Finally! A TV hero who can actually figure out how long it would take a train traveling at 400 miles an hour to go from San Francisco to Los Angeles. And not only that, but how long it would take that train to get there before the brakes exploded in the tunnel, killing the gorgeous thermonuclear train designer.
Welcome to graphic-novel icon turned live-action hero “Human Target,” AKA Christopher Chance (Mark Valley), a private security contractor who is more than just a bodyguard. He’s also a genius, who is well-trained in physics, thermonuclear design, martial arts, math and computers. He also happens to be loaded with sex appeal.
And because he’s a human target, he has no problem blowing out of exploding buildings (of which there are too many to count) with nary a scratch.
Think Jack Bauer with excellent grooming. Or in Jack’s case, with any grooming.
Fox’s entertaining new all-action-all-the-time series, which debuts Sunday night, revolves around the work of Chance, who surrounds himself with the usual Fox action assortment of quirky rogues and misfits. Slippery Chance has two trusted rogues in his circle: His grouchy business partner, Winston (Chi McBride), who doesn’t multi-task, and an elusive professional assassin/hired gun/computer hacker genius, Guerrero (Academy Award nominee Jackie Earle Haley), who clearly does.
But it’s Chance who can out-multi-task everyone on the planet, which is why he is an action hero in the truest sense of the absurd.
In the premiere episode, for example, he is hired by a beautiful, brilliant bullet-train designer (Tricia Helfer, “Battlestar Galactica“) to guard her on the $80 billion train’s maiden voyage filled with VIPs from SF to LA. Why? Because there’s been a death threat.
Of course, the train is full of suspects, and only Chance — with the help of the beautiful train designer — can save the day by figuring out how to keep the exploding brakes from killing everyone while keeping the crease in his pants.
Episode two finds Chance trying to save his client and a planeload of passengers, which is going to crash if he can’t stop it.
Fox clearly has great hopes for the show (or great hopes to get testosterone-fueled viewers), because “Human Target” is debuting between the football playoffs and the premiere of the new season of “24.”
The three mad male leads are perfection as are the silly plots and insane dialogue.
And hey — who can resist a guy who can blow out of trains, buildings and planes and still land on his feet — with his casual-yet-elegant wardrobe intact?