3 out of 5

Created by: Kevin Williamson

covers season 1

While it starts out rife with Williamson extremes that are fitting for a who called ‘Stalker,’ the series settles down relatively quickly – and smartly relaxes on some potentially obnoxious withheld audience-baiting info regarding our leads’ pasts – to become a surprisingly well executed police procedural.  Maggie Q stars as Beth Davis, head of ‘Stalker Division’ in LA – a specialized task force for stalker-related crimes.  She heads a small crew of, at first, easily stereotyped staff – the hacker; the snarker; and Dylan McDermott as Jack Larson, the hot-shot new guy.  The show revels in abuse and Beth / Jack secrets for a few episodes, and we’re ready to roll our eyes and say that this is exactly what we expect from Williamson post the unbelievable (at the time) success of The Following.  But the show’s creative team, seemingly aware of the negative feedback, very quickly turned things around: it’s obvious at first, with male stalker victims instead of just female, but then they went to work on fleshing out all of the principles, making their situations more human, giving their actors more room to actually act, and the stalker-of-the-week formula was treated with a dash less of the “this is exxxtreeeme” Following approach.  The characters became likeable; the cases interesting.  And when the Beth back-story plot (she has her own stalker) starts to feel like it’s being trailed out too long, it’s brought to the forefront and given a successful conclusion, something especially unexpected in a television world that loves roping us along.  This doesn’t prevent another storyline from being developed that gives us a cliffhanger for a season 2… but, hey, with shows being given second runs via cable or streaming networks nowadays, it’s forgivable to try to bait us even when you’ve been canceled.

And in this case, I would like the show to come back, assuming it can hold on to the integrity and intelligence it displayed for most of its season.  Stalker wasn’t especially original in the world of procedurals, but it was a success story for listening to feedback and turning things around, and had the benefit of a fully likeable cast to keep it watchable week to week.