Karl Puschmann: 12 Monkeys dulls down Gilliam's brilliant vision

The Zone's new series 12 Monkeys is a remake of Terry Gilliam's 1995 mind-bending sci-fi classic film. Photo / Supplied

Adapting classic movies for television is a hit-and-miss affair, writes Karl Puschmann.

Last year Fargo proved me wrong. This shouldn't have surprised me as much as it did as I'm plenty experienced at getting things wrong. In fact, I'm pretty good at it.

But come on; you can't say that turning the Coen brothers' 1996 quirky crime classic into a television series sounded like anything other than a splutteringly stupid idea. Maddeningly, it still does.

Even now, knowing how massively entertaining it is, it still doesn't sound like a good idea. Even though it irrefutably was.

So yeah, I was plenty wrong about that.

Ridiculously, I'm now wondering how season two will possibly be any good. With the events of the film neatly tied up and all the character arcs complete, we now face the prospect of watching a television remake of a classic film that won't actually be remaking any elements of said film because it already has.

Does that sound at all good to you? Nup. It sounds positively sucky. But I am very much looking forward to finding out just how wrong I am about this later in the year.

It was with this spirit that I approached The Zone's new series 12 Monkeys (Thursdays, 8.30pm). This is a television remake of Terry Gilliam's 1995 mind-bending sci-fi classic film, itself a remake of an experimental 60s French short.

Again, this television remake sounded like an appalling idea. The flick is a hot mess of confusion, paranoia and the gleeful paradoxes presented by its time-travelling premise.

All of which perfectly suited Gilliam's directorial strengths, him being a master cinematic surrealist whose hallucinatory style, oddball imagination and uneasy atmospherics would seem near impossible to imitate with any success.

Then there's the film's stars, Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt, at the top of their game. Their unlikely partnership resulted in a performance tour de force capitalised on by the artful madness of Gilliam's skewed vision.

Brad Pitt and Bruce Willis star in the original film 12 Monkeys

Who wouldn't want to see that on television? It would seem the makers of this television adaptation, that's who.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery then 12 Monkeys is a one-fingered salute to any expectations you have that aspects of Gilliam's twisted genius may have found its way onscreen the way the Coens' famed quirk seeped into Fargo.

Instead, television's 12 Monkeys plays it straight. It offers a standard procedural slant on the story as time traveller James Cole flits back and forwards through time in a last-ditch attempt to track down the agents of the Army of the Twelve Monkeys and prevent a plague-like virus from wiping out humanity in the future.

Considering the source material it's difficult to not be disappointed by 12 Monkeys, even if judging it against the strength of the film is totally unfair.

For the most part it looks good and things move fairly briskly, even though this means characters believe the unbelievable with nary a second of disbelief.

But the show's direction is uninspired, the acting average and the effects border on the laughable.

All nuance and mystery has also been excised and if you think about what's going on it all falls apart right in front of your eyes.

The real paradox of 12 Monkeys is that there are flashes throughout that suggest the series could turn things around in the future. Great lines are scattered liberally, displaying an intelligence I wish had been applied to the plotting.

"Hold on to this," Cole says to his new partner Cassandra Railly as he returns the watch that played a pivotal part in them escaping some baddies, "we're going to need it again, about one minute ago."

It offers hope for the future. But do you have the time to wait for improvement? Right now television is arguably at its most creative and inventive as it cultivates the ideals, art and vision of cinema while luxuriating in the storytelling opportunities that a television season allows.

Shows like True Detective, Better Call Saul and Game of Thrones have obliterated any limitations of the format and brought us auteur levels of cinematic artistry.

Fargo showed how to adapt brilliantly a beloved movie for television. It's a shame 12 Monkeys pulls its inspiration from CSI instead. I wish I'd been wrong about it.