Almost Paradise series premiere review: Christian Kane charms in breezy series

Almost Paradise casts The Librarians star Christian Kane as a former DEA agent fighting crime overseas, and the result is Psych with an island flair.

Almost Paradise brings Christian Kane back to TV, which is always a good thing—and he’s the best thing that this new TV crime drama has going for it.

The series, an international co-production airing on WGN America in the United States, is rough around the edges based on Monday’s pilot episode. Though it’s produced by Dean Devlin, this isn’t comparable to The Librarians or Leverage yet.

Though that’s not for lack of effort from its leading man. Kane, who is also a credited producer on the series, is in almost every scene and continues to be one of the most versatile actors out there. He delivers all the jokes with a certain twinkle in his eye, dispatches multiple bad guys in a bar as if it’s nothing, and has the requisite moments of angst to prove he has a serious side.

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But the rest of Almost Paradise has yet to catch up with him; it feels like a version of Psych if that series had focused solely on Shawn Spencer. We’ve seen all this before, from the corny jokes that don’t land (an opening scene has a line about penis failure being better than heart failure), to how Kane’s character Alex Walker casually interrupts a police briefing to break the case open and then strolls out.

And Walker’s the only character who feels three-dimensional so far. There’s the manager of the hotel where he works, who’s the requisite comedic boss type. There’s the local cop who winds up working with Walker (Samantha Richelle); the two quickly develop a love-hate relationship. Or the smarmy face from Walker’s past.

All of these characters need to be toned down and fleshed out to make Almost Paradise work. And speaking of down, the score is incredibly obtrusive; every scene in the opening act has a loud score underneath that gives away what to expect from it.

It’s clear what Devlin and his co-creator Gary Rosen were going for; they’re trying to do a “blue sky” crime drama in the Philippines, and there’s room for that; USA did it very well with shows like Psych, Burn Notice and White Collar before they pivoted to much darker fare.

But what all those shows—and Leverage and The Librarians—did so well was that they were so well-balanced. They had ensembles where every character was interesting on their own and then they were even better together, where the banter felt natural because the actors had a genuine rapport, and they were able to have an even mix of funny moments and serious ones that made the series well-rounded.

This show doesn’t have that yet. When it’s being funny, it feels like it’s trying too hard; when it’s aiming to be serious, it comes out of nowhere. About two-thirds of the way through the pilot Alex is breaking down and going on a rant about the futility of the drug war that has no particular build-up; it just happens. And as far as building a cohesive ensemble, Kane is out on an island (no pun intended).

Hopefully Almost Paradise fleshes out its characters and finds its tone in the episodes to come. It’s obvious that Devlin and Rosen have all these different aspects they want to play with, and Kane is more than deserving of having his own star vehicle. But it’s not easy to put all these different pieces together, and anyone other than Christian Kane fans might find it hard to book a return trip to this island crime drama.

Almost Paradise airs Mondays at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT on WGN America.