Eleventh Hour (2008)

Image credit: Marcel Williams

HOUR TRIP Shelton and Sewell

In the tradition of Monk, The Mentalist, and, to an extent, Chuck, Eleventh Hour features a quirky genius (Dark City's Rufus Sewell) and his sensible female handler (Marley Shelton), who solve mysteries. It's a stale premise — and the drama does nothing to enliven the situation. Based on a British ITV series, this 
Jerry Bruckheimer drama feels more like a limp CSI spin-off, although Sewell, with his ominously handsome face and oddly grandfatherly voice, is a notch above. His superscientist Dr. Jacob Hood is summoned by the FBI on cases that involve...science. In the debut episode, it's human cloning; in another, it's boys suffering fatal heart attacks. But every case is filled with something you've seen before: hotheaded Southerners in coveralls; purry, evil older women; a
 plotline from The Name of the Rose. It's a procedural procedural. C–