Richard Franklin had successfully directed the pilot for Ron Koslow's Beauty and the Beast so was bought back to do another Koslow pilot, this one, which wasn't picked up for series. Kim Cattrall isn't entirely comfortably cast as a secret agent with handler Billy Zane; she's killed in the line of duty and brought back as a cyborg.
Billy Zane puts the hard word on Cattrall in their first scene together. The lack of strong bond between this duo is a big drawback. It's on the page but isn't on the stage. I think it's simply a matter of miscasting.
I get the feeling Cattrall was cast because she reminded the producers of Diana Rigg, who played a spy so well in The Avengers and who plays the controller here. But it doesn't work. I think Catrall could've played a flirty spy like Emma Peel but that's not the role ehre - that's of a woman who wakes up to find she's been turned into a cyborg.
None of it feels real - the cast, the spy agency, the tech, the relationship/banter between Zane and Cattrall. Beauty and the Beast, outlandish as it was, always felt real. This doesn't click. The action sequences aren't even that suspensful and the photography (at least in the copy I saw) not that great.
The cyborg angle isn't really exploited either. Everything she does on the mission could've been done by a good old fashioned real person.
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