OverHEXed

I'm very generous with new TV series I think I might like. When something about a given show's premise, its featured players or its creative pedigree appeals to me and yet the pilot is underwhelming, I generally give the show three episodes, including that series premiere, to improve before abandoning it altogether. (Similarly, I have a tendency to stick with the truly good series long after they've lost their luster. I'm nothing if not loyal, often to the detriment or complete exclusion of other virtues. Like critical discernment.) This approach has worked quite well with HBO's Big Love, for instance.

There are shows, however, for which such indulgence is untenable. Which brings me to last night's two-hour premiere of Hex on BBC America. Hex takes place at a tony, bucolic boarding school where the best of Britain are presumably being groomed for Oxford and Cambridge. Oh, and where 250 years ago, before the former landed-gentry estate had been converted into an institute of higher learning, an overheated Hollywood version of voodoo was practiced by the servants and the wayward lady of the manor. Today, the students seem to have that air of blasé (read: zombified) entitlement and the corresponding disregard for their instructors that together are instantly endearing.

Our heroine, Cassie (Christina Cole), an easy-on-the-eyes but unremarkable-looking student unconvincingly packaged as the introspective wallflower of her crowd, steals away to a hiding place for a smoke and discovers, along with a ritualistic cross made of chicken bones, a cheap-looking objet d' art. In examining this urn thing, she pricks her finger, losing a single, elegant drop of blood to the urn's gaping maw. As a result, Cassie soon experiences, in addition to general distress and maybe constipation, creepy visions edited in the standard rapid-fire style. (Trust me, the actual episode doesn't do my description justice.)

My viewing companion and I gave Hex roughly 40 minutes, including what seemed like numerous commercial breaks, before checking out. While we certainly didn't expect anything rising to the level of the heyday of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, we hoped this apparent blending of supernatural hokum and abilities with young-adult concerns and crises would be a worthwhile summer diversion. The show was painfully slow and soporific, notwithstanding a juvenile obsession with sex that seems to plague Hex's entire campus, young and old alike. The premiere featured classroom innuendo and brief nudity that would be verboten on American network TV. (In a blow for equality, a few of the female students enjoy a Porky's reversal, taking casual advantage of peephole access to the boys' locker-room shower.)

Hex's characters, including Cassie, were indistinct and elicited as much sympathy as the overprivileged and petulant generally do. The only character who stands out (only because she must) is Cassie's roommate. I don't remember her name, but that is no matter. The creators of Hex seem concerned only with the fact that she is a Lesbian. They forego no opportunity to remind the audience as much, as though it would have forgotten during any of those regular commercial breaks. I don't know which was insulted more, my sensibilities or my intelligence. I kept thinking -- hoping -- there was more to this sidekick than thinly veiled proclamations of her sexual orientation. The powers behind Hex crafted situations and dialogue that reduced her to a single recurrent note. The ham-handed treatment of this lesbian character reeked of shallow self-congratulation, and the failed attempt to generate an authentically sexually-charged atmosphere smacked of desperation.

I suppose it is somewhat reassuring to know that the United States doesn't have a monopoly on small-screen schlock. And in all fairness to Hex, its actors and its creators, the premiere may have really picked up in its final two-thirds, and the characters may have eventually demonstrated greater nuance. If viewers who endured the full two hours claim that is indeed the case, I'll take their word for it.