A Slick Genre Entry That Plays its Hand With Confidence
FOX’s upcoming Memory of a Killer is the Network’s second recent entry featuring a protagonist who loses their memory, but gains a conscience. The first is Doc, a medical series with notes of melodrama, now airing an expanded second season on the Network following a successful first foray. Doc centers on Dr. Amy Larsen, a once Machiavellian physician who is now open to the healing power of change, tears, and talking things through following an almost fatal car crash that erased the memories of the last 10 years of her life.
Memory of a Killer chooses to approach things a little differently.
At the centre of the action is Patrick Dempsey’s Angelo Flannery, a mid-mannered, upstate widower, Dad, and wearer of comfortable woollen-blend sweaters. Angelo drives a modest family SUV, and sells photocopiers for a living. He gets excited about attending office supplies service and sales conventions, and when he’s not boring his pregnant daughter (Odeya Rush) and her milquetoast husband (Daniel David Stewart) with dull tales about photocopier parts he’s happily anticipating the birth of his first grandchild.
However, Angelo is hiding a deadly secret. He is also Angelo Doyle, a Porsche-driving, designer suit-wearing, ruthless and efficient hitman for a New York crime family who, just like his own family, knows nothing of his alter ego, double life, or penchant for finer things.
Dempsey’s turn as Angelo is excellent, whether he’s brawling in a bathroom, fighting another assassin at close quarters in an elevator, coldly executing a man whose life he swore he’d spare seconds before opening a safe, or boring his daughter with fake office stories. Known to many TV fans for his years of service to medical drama Grey’s Anatomy, Dempsey strikes a refreshing tone here in his double role as a comfortable Granddad to be, and as a methodical, remorseless killer.
Angelo works for boss and longtime friend Dutch Forlanni, a successful restauranteur whose New York eatery is a front for more criminal enterprises. Dutch is played with equal parts easy charm and simmering volatility by Soprano’s vet Michael Imperioli, who puts in an effortless performance as a mercurial man who will tolerate nothing less than unwavering loyalty and adherence to his grand plans.
Assisting Angelo with his hits is Dutch’s young nephew Joe Ferrara (Richard Harmon of Final Destination: Bloodlines fame). Joe is a capable neophyte hitman, but he still has a lot to learn. However, Angelo, who prefers to work alone, doesn’t have the patience to teach him, so Joe spends much of his time stuck with the grunt work — gathering recon, sourcing getaway vehicles, and trying not to piss the fearsome Angelo off along the way.
RELATED | Photos From the Series Premiere of Memory of a Killer
These various narrative plates would surely have happily spun in orbit forever if not for creeping series of events that upends Angelo’s life dramatically by the end of the premiere episode (we’ve seen the first two hours of the series in advance of this review). After a successful hit Angelo forgets the code to his house alarm. Later, he leaves his kit bag outside the door. Later still he has trouble remembering where he parked his car. Or how the events of a very particular violent incident went down. Angelo is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, the same devastating cognitive decline that put his brother in permanent care, unable to remember even the faces of his closest family.
For Angelo, not being able to remember his decades long list of enemies is a death sentence. However when persons unknown connect the Flannery and Doyle personas to the same person, and come looking for him in his cozy upstate home, Angelo realizes his unassuming daughter and son-in-law are also both now in mortal danger.
Not only that, but Joe, who begins to see the cracks in Doyles’ flawless exterior up close, realizes he now has the power to make or break Angelo. He also know that choice could cost him everything.
For the first time in years, Angelo finds himself in uncharted territory, struggling to protect his vulnerable family, maintain his double life, find out who uncovered his alter-ego, and take them out before he himself is exposed, or taken out.
To maker matters worse, when brilliant and tenacious FBI officer Linda Grant (Gina Torres, 9-1-1: Lone Star, Suits) begins investigating one of Angelo’s kills, the pair find themselves on a collision course that will see Grant come perilously close to unmasking Angelo’s many secrets and threatening just about everything he holds dear.
Memory of a Killer is an easy recommendation thanks to a generous number of clear, ever-escalating stakes, Dempsey’s controlled double performance, and a tone that understands when to go loud and when to pull back.
The episodes we reviewed delivered a balance between tightly choreographed action sequences and quieter, more intimate moments of family drama, allowing its thriller mechanics and emotional core to reinforce one another rather than to compete.
And although the show doesn’t quite carry the same heavy melodramatic tone of the aforementioned Doc, it handles themes of grief and loss with a style Broadcast audiences will likely find comforting nonetheless. With Angelo’s clock constantly ticking and no safe identity left to retreat into, the show sets itself up as tense, propulsive, and watchable ride.
Memory of a Killer is a slick genre entry that knows exactly what it is and plays its hand with confidence.
The series stars Patrick Dempsey, Michael Imperioli, Richard Harmon, Odeya Rush, Daniel David Stewart, Gina Torres, and Peter Gadiot.
Memory of a Killer launches with a special two-night premiere event beginning Sunday, Jan. 25 (10:00-11:10 PM ET / Live to All Time Zones) immediately following the NFC Championship Game (6:00-10:00 PM ET / Live to All Time Zones) on FOX.
The two-night event continues the next evening, Monday, Jan. 26, when the show will have its time-period premiere (9:00-10:00 PM ET/PT) with its second episode.
Inspired by the book and 2003 Belgian film De Zaak Alzheimer, Memory of a Killer is produced by Warner Bros. Television and FOX Entertainment. Executive producers include Aaron Zelman, Glenn Kessler, Ed Whitmore, Tracey Malone, Cathy Schulman, David Schulner and series star Patrick Dempsey.
Arthur Sarkissian and Martin Campbell are also executive producers, along with Peter Bouckaert of Eyeworks.
