The thought of George Lucas, the man who created “Star Wars,” working on a weekly television series turns out, alas, to be more exciting than the result.
It’s not that ABC’s “The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles,” which opens with a two-hour movie Wednesday night (from 8 to 10 on WTNH, Channel 8), isn’t above-average.
It is. But just barely.
Maybe — as often happens — expectations have been raised too high.
Everything looks as it should in the premiere. “The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles” has expensive production values, with exotic TV locales such as Egypt, China, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Africa and story lines to match.
Newcomers Corey Carrier and Sean Patrick Flanery are cast, respectively, as the very young and the teenage Indiana Jones. Each one-hour episode will feature one or the other Indy (at 10 or 16), and judging by the pilot, both actors seem up to the task.
Lucas, who created the archaeologist action-figure played by Harrison Ford for the big screen, turned to television as a way of fleshing out Indy’s formative years.
And what years, it turns out, they were.
In the two-hour opener, “Young Indiana Jones and the Curse of the Jackal,” young Indy, whose dad takes the family on a globe-trotting lecture tour, goes to Egypt and meets T.E. Lawrence at the pyramids. Lawrence is naturally enchanted by the smart-as-a-whip Indy and takes him on his first archaeological dig, where, of course, a mystery develops.
It isn’t, however, until 1916 (and the second hour of the movie), when 16-year-old Jones hooks up with Pancho Villa — where the lectures are about political oppression and revolution — that the mystery is solved.
All of the stories are told from the vantage point of old Indiana Jones, now 93 (played by George Hall) and living in the year 1992.
As it turns out, Indiana Jones spent his youth palling around with Norman Rockwell, with Edgar Degas and Pablo Picasso in Paris,
on safari in British East Africa with Teddy Roosevelt, getting the inside scoop on psychoanalysis from Sigmund Freud — you get the idea.
Lucas says he sees it as more Huck Finn or “The Wonder Years” than the action-packed feature films starring Ford.
It’s all very educational and politically correct and, particularly in the series’ first hour, a bit dreary and plodding.
With each hour, it seems, there’s at least one lesson for Indy that later comes in handy.
In Wednesday night’s episode, for example, Lawrence (as in ” … of Arabia”) gives Indy the lowdown on religions of the world without showing favor to any one in particular. At another point he tells him, “Henry [Indy’s real name], wherever you go, whatever countries you visit, learn the language. It’s the key that unlocks everything — the most important thing of all.”
Indy squeezes his eyes in acknowledgement, takes the lesson to heart and soon puts it to life-saving use.
Whether “The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles” survives prime time is another story, but it seems worth waiting for the kinks to be worked out.
The show has a feature film lustre not often seen in network television — also part of the Lucas master plan for the series: namely, to bring a big-budget look to TV on a modest ’90s budget. Some of this is quite literally smoke-and-mirrors magic unique to Lucas — his high-tech toys and way of doing business, which includes working with a mostly international cast and crew.
Regular co-stars include British actors Margaret Tyzack (“I, Claudius”) as Helen Seymour, the Oxford University tutor traveling with 10-year-old Indy, and Lloyd Owen as Indy’s dad, Professor Henry Jones. Belgium-born Ronny Coutteure is cast as Remy Baudouin, best friend to the teenage Jones. Ruth de Sosa (“Hook”) plays his mom, Mrs. Anna Jones.
Filmed in 11 countries, the series also will employ the talents of international directors such as Australia’s Carl Schultz (“Careful, He Might Hear You”), England’s Jim O’Brien (“Jewel in the Crown”) and Terry Jones (“Monty Python and the Holy Grail”), Sweden’s Oscar-winning Billie August (“Pelle the Conqueror”) and others. Lucas has also signed up an interesting array of writers with backgrounds ranging from spy novels to British and American miniseries. (Simon Wincer, whose credits include “Lonesome Dove” also directs.)
The result?
A show that sometimes has the look, the feel, the pacing of a “Masterpiece Theatre” and at others times a purely American sense of adventure.
If it reaches its true potential, “The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles” will have managed to turn a Saturday-at-the-Bijou-style adventure story into a learning tool, though it seems more likely that kids will learn about as much about history here as they would in a Classic Comics book.
But considering the state of American education, that’s probably a step up.
ABC’s “The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles” will premiere with a two-hour movie Wednesday night from 8 to 10 before moving into its regular 9 to 10 p.m. time slot March 11
