Millennium: Season One (2004)

Millennium is set in the late 1990s, in the years preceding the turn of the last millennium. Frank Black (played by Lance Henrikson, not the Pixies vocalist) is an ex-FBI agent trying to keep his family safe from the real horrors of the world. He may be officially retired but he's not out of commission. He's a member of the mysterious Millennium Group, a collective set up to aid police when the rising eschatology that Y2K heralded manifests in acts of seemingly arbitrary violence, planned ritualistic murder, sacrilegious torture, etc. Frank witnesses all the nasty things that we pretend don't exist.

He has a gift/curse that lets him experience traumatic visions, placing him in a killer's mind at the time of an attack. By working backwards, anticipating forwards, profiling and forensics, he's able to get a clearer picture of a criminal and their crime.

It's fair to say that the series went to some very dark places. It was grounded in reality but is ultimately a dichotomy in that while it strives for realism it asks us to accept that Frank has unexplained visions. If you're willing to accept that, there's much to enjoy in Season One.

Besides the occasional and incidental pairings with his wife, Catherine, and regular team mate, Peter Watts, the drama required Frank to be alone with his thoughts, as he was alone with his visions. Consequently, it lacked the buddy dynamic of series creator Chris Carter's other TV show at the time, The X-Files. But where X-Files used conspiracy and aliens to mask its occasional lack of a satisfying conclusion, Millennium had no such crutches, so when it fell flat it did so openly. Conversely, when it worked it was like a small screen version of David Fincher's Se7en (1995).

22 episodes, approx 44 minutes each.

3½ ouroboros' out of 5