{alltv} Mystery Hotel: They Check In, but They Don't Check Out

 

"Persons Unknown" was created by Christopher McQuarrie, who wrote the screenplay for the 1995 thriller "The Usual Suspects," and that pedigree alone should seal the success of this new NBC series that begins on Monday.

But the two can't really be compared. In a series the mystery is not resolved in 2 hours, or even 20; these sorts of shows almost always lose momentum or are prematurely canceled. This new suspense drama, about a small group of people who wake up as hostages in an empty, creepy hotel, has promise, but it also has familiar and ominous signs of a short life expectancy.

So many other series have tried the same tricky course and failed. "The Prisoner," shown on CBS from 1968 to 1969, is one of the most legendary television thrillers, partly because it wrapped after one 17-episode season. Most recently "Lost" on ABC kept core fans going for an improbable six seasons, but it also shed most of its coherence and intrigue long before it ended. And those are the successes. Shows like "Jericho," "Vanished," "Kidnapped," "The Nine" and "FlashForward" also began with great style and suspenseful verve, and later fell short.

"Persons Unknown" follows a premise that's now almost trite: Strangers are held against their will by an invisible enemy for no apparent reason and struggle to understand what happened and how to fix it. These hostages are a diverse, seemingly random group, with nothing in common except a bizarre twist of misfortune: Janet (Daisy Betts) is a young, divorced mother; Charlie (Alan Ruck) is an investment banker; Graham (Chadwick Boseman) is a Marine sergeant; and Joe (Jason Wiles), who is a natural leader, won't say what he does in real life. Along with several fellow prisoners, they are spooked and trust no one, not even one another. Their captors are not seen, but they seem to see everything through hidden surveillance cameras.

There are amusing touches: The anonymous town the victims wake up in appears to have an All-American Main Street: pharmacy, sheriff's office, dress shop, gun shop and Chinese restaurant. And viewers are given hints of rescue possibilities from the outside, mainly from Mark (Gerald Kyd), an investigative reporter at a San Francisco newspaper who begins looking into the unexplained disappearance of Janet and keeps running up against strange and baffling clues.

But the "Twin Peaks" axiom applies here as well: a show can ride only so far by suggesting, however cleverly, that things are not as they seem. Soon the creators must start revealing what really is going on.

Until that process begins, the true worth of "Persons Unknown" is unknowable.

Celebrity Stalker

"Smash His Camera," an HBO documentary on Monday, is an incisive and not unkind look at the life, and lens, of Ron Galella, the godfather of all paparazzi and the man who is most identified with restraining orders after Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis obtained one against him in 1973.

Marlon Brando shattered his jaw, Sean Penn spit at him, and Mrs. Onassis said to her Secret Service agent, "Mr. Connelly, smash his camera." But now Mr. Galella, who is 79 and still puttering in his darkroom in a "Sopranos"-style McMansion in New Jersey, should seem like a relic of a gentler age, a gentleman-scholar compared with the telephoto-lens-carrying hordes and TMZ-style papa-Nazis who stake out gay love nests, rehab break rooms and beach getaways, zooming in on sagging bellies and rippled cellulite.

His pictures now seem relatively harmless, and a few — like the famous 1971 snapshot of Mrs. Onassis striding on a New York sidewalk, hair windblown and half-smiling — are immortal. But actually there is something quite creepy about Mr. Galella in his twilight years.

He still has the hunter's blinkered hunger for the kill, and a stalker's almost impersonal obsession with the famous. We still want to see his pictures, but even today his passion for getting them is disturbing.

PERSONS UNKNOWN

NBC, Monday nights at 10, Eastern and Pacific times; 9, Central time.

Created by Christopher McQuarrie; Mr. McQuarrie, Heather McQuarrie and Rémi Aubuchon, executive producers; Sandy Isaac, co-executive producer; Linda McGibney, supervising producer; André Barrén, Mitch Engel, Eréndira de la Lama, Lorenzo O'Brien and Alberto Pando, producers; Michael R. Perry, consulting producer. Produced by Fox Television Studios in association with Televisa, S.A. de C.V.

WITH: Alan Ruck (Charlie Morse), Daisy Betts (Janet Cooper), Jason Wiles (Joe Tucker), Sean O'Bryan (Bill Blackham), Tina Holmes (Moira Doherty), Chadwick Boseman (Sgt. Graham McNair), Kate Lang Johnson (Tori Fairchild), Kandyse McClure (Erika Taylor), Gerald Kyd (Mark Renbe) and Lola Glaudini (Kat Damatto).

SMASH HIS CAMERA

HBO, Monday night at 9 Eastern and Pacific times, 8, Central time.

Directed by Leon Gast; Jeffrey Tarrant, William Ackman, Daniel Stern, executive producers; Linda Saffire and Adam Schlesinger, producers; Don Lenzer, director of photography. An HBO Documentary Films presentation produced by Got the Shot Productions.