The TV Column

CBS unleashes Zoo to chomp on human race

It could be mankind's worst nightmare -- the animals decide they ain't gonna take it anymore.

Yikes! What if one day all the critters decided to get organized and turned on us?

I still recall the chills I felt when I first saw Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds in 1963. From seagulls to sparrows, the birds got even. And that was just the birds. What would happen if, say, the lions turned on us?

Or (gasp) our pet cats?

Something very bad is going on with the animals and that's what's at the heart of Zoo, a new drama based on James Patterson's (with Michael Ledwidge) 2012 best-seller of the same name. The 13-episode thriller debuts at 8 p.m. today on CBS.

Granted, the prolific Patterson isn't Shakespeare, but he has sold 300 million books, churning out his fair share of light summer reading.

In the CBS series (which includes some characters not in the book), a rash of violent animal attacks begins taking place around the globe. As the assaults become more coordinated and fierce, Jackson Oz (James Wolk, Mad Men), a young slacker American zoologist, must solve the mystery before there's no place left for people to hide.

Before all that, Oz spent his days running safaris in the wilds of Botswana with his best friend, the hulking Abraham Kenyatta (Nonso Anozie, The Bible), who is a wildlife expert.

Shortly after the attacks start, Oz begins to see a link between the strange animal behavior and his late father's controversial theories about impending animal threats.

Meanwhile in Los Angeles, spunky newspaper reporter Jamie Campbell (Kristen Connolly, House of Cards) defies her editor (and lover) by following a wacky tip that zoo animals are being affected by the unsafe food manufactured by a major (therefore evil) corporation.

Campbell finds a sympathetic ear in eccentric animal pathologist Mitch Morgan (Billy Burke, Revolution), and thus are sown the seeds of a global conspiracy: Changes in the environment have caused changes in animal behavior that went mostly unnoticed for years.

French actress/singer Nora Arnezeder (Maniac) stars as Chloe Tousignant, an ecologist Oz rescues after a pride of male lions attacks a nearby resort, killing everybody but her.

The pilot, "First Blood," unfolds nicely, dribbling out the tension and ending with a quiet, but horrific reveal that'll make you look twice at little Fluffy curled up and purring next to you on the couch.

Patterson, best known for his Alex Cross franchise, boasted to the Los Angeles Times that the adaptation "should give the summer movies a run for their money. There's horror, sci-fi, suspense. It's kind of James Patterson meets Stephen King meets Michael Crichton. It's a scary fable.

"The notion is, we're next for extinction and maybe we deserve it. The animals are the heroes here, and they're mad for the right reasons."

Run for their money? I don't believe Jurassic World or Pixar need worry.

Producer and co-writer Jeff Pinkner added that the series is not a diatribe against global warming and will be "thought-provoking in a fun, not finger-wagging way."

Yeah, as much fun as getting mauled and eaten by lions can be.

Extant, 9 p.m. Wednesday, CBS. Zoo is the latest "event" series to join the CBS summer lineup. Under the Dome and Extant are the others.

When Extant returns for Season 2, you'll see a major revamp. CBS isn't exactly cleaning house, it's just headed in a different direction and dumping a bunch or characters.

All you need to know is in the Season 2 tagline: "Mankind's future lies in the hands of one woman."

Yep. That's it. But just to remind you, in Season 1, Oscar winner Halle Berry played astronaut Molly Woods. She goes up to a space station solo and comes back impregnated by an alien. This season she'll be looking for her alien offspring.

New faces this season include Jeffrey Dean Morgan (the late, lamented Denny Duquette on Grey's Anatomy) as J.D. Richter, a cop and bounty hunter, and David Morrissey (the odious Governor of The Walking Dead) as Gen. Tobias Shepherd, the head of the Global Security Commission.

Scream, 9 p.m. today, MTV. It's the 10-episode TV version of the cult slasher film series. The tagline: "Everyone has secrets. Everyone tells lies. Everyone is fair game."

The cast includes the usual stock characters: Noah, the comic relief (John Karna); Emma, the virginal innocent (Willa Fitzgerald); Kieran and Audrey, the mysterious loners (Amadeus Serafini, Bex Taylor-Klaus); and Jake and Will, the jocks/jerks (Tom Maden, Connor Weil).

Don't forget. Although this is cutting-edge entertainment, it is not a family show.

The TV Column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Email: [email protected]

Style on 06/30/2015

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