Hunters - 'The Beginning and the End'

Earth's only line of defence is so gloriously low-tech.

Ironically, given its title, the pilot episode of new and already cancelled alien hunting series Hunters begins at neither the beginning nor the end, but in the middle, with a man manipulating music files on a computer while a naked woman lies hogtied in a cage next to hutches full of rabbits.

So, this is the bad guy, okay. The heroes may be asshats, but this dude keeps naked ladies in cages.

Flash back 72 hours and we get to see a bit of the captive, Abby Carroll, living her normal life with her FBI husband, Flynn and their foster daughter whose dad was Flynn's late partner. Damn this guy's family life is complicated. I bet he's really deep and interesting, says the imaginary viewer for whom this show is being written. Abby is kidnapped by the bad man, who just to drive the point home gets all close in and rapey before incapacitating the half-deaf woman with a sonic weapon.

To find Abby, Flynn is roped into the Exo-Terrorism Unit, a group of cross-agency, slightly international alien Hunters working out of a 1990s police procedural set, using sonic weapons adapted by those used by the 'Hunters', their human-looking alien quarry. He works with ETU agents Regan and Riggs to try to catch our bad man - I think his human alias is McCarthy or something - but they fuck it up, largely because they are fuck ups and incapable of maintaining any kind of tactical formation.

So, are we clear on who the baddy is?

And therein lies the real problem. The leads are a bunch of fuck ups, lacking not only redeeming features, but also convincing reasons to be on this team. In terms of character, Carroll is a growly misanthrope who loves only his wife (and possibly the foster daughter, while also feeling unable to look after her properly on his own,) Riggs is Australian and Regan is impulsive, and probably an alien. The Hunters are pretty one-note - they really have to be to hold onto the bad guy flag against this bunch of chuckleheads - with their human appearance, animalistic snarling and rapey, big game hunter overtones. Maybe there will be more nuance later.