by Aitch Cee

So, after watching a very interesting Scandal, with no How to Get Away with Murder to finish off the evening, I settled in to watch Dig.   Dig is the USA Network’s attempt at a deep complex story show like ABC’s Lost. Except no matter how far you dig with this first episode it’s hard to want to keep up with what’s going on.

Produced by Heroes’ Tim Kring, the show’s fuzzy premise begins in Norway with Orthodox Jews inspecting a red calf. Once the calf has been found containing no black hairs, they claim that “The prophecy has begun” but…we don’t know what this prophecy is. Thus the mystery begins.

We then cut to Israel where FBI agent Peter Connelly played by Jason Isaacs, is working a sting operation with the local Israeli police in Old Jerusalem. We find out during the course of the show that he lost a daughter and it’s strained or ended his marriage thus sending him to Israel. While he is there we also find out he is screwing his boss played by Anne Heche. The other part of the story has to do with a 13 year old boy being held by a religious group in a remote location being told that must fulfil his destiny, which of course, we are given no idea what it is.

When all of these threads are established, we cut back to Connelly who is in the process of apprehending a suspect during a chase sequence which was probably the only exciting moment of the show. During the chase, Connelly has a vision of a red haired woman (Emma, played by Alison Sudol) who he somehow meets later that night.   From there, the plot takes a strange twist as Connelly and Emma seemingly make a connection. Emma tells Connelly that she is working on a dig that will change the course of mankind. She takes him to the site and after a few Indiana Jones references; they skinny dip in a sacred pool.   They are interrupted however by a secret ritual being done in a supposedly unknown tunnel. We get another reference about grand and mysterious forces at work animal sacrifices and then…the next day Emma is found brutally killed.

Of course, Connelly is the last one seen with her and can’t just come out and tell everyone but someone suspects but ‘the greater mystery’ of course is why she was killed.

Dig, in making this attempt at creating a TV version of a Dan Brown book, is that it spent too much time trying to get viewers wrapped up in the mystery without really giving a reason why we should care. Worse, it really feels like we have seen it all before. The trailers and ads stated that it would challenge everything we know but to steal a phrase from Raiders of the Lost Ark, it felt like too many times, this show was digging in the wrong place. Isaacs, clearly is carrying this show but I almost feel that the other characters are just there for fill in.

At the end of the day after you have had TV shows like Lost did its best weaving complicated conspiracy type stories, Dig feels like a shiny object you saw from afar and then when you look at it closer, you want to toss it back. Very vague on the plot and character development, I think there may be better things to unearth on Thursdays than this. Good luck for anyone wanting to hang around for the next 9 chapters.