Oh, the Humanity!

Over the past two nights, FOX has rolled out the last TV series premiere of the fall season. (Until January brings the sizable "mid-season" crop.) Almost Human comes from series creator J. H. Wyman, one of the showrunners on Fringe, and is produced by J.J. Abrams' company, Bad Robot. It's set in a near future L.A., following a police officer working with his android partner.

From the two episodes so far (aired back-to-back on Sunday and Monday night), the show seems aimed at carving out a familiar space despite its undeniable sci-fi trappings. It's part procedural cop show, with a sci-fi brush over the particulars of any given case. It's part buddy cop movie, in which it just happens one of the buddies is an android.

Though rather simple on the page, the episodes so far have managed to be more than the simple premise. I'm not wowed, but I'm definitely interested, in large part because of the two main actors. The series stars Karl Urban (the new Dr. McCoy, but with a pile of geek cred including Dredd and The Lord of the Rings) as the grizzled human cop and Michael Ealy (whose own less exhaustive geek cred still includes an Underworld movie and the short-lived TV series FlashForward) as his android partner. The two actors have an immediate rapport with one another, which puts the writers a big step ahead in trying to figure out just what the show ought to be like.

There are a handful of other side characters, some of them somewhat recognizable faces from other TV series. But the only one making even a modest impact so far is a tech geek played by Mackenzie Crook (known for the original British version of The Office). At this early stage, I suppose it's understandable -- even desirable -- that the focus be on the main two characters. Still, at this point it leaves me wondering why bother with anyone else at all. No one else seems like they're really adding much to the mix.

It will be interesting to see what the show does in the weeks ahead. There was the layering in of an ongoing plotline in the pilot episode, which was not mentioned again in the second hour. Is the show going to feel compelled to build an ongoing story, just because it's science fiction and produced by J.J. Abrams? If so, is that going to be an interesting ongoing storyline, or is it going to go the way of The X-Files? Will the show instead embrace a more episodic, procedural format, letting its unusual setting do the job of separating the series from the pack? The first two episodes have at least earned more than enough goodwill for me to hang around and see.