Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The InBetween’ on NBC, A Procedural About A Clairvoyant That Helps Her Foster Dad On His Police Cases

TV is fascinated with mediums and clairvoyants. If you come up with a character that can talk to the dead, chances are you have the basis for a show. Medium ran on NBC and CBS for many years, and a writer from that show is now running a new clairvoyant-centric procedural series on NBC, The InBetween. Read on for more…

THE INBETWEEN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A woman is wheeling down the liquor aisle of a supermarket; all of a sudden, she hears a creepy voice singing a “Peter Rabbit” song over the store’s PA system.

The Gist: Cassie Bishop (Harriet Dyer) often has dreams like this. She’s in them, but the circumstances surrounding them are strange. In this dream, she goes home with her booze and starts hearing the song again. When she follows it, she encounters a woman with no eyes in a bathtub. She’s also seeing a little girl that no one around her sees.

The vision of a woman with no eyes (no pun intended) is of interest to Seattle PD detective Tom Hackett (Paul Blackthorne), who often comes to Cassie to find out what she sees. He knows what power she has; he and his husband raised Cassie, after she came to live with them as a kid. In this case, he’s trying to track down a killer whose MO is similar to that of a serial killer who was executed many years ago.

He also finds out he’s getting a new partner: Damien Asante (Justin Cornwell), who used to be in the LAPD but has moved to Seattle for unknown reasons. He specifically asked to be partnered with Hackett, but starts to wonder about it, when Hackett consults Cassie for input on the case. He calls Cassie “your psychic friend,” and when he goes to talk to Cassie at the bar where she works, she’s none to happy to see her foster dad’s new work partner.

Meanwhile, the girl she’s been “living with” is named Abigail Coleman (Sarah Abbot) who can move things telekinetically. She’s an unsettled soul because she wants to exact revenge on her grandfather, who sexually abused her. Cassie somehow manages to visit her grandfather in prison and help Abigail get the revenge she wanted.

Our Take: The creator of The InBetween, Moira Kirland, is very experienced in procedurals (Castle) and with stories about clairvoyants (Medium). The experience shows in the casting and overall quality of the show; it looks good, and actors like Blackthorne (who left Arrow to do this show), Cornwell and Dyer do a good job with the material they’re given. But the material is pretty much a standard procedural; it’s one of those shows that you’ll likely find entertaining but not remember much about after the credits roll.

And, that’s OK! For some reason, we expect our network shows to vault over the same high bar as the more daring ones on streaming or cable. And sometimes, network shows do just that. But we also still have an appetite for a show that washes over us, that prompts us to settle in and just try to solve the crime along with the people investigating it.

That’s where the networks have been falling down on the job lately, giving us procedurals with bad dialogue, confusing mysteries, flat characters, or all three. The InBetween gives its audience at least a bit of credit, which is almost refreshing given what we’ve seen lately. Cassie struggles with this gift of hers; it’s not like she actually likes communicating with the unsettled dead. But at least she knows how to use it effectively. We also appreciate how Dyer is able to effectively play a woman who doesn’t necessarily like having this gift, but will defend herself and her loved ones at all costs when confronted about it by outsiders like Asante.

Sex and Skin: Cassie has a boyfriend named Will (Chad James Buchanan), but we don’t see any lovin’ in the first episode.

Parting Shot: After having caught the killer, we see why Asante has moved to Seattle. Then we see Cassie in the middle of a vision where she sees the serial killer who was executed years ago. “We need to talk,” he says.

Sleeper Star: Anne-Marie Johnson plays Hackett’s boss, Lt. Swanstrom. We just see her in one scene in the pilot, but we’re just happy to see the In The Heat of the Night standout on our screens in a regular role.

Most Pilot-y Line: “You don’t believe me but you think you can use me,” Cassie says to Asante when he comes to her bar to ask questions. “So go ahead. Ask.” The tone of the speech she makes that ends in that line is a touch off from how Cassie is in most of the episode, but we understand why she’s so protective.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The InBetween won’t blow you away, but it’s entertaining enough to be a low-stakes summer watch.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Stream The InBetween on NBC