Ransom Canyon

Ransom Canyon represents the best of what TV has to offer in so many ways. There's solid acting across the board, it looks beautiful, and most importantly, it allows the audience to blissfully escape into another world for an hour at a time.

There is no reason on Earth not to enjoy this well-made, nicely acted, soapy, soap-bubble show, whose 10 episodes have been laid out whole for you to binge. Come for the messy lives, the promise of love, the old-fashioned values.

Ransom Canyon is definitely still a soapy, sexy guilty pleasure kind of a show. But with the addition of Clarkson and some focus on the main storylines, it’s become a soapy, sexy show with a bit more depth.

No one is going to mistake Ransom Canyon for prestige television. But it’s certainly a soapy, guilty pleasure, anchored by performances from Duhamel and Kelly that make you want to see both of their characters get what they want, which is each other.

Maybe Ransom Canyon’s more vibey elements are all that matter to the show’s intended audience anyway. .... If they do notice the themes echoing through the show—the dubious ethnic representation, say, or the stagnant gender politics—maybe these things can be brushed aside as they watch a woman almost have it all, if only one mopey man could see her worth. But that doesn’t make it any less of a bummer.

There may be enough romance novel enthusiasts to keep “Ransom Canyon” afloat — I can’t claim to be one — but it’s hard to see anyone else flocking to these hills. After rushing to set its narrative stakes in the first 30 minutes, it forgoes urgency. The love triangles muddle the skullduggery, and vice versa.

"Canyon" doesn't have an authentic bone in its 10-episode first season. It's all forced and uncomfortable; you could style a drinking game every time a character awkwardly says "the great state of Texas."