OK, obviously this isn't WEST WING, nor did it ever set out to be. I only saw this because it was included with the movie DVD. That movie was worse than I remembered, and I had no expectations this TV show would be any better. I was wrong, and here's why:
The plots themselves are simply what you'd expect: some poacher (etc) comes to town (or rather jungle) and our two intrepid heroes defeat them. So far, that's each 43-minute episode, with a bit of padding from nature shots ... which sometimes include Ms Nolin washing off mud. Well, you don't get much closer to nature than that. This is Disney, though, so yes: they may push the edge of PG but don't go over.
The CGI? Well, it's ... OK, this is just TV adventure, folks. The CGI is what it is. I've seen worse, I've seen better. It gets the idea across, and they don't use it very often.
The bad: well, leave it to American TV to make a TV show that takes place in the African jungle, but only cast one non-white actor among the four regular cast members. Can you guess which of the four gets the least amount of screen time? (ding! I think we have a winner!)
But seriously: for a TV show featuring white people in the African jungle who never suffer from sunburn, this is not so terrible as I expected. Ms Nolin herself isn't too bad, and after three episodes I have yet to see her run in slow motion, so that's already a step up from Baywatch. No, there's no realism, but for escapist adventure TV, this is surprisingly well-written and decently filmed. I'm not sorry I bought it.
- David Allan Nelson: yeah, the show is called SHEENA, but Nelson's is the more central character. We're lucky he is, because Nolin has no real charisma, but Nelson does. It's really the same character he did in DEATHSTALKER III (aka Deathstalker And The Warriors From Hell), with a better hairdo. He brings a good light-hearted sensibility to his lines, which nicely offsets the fantastic element of Sheena and her shape-changing.
- the writing: again, this comes down to comments made by Nelson (or occasionally Kevin Quigley), because Sheena's role doesn't really allow for character or humor. It doesn't help that Nolin's line delivery tends to come off snappish (at least, in the first few episodes; I'm hoping she gets better). This may simply point to Nelson's vastly longer resume. But it really says something when a TV show features a half-naked girl, and I'm still watching it for the bemused male dialog.
- settings: the exteriors look pretty good, and that is the vast majority of shots. Sheena's cave lair is mercifully rare. Think Star Trek caves. Yeah.
The plots themselves are simply what you'd expect: some poacher (etc) comes to town (or rather jungle) and our two intrepid heroes defeat them. So far, that's each 43-minute episode, with a bit of padding from nature shots ... which sometimes include Ms Nolin washing off mud. Well, you don't get much closer to nature than that. This is Disney, though, so yes: they may push the edge of PG but don't go over.
The CGI? Well, it's ... OK, this is just TV adventure, folks. The CGI is what it is. I've seen worse, I've seen better. It gets the idea across, and they don't use it very often.
The bad: well, leave it to American TV to make a TV show that takes place in the African jungle, but only cast one non-white actor among the four regular cast members. Can you guess which of the four gets the least amount of screen time? (ding! I think we have a winner!)
But seriously: for a TV show featuring white people in the African jungle who never suffer from sunburn, this is not so terrible as I expected. Ms Nolin herself isn't too bad, and after three episodes I have yet to see her run in slow motion, so that's already a step up from Baywatch. No, there's no realism, but for escapist adventure TV, this is surprisingly well-written and decently filmed. I'm not sorry I bought it.