I don’t know how many people will have heard much about it, and I doubt many of you will have seen it. Drive is a TV show that aired in the US in 2007, and there are no plans to bring it over here or release it on DVD.
Basically, it’s about a big cross-country road race (which is both secret and illegal). There are a lot of characters, each with their own back stories and twists. Episode time is split up pretty much perfectly between all the characters and you’re kept interested in everyone’s story.
The best thing that this brings is that the show isn’t predictable – anything could happen to any of the characters, and you find out more of their past, as well as their reasons for racing. The general prize is $32 million, but other people have other reasons to race.
Of course, the show does have a main character and Drive’s is well written. Alex Tully (played by the fantastic Nathan Fillion) is a hardworking gardener. The people who organise the race kidnap his wife, and say that his wife will be at the finish line. After a few episodes, you discover that people have sponsored all the contestants in the races (who are all unknown) – Tully’s has something to do with is dark past.
Which brings us to another side of the plot: The Organisers. The group is very mysterious and the story and explination behind them is slowly explained throughout the show. They use multiple representatives in order to “police” the competition and hand out penalties and rewards (such as eliminating other drivers and the chance of a “shortcut”).
The driving sequences are extremely well done, thanks to wonderful camera movement (which includes the camera moving into the car seamlessly through the window) and it looks fantastic. The whole show is very well done, and is some of the best TV I’ve seen from the past few years.
The massive downside is that…it was never finished. As with all good Fox shows, it was canned. Drive was canned after four aired episodes, and only two more were finished. So that’s six episodes of the first series (which would have been at least 13 episodes long). Which is a massive shame. Hopefully Fox will release it on DVD….hopefully someone will make a movie to tie up the mass amount of loose ends from the end of the produced episodes.
It’s a well written show with loads of fantastic characters, there’s plenty of plot twists in every episodes and the camera and driving scenes are fantastic. While a lot of CGI was used (mainly for the camera), it isn’t an abundance, nor is it noticeable.
If you can put up with never finding out what happens after the first six episode (apart from some tidbits which you can read about here) then I highly recommend this show to those who can get hold of it.
