Theatrical Release Date:August 28, 1995 Release Date:December 26, 2005 Availability:Usually ships in 1-2 business days Shipping:International shipping available Condition:BRAND NEW AND FACTORY SEALED
Editorial Reviews:
Description Unknown forces conspire to erase the identity of photographer Thomas Veil (Bruce Greenwood, I, Robot), and without warning, every aspect of his life is erased during the course of one evening. His wife acts as if he's a stranger, his credit cards are suddenly invalid, his keys no longer fit the door to his home and in one way or another, his family and friends are silenced. Completely alone, Veil sets out on a desperate cross-country quest for an answer while eluding his powerful and unknown enemy. His only clue to the possible motivation behind the harrowing ordeal is the disappearance of one of his photographs, "Hidden Agenda," which depicts the execution of natives in a war-torn Third World country. SPECIAL FEATURES: - Audio and video commentaries (Larry Hertzog, Bruce Greenwood, Peter Dunne, Steve Rodman, Art Monterastelli and Ian Toynton) - Interviews (Larry Hertzog, Art Monterastelli, Guy Magar, Steve Rodman, Bruce Greenwood, Michael Levine, Megan Gallagher) - Deleted and extended scenes - Promotional spots - Outtakes - Featurette -- "Networking" (UPN executive Mike Sullivan and series creator Larry Hertzog reminisce) - Featurette -- "Fact or Fiction?" (an anonymous ex-CIA operative reveals real world government conspiracies, mind control techniques and how fragile our identity really is)
Great, but end is a downerOctober 17, 2008 1 out of 1 found this review helpful
My personal opinion is that Nowhere Man was a terrific tv show- far above the lame action-laced pap that dominates in such series as CSI, Law And Order, 24, or Alias, despite Jennifer Garner's babeoliciousness. It, like The Prisoner, was about something, and Hertzog admits that he viewed the show as an anthology series exploring loneliness, with the Organization as a mere spur for those perambulations of the character of Tom Veil. Yet, despite its debt to The Prisoner, Nowhere Man explores many of the same themes from the other end of the spectrum. Tom Veil wanders through his society that does not see him, while John Drake, as Number Six, is physically cut off from his society. Both battle a network of mysterious malefactors, but Veil's fate seems the worse of the two, because, at the end of his series he is still in anomy, whereas John Drake has been restored to his life, his wish to resign just a fleeting desideratum. This may be partly explained by the fact that Patrick McGoohan had total control over The Prisoner while Lawrence Hertzog lost control of Nowhere Man. Despite that, while Nowhere Man does not reach the heights its predecessor did, it remains one of the great achievements of action television- thought-provoking, well-acted, and with a number of terrific episodes, most notably the first twelve. And almost as influential on the show as The Prisoner was were the film The Manchurian Candidate, and the tv show The Fugitive.
If we take the end of the series as its true end, and ignore a planned second season, Nowhere Man seems to be about the search for the truth. This is what impels Veil to resist, whereas Number Six's motivation was the desire and struggle for privacy, individuality, and his refusal to accede. Veil has no privacy, and may not even really exist- his battle is the more abstract, and perhaps that is why he ultimately fails where John Drake succeeds. The ending also cleared some things up, even as it clouded others. Veil was so good in high danger situations because, like Drake, he was really a trained expert in them. But, the biggest difference between the two shows is that The Prisoner dealt with the inward evils of self, and is therefore allegorical, whereas Nowhere Man dealt with that on the outside, and is more mythic. Drake's battle with the Village is really his own with the desire to conform. Veil's real battle is to find out the truth that others refused him. Hidden Agenda's real Hidden Agenda was that the photos were ultimately unimportant, and there probably was no execution, even of the Senators. They were probably just coerced into cooperation, for funding black ops programs, as the Organization seems to have been a quasi-governmental concern. No organized crime group, nor single government agency- foreign or domestic- could do all it did without being detected, unless it got major cash infusion from a government, likely the American, since the series is a post-Cold War paranoia trip.
