Shut Eye

There’s nothing innovative about this project, but its commitment to fleet storytelling and a game cast take it far.

We’ll be curious to see what the second half of the season delivers, but its uneven presentation thus far, torn between grounded and outlandish, fails to give a proper platform to its stars (even if they manage to squeeze in moments on their own).

At its best, the show mimics the stylized visuals, outlandish violence, and comic cynicism of early episodes of Breaking Bad--though, so far, it lacks the clarity and the focus to make its story half as thoughtful.

Over its next three episodes, Shut Eye, created by Les Bohem (“Extant”), loses most of its momentum as the story grows overcomplicated and undercharacterized. It’s like watching a trick in which the dove fails to fly out of the magician’s hat.

When Shut Eye focuses on the often separate-but-equal storylines of Linda and Charlie, it’s intriguing; the more it peels off into a tedious storyline about their son’s high school life or the illegal doings of Rossellini’s gangster empire or the strong-arm tactics of the gangster (you’ll wince at a death-by-boiling-oil in a doughnut shop), the more diffuse the series becomes.

Through four episodes it's still struggling to establish a consistent tone or to settle on the hook of its premise.

Donovan, Schmid and, intermittently, Strickland manage moments of credibility, but Sampson and Rossellini sink beneath the waves of bad writing at every turn. They are weighed down by painfully bad performances.