points.

Welsh actor Ioan Gruffudd plays Morgan and is very charming and passionate about the project.  They decided to let him keep his accent, though it is more English than Welsh, and it's refreshing to allow an actor to do this rather than forcing what is often an awkward American accent (looking at you, Gracepoint).  Law and Order's Alana De La Garza plays Jo who thus far has a nice edge to her character and good chemistry with Ioan.  Creator and Executive Producer Miller was asked about romance between the two as it is expected of a prime time show with opposite  gender leads.  He said that while they may go down that road they have many stories to tell before they get to that point and he is more interested in portraying the fact that both characters have to work on their own emotional losses and issues while forging a friendship before anything else happens.  They are two vulnerable, self medicating characters who need kinship more than anything else according to De La Graza. A few ladies in the audience were saddened by this, but I think it may help the show if they do not jump into an immediate clichéd romance.

The show goes between their A story in the present time and their B story form Henry's past. This allows them to have fun with many eras, locations and other characters including the romance that some of the audience desires.  Some upcoming story lines include an 1880s Jack the Ripper copycat murderer, a huge conflict between Henry and Abe (his son who is now his aging caretaker, played by the wonderful Judd Hirsch) when Abe decided to enlist in the Vietnam war, and a "tangential involvement in the Black Dahlia murder".  We will also be seeing the episode they are currently shooting which tells of Morgan's first death on a slave ship and how he reunites with his then wife a year later.  Henry will also be kidnapped by Adam, found in the water (he always comes back to life in a large body of water for some reason) and after being found nude rising form the water too many times by the police, is sent to some intense psychotherapy.

I like the idea of being able to jump into various time periods in his 245 year lifespan and hope that the apparent villain brings more intrigue and darkness to the show. The cast loves shooting and living in NYC, and as many productions before them have said they feel the city becomes a character in itself.  I recommend giving this show a try if you have not started watching it already, as it has a lot of promise and potential to be a great network show if allowed to unspool its story.

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