But, another important difference between The Prisoner and Nowhere Man is that the two protagonists, despite being in the same profession, could not have greater temperamental differences if they tried. John Drake is cold, cerebral, a thinker and possibly a misanthropist. Tom Veil, or Gemini, is a feeler, who loves his faux wife even after betrayals, and easily acceded to the sexual desires of his many lady loves. It would be difficult to imagine the two characters in the other's series. John Drake would likely have discovered the secret in two to three episodes, tops because most of Veil's failings are a direct result of his emotionalism bettering his rationalism. And Veil in the Village? He'd have never been able to wall off any part of his ego long enough for his existential dilemma to come to fruition. A listen to his episode opening monologue- `My name is Thomas Veil, or at least it was. I'm a photographer. I had it all: a wife, Alyson, friends, a career. And in one moment it was all taken away. All because of a single photograph. I have it. They want it, and they will do anything to get the negative. I'm keeping this diary as proof that these events are real. I know they are....they have to be.'- aptly delineates the difference between the two men. Would Number Six/John Drake ever had a hint of doubt like that? This has led some to believe that Veil/Gemini is really insane, and the show just one long attempt to make the viewer identify with a lunatic, much the same that the novel The Dead Zone, by Stephen King, is an attempt to make the reader sympathize with an assassin. It could be that everything was real until Tom's psyche broke in the bathroom in the pilot, and clues throughout the show leave interpretation open. Of course, suspension of disbelief is a necessity, for many things don't seem to make sense in any `real' interpretation of the sow's events.
Nowhere Man, though, is not just a ripoff of The Prisoner, it's a show that works for a number of reasons. First, it appeals to the masses, with its weekly adventure- this is its The Fugitive appeal- with the twist, of course, being that the hunted was also the hunter. The questions are of what the Organization is, what is Hidden Agenda's true significance, and why was Tom Veil's life stripped from him? Secondly, the show appeals to The Manchurian Candidate conspiracists- it's a sociological and political mystery. Is the Organization part of the government, is Veil a spy, and who is behind it. Thirdly, there are The Prisoner fans, who see the show more existentially- who is Tom Veil, and why is he Nowhere Man, concern them. There was a reason the show was the most critically acclaimed of the 1995-96 season, and only studio stupidity, and a slot opposite Monday Night Football, ruined it.
Really wanted to like thisAugust 6, 2008 0 out of 2 found this review helpful
I was excited to learn of this show and must say the premise is enticing: a man who loses his life and wants to get it back. How in the world could you blow a great idea like this? Stay tuned.
It all begins with our hero going to the restroom and returning to find a restaurant full of amnesiacs: another couple is sitting at his table and and the waiter denies having ever seen him or his wife. Not just his wife and the waiter are in on the conspiracy, but somehow all 30 people in the restaurant are in on it as well, as they all play their parts.
He quickly discovers they've canceled his phone, changed the keys to every lock, recalled his bank card, gotten his wife a new husband, retrained the dog, and basically zeroed out his life. Hmm, that's a lot of work to get done over dinner. Instead of having to enlist entire restaurants full of people and deploy multiple teams of locksmiths, computer hackers, and animal trainers to frantically get the work done while the guy is having dinner, why didn't they just do it all after he'd gone to bed so they could take their time? Never occurs to them.
They can be forgiven that, since it never occurs to our hero to track anyone from the restaurant down to ask them what happened that night. Instead, our hero wanders around the country being chased by the bad guys (every episode) and captured by them (every other episode). They mobilize entire military units to track him, and suffer heavy casualties: a half dozen foot soldiers and three key people in the first few episodes alone. He must be really important to expend that kind of effort and resources on. Right?
Uh, no, not really. All "they" supposedly want are the negatives to some picture that our hero took two-and-a-half years earlier.
