TV episodes review
US airdates 15 October-19 December 2007 (NBC)
UK airdates 29 November 2007-18 February 2008 (Sky One)

San Francisco journalist Dan Vasser’s (Kevin McKidd) trips into the past become more complicated as they begin to affect his present day life…

Journeyman, now cancelled, may have proved to be a too adult, too clever version of SF TV classic Quantum Leap for modern audiences. Nicely understated, rooting its drama in the everyday events of real life, Journeyman was probably not fantastic enough for the SF crowd, but too ‘out there’ for regular drama viewers. Thus, falling between two stools and pleasing no one, it has died a lonely (it was losing viewers hand over fist), writers’ strike-assisted death after a mere 13 episodes.

The clever thing that the show did as it progressed was to show the impact that Dan’s time-travelling was having on his life in the here-and-now. Not only was he disappearing at awkward and embarrassing family moments, but his tampering with the past was having material changes on the future (his present).

Firstly, two-part story Emily and Blowback sees Dan’s determination to capture a serial killer result in the same guy being released from prison in the present after serving his sentence, only to kidnap Dan’s wife Katie. This idea is built upon in The Hanged Man that sees Dan’s actions (he loses a digital camera in the past, altering the future) cause his son to become his unknown (to him) daughter.

It’s clever stuff, which works very well on a thoughtful, emotional drama level, if not as a wham-bam action series. With no explanation offered for Dan and ex-girlfriend Livia’s time travelling, the series is ultimately unsatisfactory (but then Quantum Leap didn’t achieve a satisfactory resolution, either, after many more episodes).

Throughout the show physicist Elliot Langley is slowly built up as a mysterious figure who may know more than he is letting on: he’s studied time travel, he may have known Dan’s father (an important, recurring character in the past), the military took his research… It’s all very promising, but ultimately goes nowhere, a bit like FBI agent Richard Garrity who appears to be investigating time travellers but is killed off when he becomes inconvenient.

Unlike Lost, Journeyman didn’t have the same big easy-to-understand mystery questions to keep a mass audience attached, but it would have been nice for those who stuck with this well-made, well-scripted and very well acted show to have had the pleasure of a resolution. Unfortunately, it looks like creator Kevin Falls had no idea what the solution was to his own mystery, either. Brian J. Robb

VERDICT
The Year of the Rabbit: 5/10
The Legend of Dylan McCleen: 6/10
Keepers: 6/10
Double Down: 6/10
Winterland: 7/10
Emily: 7/10
Blowback: 7/10
Home by Another Way: 7/10
The Hanged Man: 8/10
Perfidia: 8/10

SERIES VERDICT: 7/10