Any adaptation of Michael Crichton’s thriller “The Andromeda Strain” (8 p.m. Monday and Tuesday on A&E) needs to do one thing: serve up a heaping helping of paranoia.
The four-hour version on A&E does that with workmanlike competence and a bit of high-tech flash. If this tale of a possibly alien virus on Earth doesn’t really improve on the suspenseful 1971 Robert Wise film, that’s not necessarily a dismissal.
The new “Andromeda Strain” has some unnecessary bells and whistles that mark it as a production overseen by the flashy filmmaking brothers Ridley and Tony Scott. We really didn’t need to see an extended shot of the characters taking a slow-motion decontamination bath, and this cast, though it performs solidly, isn’t nearly as quirky or memorable as the troupe in Wise’s film.
Still, Crichton’s story serves up so many interlocking layers of distrust, fear and competing agendas that it’s hard not to get sucked into its thicket of conspiracy theories. And this version of the story is paced well; it gives Crichton’s story a hint of blandness, but it also marches through the plot with no-nonsense efficiency.
Benjamin Bratt plays Dr. Jeremy Stone, the head of a team of scientists who are recruited by the government to investigate a strange occurrence in a small Utah town: Unbeknownst to the rest of America, most of the town died soon after a satellite crashed nearby. One reporter, Jack Nash (Eric McCormack), starts to question the odd things that begin to happen in Utah.
Nash’s distrust of the government cover stories is just one part of a web of paranoia. Stone doesn’t necessarily believe what his government handler, Gen. George Mancheck (Andre Braugher), is telling him. Mancheck begins to suspect the motives of his own civilian bosses, and the members of the scientific team Stone assembles don’t necessarily trust each other. And they all begin to think the government’s claims about the satellite that carried the deadly virus are bogus.
Could the Andromeda crisis be related to a sea-mining operation that the government is trying to get approval for? Is one of the president’s aides even shadier than he first appears? And for the scientists, the scariest question of all is, could this strange, living organism adapt and become even more deadly?
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Certainly Crichton’s tale has proved that it is highly adaptable to the paranoias of any age. His novel has been updated here with energy but also a mild overlay of melodramatic cheese. Still, “The Andromeda Strain” is one adaptable entity that’s nearly impossible to destroy.
Note: For a list of Monday TV marathons, check out the list at tinyurl.com/6dh8by.
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