Aquarius: Discussion Thread

AQUARIUS - It’s 1967 and the era of free love, drug experimentation and the Vietnam War is in full effect. When the teenage daughter of a respected lawyer goes missing, L.A. Police Sgt. Sam Hodiak (David Duchovny, “Californication,” “The X-Files”) starts asking around. He soon discovers that the hippie kids he’s questioning don’t take kindly to cops, especially one with hair as short as his. Needing the help of someone they will trust, he partners with rebellious undercover cop Brian Shafe, a man who’s more comfortable rolling a joint than patrolling a beat. It’s not long before they stumble upon a small-time cult leader seeking out vulnerable women to join his cause. From there, they follow this man’s trail down a rabbit hole of drugs, sex, murder and cultural revolution. Little could they know, however, the guy they’re hunting will eventually become the killer we now recognize as Charles Manson. He was a lost soul who desperately wanted to get into the music scene of the ’60s until something snapped. This is the show that will explore the cat and mouse game between him and the police that will go on for several seasons, ultimately ending with the infamous Tate-LaBianca murders.

Writer John McNamara (“In Plain Sight”) serves as executive producer with Marty Adelstein (“Prison Break”), David Duchovny and Melanie Greene. “Aquarius” is a production of ITV Studios America and Marty Adelstein Productions.

I'm giving this a shot, though I find the premise to be a potentially lead balloon (it's set in '67) and NBC to be the wrong fit. I was a student of the Manson case for a number of years - I devoured both Helter Skelter and The Family, two essential texts, in college, among other research - and there is a lot to the story, but network television is, IMO, the wrong place to tell it. The trailer looks interesting but could go either way, and honestly I feel like Gethin Anthony is a) too pretty and coming off too much like a particularly tacky episode of Criminal Minds.

Anyway, here's the trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVTdizy0Wds

Also, a brief mention of the show in a new David Duchovny profile at Grantland:

When I ask Duchovny if he’s excited about NBC’s plan to release all 13 episodes of Aquarius online for Netflix-style big-gulping, he says, “I’ve been told to be excited about it.” He says that when he signed on, “I thought it was gonna be HBO or AMC,” and there’s a tiny whiff of disappointment in the way he explains how it’s still the show they wanted to make.

I guess we'll see.

Alan Sepinwall doesn't think much of the show.

Sepinwall makes it sound like about what I expected from the trailers, and what David Duchovny indicated it might be - a show squirming inside the box a desperate non-cable network has put it into, with a lot of cliche "the '60s!" signifiers.

That being said, since it's bingeable and I am deeply bored as well as a pretty obsessed follower of the Manson case, I will likely watch the premiere and at least a few more, and give it a chance.

Edited May 27, 201510 yr by Vee

It's been canceled.