Brian Seay offers his thoughts on a new CBS series.

Starting April 9, CBS Network will premiere a new 13-episode murder mystery series called Harper’s Island. This show is about a group of family and friends traveling to a secluded island off the coast of Seattle who die off one by one. Now if anyone thinks this is an original idea that just brilliantly came from the pen of a scriptwriter or the mind of some director from today’s crop of modern filmmakers you are dead (no pun intended) wrong.

The idea of people getting killed off one by one was developed by Queen of Crime writer Agatha Christie with her book And Then There Were None, which is considered to be one of the best mystery novels of all time. I’m a big fan of Agatha Christie and all the credit goes to her for weaving such a spellbinding plot that has been used repeatedly in books, television shows, and motion pictures. Then it came to the point that the idea became worn-out and commonplace.

As I watch promos and interviews from Harper’s Island, I don’t see anything new under the sun. There is a killer on the loose, a group of young one-dimensional characters are trapped in an isolated location, they are getting butchered one by one, and there is blood, gore, and sex all over the place.

Executive Producer Jon Turteltaub said that the new show has “a basic premise of an old-fashioned murder mystery with some modern horror elements in it with a sense of a whodunit.” All horror films integrate the old-fashioned murder mystery with modern horror elements so Harper’s Island isn’t some new show that is giving its audience something different.

Turteltaub added that the show is pushing the boundaries of television but it’s actually the opposite. The story idea isn’t new and the elements are something that you see from a horror flick. This is just another show that could be thrown into the pile of others that were so similar. The idea of killing people off one by one can be pulled off but the show has to be made in a way that doesn’t comes across as cliché and embarrassing.

I can appreciate a good mystery or horror film without all of the elements that this generation thrives on. I don’t need blood, gore, and sex to keep my attention because it turns me away from the screen. Filmmakers of today should study director Alfred Hitchcock’s body of work. He was not only ahead of his time but was original in his ideas. Watch films such as Psycho, Vertigo, and The Birds and you’ll get my drift.

As far as Harper’s Island is concerned I think it will be a dud.

Brian Seay is a media studies major at Radford University and an intern for the New River Voice.