'THE ALIENIST'..........STILL AS D.O.A. AS ITS RIPPED UP BOY WHORES.....

The Alienist (TNT series, 2018)       5 episodes in (out of 10) and we're still waiting for this one to develop a pulse......

                What a colossal bore.

                 Years ago, our first attempt at reading Caleb Carr's bestselling book went nowhere.

                 We gave up after 50 pages or so. Couldn't hack our way through the glacial pace, the thick, impenetrable prose.  For all the praise it received, we thought it was a futile chore to read.

                  A year later, we put our nose and reading glasses to the grindstone and finally read it from start to finish. Damned if we could ever remember a single thing about it.

                 So here we now have the mini-series. And it's wonderfully faithful to the spirit of the book in that it moves like a squashed deer on the highway and is riveting to sit through as watching the grass grow on your front lawn.

                 The producers of this series have foolishly presented it as a weekly basic cable show instead of making all its episodes available for binge streaming.  Big mistake.

                  Seven days between episodes?  You could easily forget what happened in any of these episodes 10 seconds after you've seen one, let alone 7 days.

                  In fact, they could have run the 5 episodes we've endured so far in random order and we doubt anyone would have noticed the difference.

                  We do appreciate the meticulous production design, the studious recreation of late 19th century New York in all its corruption, squalor and brutal divide between the immigrant working classes and the aristocratic wealthy.

                   But for a dramatization, it lacks any forward momentum. And for a story about an 'alienist' (a prehistoric psychiatrist) tracking a Jack-The-Pedophile-Ripper who carves up boy hookers, the lack of pacing does more damage to this show than its psycho does to the kids.

                 We'll give it this much.........at least the show's casting director has a perverse sense of humor casting Sean Young as the prime suspect's uppercrust mother.  If anyone knows about batshit crazy behavior, it's her........

                  As for the rest of the cast......well, they look awfully spiffy in their period duds.

                  1 star at the halfway point of this show (*) and that's primarily for the decor. We'll visit again after the finish.......and who knows how many cups of strong coffee it'll take to keep our eyes open........