Thursday, April 09, 2009

Dropped Stone

In my last entry, I mentioned that I would post next about meatloaf at the yellow house. Well, I’m still planning on writing about that, but Brit Boy wanted to contribute a post about a show that we both love and one that we’d love to see saved. The show is called “Eli Stone”. It’s one of our favorite shows and it has been cancelled back home, but the fans are trying to persuade ABC to bring it back. The show stars Jonny Lee Miller, a British actor, who I think does a great American accent (we love talking about accents in our house :-)). This is a great show and has a great cast. His feisty assistant is played by Loretta Divine, who some of you may know from many roles, including one of the leads in “Waiting to Exhale”. And his former girlfriend, and fellow lawyer is played by Natasha Henstridge. The cast is impressive and the show is just so fresh. This is my preamble to Brit Boy’s post, so I’ll leave it here and let him do his thing (smile). By the way, we just realized today that this post comes exactly one year to the day since he posted here last and we didn’t even plan it that way. It must be destiny. So without further ado, here’s Brit Boy……


Monday night saw the airing of the last episode of the wonderful “Eli Stone” here in the UK. The series, which was shown on ABC in the US and on the Sci-Fi channel here in the UK has apparently now been cancelled. I understand that the final four episodes have yet to be shown back in the States, so I won’t reveal any storylines!

I felt compelled to invade Dori’s blog to write about this series and its undue cancellation, because the show was such an oasis in the desert of today’s TV programming. How exceptional it is nowadays to find a show that is original, risk-taking, thoughtful, well paced and extremely funny. The premise of the show was that Eli Stone, a lawyer portrayed by British actor Jonny Lee Miller, suffers with a brain aneurysm which leads him to experience prophetic visions. Through this simple idea, some very profound themes were investigated but the writers never lost sight of the fact that their primary goal was to entertain the audience.

For Dori and me this was one of the very few “must-see” shows on our weekly viewing schedule, and we were both extremely disappointed to learn that the powers that be at ABC have decided not to make any further episodes of the show. The schedules are currently crammed full with reality TV shows, be that talent competitions, fly-on-the-wall docu-soaps, make-over shows, elimination game shows or whatever. To find any quality drama is getting rarer by the day, let alone one that can amuse, sadden and challenge you all at the same time. Some very intelligent writing and a wonderful soundtrack gave us a plethora of memorable stories and moments, in particular the vivid, often musical visions that the protagonist suffered. Large scale song and dance scenes are not a regular occurrence on mainstream TV in this day and age, and yet they worked perfectly and were such a breath of fresh air.

But sadly the show is no more. After just two seasons, it has been decided to pull the plug on this sharp and imaginative programme. As is often the way in these circumstances there is a fandom attempt to get the decision reversed, including an online petition and a mailing campaign. I have signed the petition myself and hope that maybe the decision makers at ABC will have a rethink and give us some more of this jewel of original programming.

This Stone truly was a Diamond!

If you'd like to help or want to know more, please check out these sites.

Eli Stone Petition

Save Eli Stone

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I LOVE LOVE LOVE Eli Stone!! I wondered when it was coming back, this is certainly sad news to hear it has been canceled. I MADE my oldest son in Chicago watch it and he enjoyed it as well, I guess I should have told more people about it!

Eli Stone is the kind of series that if you start to watch it any time after the very first episode, you'll wait for the DVD series so that you can fully understand it. That may hurt the ratings.

Alicia aka "Fashiona" said...

I only watched the show a few times but it is nice to "meet" Brit boy.

Unknown said...

Save Eli Stone!


peace,
mike
livelife365

Brit Boy said...

Campbele
I'm glad to hear you loved the show too, and I guess we all fell down on telling enough people about it :-)

Fashiona
It is good to "meet" all of Dori's bloggy friends too

Mike
Hear, hear!

Ivanhoe said...

Hi Dori:
I just wanted to say Happy Easter & let you now that I had to move. You can find me at: http://ohiowithlove.blogspot.com/

heidi said...

I have never seen this show but really wish that I had. It sounds like something that I would really enjoy. There are so few things that are good anymore. Hope it comes back.
Hi Brit Boy! So nice to hear your voice!

A Valdese Blogger said...

I have never seen the show - I didn't even know about it. Ratz, sounds like it was a good one.

Brit Boy said...

Ivanhoe
Dori says to tell you that she has found your new site and updated you in her blogroll

Heidi
Hi. It was a great show, and I hope that it may be again. You are right that good shows are hard to come by nowadays.

A Valdese Blogger
I'm sorry you missed it - I think those of us who loved it failed to get the word round enough to build up the ratings