Probe

1988

Seasons & Episodes

  • 1
8| 0h30m| NR| en| More Info
Released: 07 March 1988 Ended
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Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
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Synopsis

Probe is a 1988 American television pilot and subsequent TV series, created by television mystery writer William Link and noted science fiction author Isaac Asimov. It aired on ABC. Michael B. Wagner, a veteran television writer, wrote the two-hour pilot, and became Executive Producer for the series. The pilot and series starred Parker Stevenson as Austin James, a misanthropic genius who solved high tech crimes, and Ashley Crow as James' new secretary Mickey Castle. The show began as a mid-season replacement and was canceled after a two-month run of the pilot and six episodes. Entire episodes have made their way on the internet through video-sharing sites such as YouTube. Some episodes of the show revolved around Serendip, a company founded by Austin that he has no interest in running. Mickey, his Serendip-appointed secretary, plays Watson to Austin's Holmes.

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Reviews

Bergorks If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.
Aiden Melton The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.
Lidia Draper Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.
Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.
sombrune As I recall, the show was canceled during the writer's strike of 1988. I don't believe the cancellation had anything to do with the quality of the show, it was just too new for the network to take a chance on, it's the same thing they do today. I just wish they'd release it on DVD.It was very much ahead of its time, the scientific approach just wasn't that interesting to people at that time, I think. It will always be one of my most favorite shows, and perhaps someday I'll get to watch it again.Wow, I can't believe I'm being forced to write more just to post this flippin opinion! I never thought anyone would want 10 lines of my kind of BS, but hey, who am I to complain?wistful in Los Angeles
TVholic I remember being intrigued by this series before its premiere back in 1988. I also remember I quickly lost interest after a few episodes, although I couldn't remember why until now. Seeing this again, I can understand why I did. The show is rather like "Monk," with its eccentric, supposedly brilliant, antisocial, iconoclastic, grumpy lead character minus the OCD quirks, but still with the spunky female personal assistant and with worse writing. Austin James always sees tiny details that we the audience could not. To make it seem more intelligent, the writers peppered the scripts with scientific trivia and pseudo-scientific babble. The latter was especially embarrassing considering Isaac Asimov was listed as co-creator and scientific adviser. A supercomputer that can make neon signs explode and rupture gas lines at specific places? That has continuous speech recognition and natural language processing -- a goal that still eludes computer scientists today -- but not the much simpler speech synthesis? That can turn the dial on a cheap radio or an old TV set as if they came with motors installed on the knobs? It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that most of the "science" in this show was nonsense.Subsequent episodes were little better. The "smartest man in the world" keeps saying "nukular" and "nukulotides." He does burnouts when he has to get somewhere fast, instead of knowing that less smoking rubber means more traction and a faster start if you're not in a Top Fuel dragster. You can target a virus at a specific human by inserting that human's DNA into it??? Good grief. Some of the situations are painfully obvious and clichéd, like the hoary "videotape was substituted for live video but Austin noticed items on the tape didn't match." That was old when Mission: Impossible used to do it twenty years previous. Episodes mixed these shopworn plot devices with supposed scientific concepts but each time proved that the writers knew barely more than the names of those concepts. It was as if Asimov had no hand in the show after co-creating it.The show seemed to rely mostly on the charisma of former "Hardy Boys" star Parker Stevenson, but that couldn't compensate for the contrived scripts. It wasn't even as good as an average Columbo episode from the original NBC run. Sometimes, information in the climax would just come out of the blue, rather than foreshadowed for the audience. The concept had promise, but was undercut by mediocre writing. But I guess scientific geniuses generally don't become television writers. What a waste. It could have been science fiction of the hardest kind, but instead turned out to be science fantasy folded into run of the mill murder mysteries.If you want to see what TV mystery and suspense writers can really do with the science fiction genre if they really put their minds to it, watch "Earth II," the 1971 pilot movie from the writers/producers of "Mission: Impossible," or "Prototype," the 1983 TV movie from Michael Levinson & William Link, who created and wrote the classic "Columbo" and later "Murder, She Wrote." (Although inexplicably, Link served as executive story consultant for this series. I guess they took his advice only sparingly.)
blaackbird This was one of an annoying number of shows I liked as a kid that were each run for a season and then promptly cancelled. I liked shows that varied from the norm, especially ones about eccentric geniuses. But I guess it was just too smart (or weird) to be popular. People prefer shows about inept housewives, bigots, idiots stranded on islands, barrooms, rotten families, and just about anybody who makes everyone else look smarter by comparison.
Gislef Probe was one of the best shows of 1988. It was intelligent, well-written TV, with a mildly misanthropic main character and a lot of quirky performances. Naturally, it got cancelled despite the combined creative talents of William Levinson (Columbo) and Isaac Asimov. Lots of shy, subtle humor and in-jokes. Catch it if you can.

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