DC fans we don't really get to talk much , we should really talk more and as you can guess by the very title of this review i'm going to take us back to a show that barely anyone even remembers and given that this team is going to be getting a movie in a few years now seems as good a time as any so here is my review of the 2002 TV Series "Birds Of Prey" let's dig in shall we.
I'm going to let you all know i'm doing something a little bit different with this review instead of watching the whole show i'm only watching three episodes and they are the unaired pilot and the shows first two episodes.The premise for the show is in the future long after Batman has driven himself into exile his legacy lives on in the form of the Birds of Prey. I'll admit the idea of having a Gotham without batman does seem interesting but my issue is that's not in his character at all so couldn't they have found a way to not have him in the show but have him still be in Gotham.
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Starring in the show was Ashley Scott as Helena Kyle/Huntress , Dina Meyer as Barbara Gordon/Oracle , Rachel Skarsten as Dinah Lance , Shemar Moore as Detective Jesse Reese , Ian Abercrombie as Alfred and Mia Sara as Harleen Quinzel/Harley Quinn. Wow the acting in this show is pretty bad. I expected this show to have some bad acting just because the acting in most comic book adaptations in the early 2000's was bad but wow the acting in this show takes the cake.
At the end of the unaired pilot there's a great scene with Harley where she's interrogating the villain of that episode and during that scene it would have been perfect for Harley to go full on nuts but no they don't do that. If there was any scene where Harley should have gone freaking insane it's scenes like that because that's her character she would go insane at you if you so much as looked at her wrong altho that was the only scene that they improved in the shows first episode.
Here is something interesting Mia Sara wasn't the only person to play Harley in the show because in the shows unaired pilot episode she was played by the great Sherilyn Fenn. As far as I can tell they had no reason to replace her since there's nothing about it anywhere online and it's a shame because she could have made a decent Harley if given the time but they replaced and reshot her scenes from the pilot with Mia.
What really annoyed me was the fact that the show has really annoying CGI filled transitions and it's not just something that's every once in a while either. Those transitions are several times per episode and they are really freaking annoying and horribly dated because the CGI freaking sucks and you know it sucks because it's early 2000's CGI so not only is bad it also look really dated.
This show is cheesey as heck and when I say cheesey I mean it's really freaking cheesey and i'm not quite sure how I feel about that. On the one hand it does add alot of unintended humor to the show but on the other hand it does take me out of the show. Just to give you an example of how cheesey this show gets they add a lion's roar whenever Helena does a huge jump or whenever she does something cat like which while they do explain it still doesn't explain why there's a lions roar there.
When this show first aired in 2002 it was very popular with the 18–34 demographic and just based of the three episodes i've seen i;m willing to bet that most of the people watching this were male. If that is the case then I can see why it was popular and hint hint it has nothing to do with the show itself it's to do with the fact that all three leads are really beautiful and one of them wears a skin tight leather outfit. They pretty much got the male demo after pilot it's just a shame they couldn't keep them tuned in.
This show doesn't hide it's stunt team well at all because you can straight up tell when there using a stunt actor in the fight scenes. If you want to know what I mean it's whenever they cut to another shot and you can't see the actors face now any good film or show will try to hide the fact that's clearly not the actor doing that fight scene but nope not this show. In this show it's right there for us all to see in all of it's bad glory.
Like I said before when the show first premiered it was really popular however the ratings for the show dipped every week during it's thirteen episode run so much so that the network The WB cancelled the show after just thirteen episodes. I can really see why this show didn't stay on the air for long because yeah it's bad and i'm saying that after only watching a few episodes so imagine how bad it would have been if I watched all of the episodes.
As for the fight scenes themselves they are extremely basic and there's very little to no creativity in them what so ever. That's not really a bad thing since this is still a TV show but even so if your making an action show it's expected that you put alot of effort into creating some great action scenes. What does make the action scenes alot more entertaining tho is that there's a lot of whooshing sound effects in this I don't even think Power Rangers: The Movie had this many whooshing in it.
There is something that I did like tho and that's the shows opening theme it's called "Revolution" and is sung by singer / songwriter Aimee Allen. The song in my opinion really does fit the group really well and the fact that this technically the first appearance in live action for characters like Dinah Lance and Harley Quinn is only fitting in my humble opinion.
Overall this show is bad but it's bad in an enjoyable way like you'll laugh at how bad it is so that does prevent it from getting anything below a 5 out of 10 but it's still a show that has a lot faults and it was made at a time when comic book adaptations weren't being taken seriously so it gets a 5.5 out of 10 from me.