A still from the Ridley Scott show The Hot Zone.“The forest is bleeding,” is a good line. But a good line can only take you so far. That’s as true in cinema as it is in literature. Add a healthy dose of medical jargon to it, and things are bound to get worse. In National Geographic and Ridley Scott executive-produced mini-series The Hot Zone, we are dealing with a doctor who is trying to contain the Ebola virus and perhaps successfully eradicate it from US soil.
The million dollar question then is how do you make such a show interesting for someone who has perhaps marginal or little interest in viruses? And this question becomes all the more important when one realises that showrunners often find it difficult to maintain the pace and momentum in a standard human chase thriller, so how can chasing a virus be made for an appealing watch? How best do you serve it to the audience?
The first episode of The Hot Zone starts a little slow, and at 45 minutes with a dry subject like a virus, things seem more lacklustre than usual. However, the writing, as well as the performances, slowly simmer and boil and create the kind of rising tension expected from a thriller.
James V Hart has done a commendable job of adapting 1994 non-fiction of the book same name authored by Richard Preston. There are dramatic, hard-hitting lines. The tone of the characters, as well as that of the story, oscillates between conversational and premonitory. So does the music. Again, none of it is jarring and settles well within the context of the plot. All it takes is time.
Performances by Julianna Margulies as Dr Nancy Jaax and Topher Grace as Dr Peter Jahrling stand out. We don’t see much of Liam Cunningham’s Wade Carter in the first two episodes.
The Hot Zone is plain exhausting at first but promises a better time with the second episode. As they say; try, try until you get better. And this show does.
