A Little Joy

This space has frequently lamented the too-early demise of Joss Whedon's western-flavored space show Firefly. Just a half a season and a movie is all this excellent television series could get from a network that thought running the initial episodes out of order would be no problem for potential viewers.

It's been 10 years since Firefly aired and a lot of people have tried to find its lightning and get people to watch them unleash it. Most have failed, some miserably and some less so.

Back in 2013, Michelle Lovretta, creator of Showcase's Buffyesque Lost Girl, pitched her idea of a western/spaceship blend to Canada's SpaceTV. In April of 2014 the ridiculously renamed SyFy network in the US signed on to co-produce, and Killjoys aired this summer. It tells the adventures of three bounty hunters in a distant planet/moon system called the Quad, who work for a company that different nations and warring factions have agreed can be neutral in their conflict as long as it sticks to business. The business is executing warrants, which could range from anything to property recovery to hostage exchanges to felon tracing to actual executions. These agents are called "Killjoys," partly because the slang term for cash in this society is "joy," and if they need to they may kill to make some.

Dutch (Hannah John-Kamen) leads the trio and is the most experienced agent. She is initially aided by junior partner John Jaqobis -- the "s" is silent (Aaron Ashmore) -- but later adds John's older brother D'avin (Luke Macfarlane). John is the idealist, Dutch and D'avin each hide a Secret Past That Is Catching Up to Them.

While Lovretta's love of Firefly is obvious in the way she crafted her show and characters, she doesn't try a simple note-for-note recreation. Rather than the eight-member crew of Serenity, the Lucy only carries three, although the ship itself seems to have an artificial intelligence. There are Evil Shadowy Corporate Types and a fun mix of cultures, but our trio work with them more than try to stay away from them.

On the other hand, the show's world has a high learning curve to step into and rather than use its pretty well-worn TV tropes as pigments to color its portraits it just runs them out there as is. The quippy portion of the dialogue is pretty well-written, but much of the rest is cut-and-paste from a hundred other action-oriented TV shows where the leads Really Care For Each Other But Bicker Because They Are Afraid to Show It.

But on the gripping hand, the trio of John-Kamen, Ashmore and Macfarlane are likeably charismatic and have good chemistry. John-Kamen's dance background helps give her fight scenes some interesting grace, Ashmore has good genre cred from Smallville and Warehouse 13, and Macfarlane does pretty good at mostly hiding his aforementioned Secret Past. Some pretty cool techno music scores a lot of the fight scenes, which sort of make you wish the show had gone full Bollywood and just made some of those scenes flat-out musical numbers.

Watched weekly where its clichés can fade a little bit in between viewings, Killjoys is probably a lot easier to take than done in a binge session. Overall, it's sort of like being given O'Doul's when you'd like to have a Guinness. It's disappointing, but the reality is we're not going to get our Guinness of Firefly anytime soon and in small doses, O'Doul's can grow on you.

(Edited 11:00 PM Sunday to change character name to "D'avin" instead of "D'aven.")