Hmmm. Two-and-a-half years earlier, and they are just now getting around to trying to shut him up? Here's their reasoning: If you don't want someone to make something public, then wait until after the gala grand gallery opening and a signed publishing contract. Only then try to shut him up. Huh? Did it occur to them to shut him up before all this? Nope.
But let's give them the credit of the doubt. Maybe they waited for the gallery to open so that they could buy the photo from him without all this subterfuge and sneaking around? Uh, no, that never occurs to them. Did he make a copy of the negatives? After being chased around for months on end this might occur to someone. Amazingly, it occurs to neither side.
Actually, not much occurs to anyone in this show.
Since they capture him every other episode, you'd think it would occur to them to simply torture him and ask where the negatives are. But this advanced concept never arises. Instead, they hatch elaborate and expensive schemes to trick our hero into revealing where the negatives are. Needless to say, these schemes are more convoluted than the ones on the old Batman TV show and don't work. Of course, they always make it easy for him to escape, and escape he does, to continue bumbling about the country trying to get back his life.
That's his goal, to get back his life. Let's see what he's trying to get back to: his wife frames him multiple times, his best friend is dead, his estranged mother betrays him, his business is destroyed, and everyone who knew him refuses to aid him and disavows knowledge of his existence. There's motivation for you.
If you enjoy watching a guy with an 81 IQ outwit guys with an 80 IQ then this show is for you. Otherwise, move on, nothing to see here. There is a good reason this show isn't called Knowhere Man.
An oddly enchanting hodgepodgeJanuary 6, 2008 2 out of 2 found this review helpful
What would you do if you were enjoying a steak dinner with your wife, slipped off to the boy's room for some relief, and returned to the dining room only to find your wife gone, a strange couple at your table, and a maitre d' (plus staff) who no longer recognize you? Eventually, you'd head to the ATM for cab fare home, only to find you'd been erased from the bank's memory, you'd arrive at your doorstep to find said wife claiming she doesn't have a clue who you are, and to add to it all, she's living with another guy who threatens you.
As you dig deeper you'd connect it to the fact you are a successful photographer named Tom Veil (played with considerable aplomb by Bruce Greenwood) whose recent show featured a black and white photograph of several men hung from the gallows, being watched by someone who suspiciously resembles a cigar-chomping American marine with a jeep. Does this photograph - and the negatives, which some shadowy group wants - form the centerpiece of the next 24 episodes? You guess :-)
This is the opening of Nowhere Man, conceived by (now) 24's Larry Hertzog, and offered on the (then) new UPN for a single 1995-96 season. For the next 24 episodes, Greenwood's Tom Veil becomes a man without a country, or bank account, or whatever it is he needs at the moment to get to the bottom of the 'organization' who is making his life miserable and attempting to acquire the negatives. What we get is a roller coaster ride, in both concept and excecution. Hertzog conceived the show as a stream-of-consciousness exercise centered around the photograph (which he freely admits in the commentary, is nothing more than a MacGuffin - a Hitchcockian term for The Thing everyone obsesses over). After initial good reviews, UPN got antsy to make the show 'about something', so Greenwood was given a 'palm top' (early version of the Palm Pilot), and directed to shadowy doings by mysterious folks . Hertzog played along for a few eps, then went back to his initial abstract concept, only to be faced with cancellation and the desire to wrap things up plot-wise. So it was back to the 'about something' organization, whose motives were reasonably well explained towards the end. So, yes, there is a form of closure contained in this set of DVDs.
Tom Veil travels from town to town 'in search of answers', only to find an assortment of characters - all of whom had to be suspected of being part of The Big Plan - who were placed in various ominous narrative settings. These ranged from mental institutions, to boys' academies, to strange locked communities that were inspired directly by the 60s TV classic, The Prisoner. In a favorite ep of mine, Veil travels to rural Georgia and almost locates the jeep in his picture, only to be attacked by hostile henchmen. He turns up at a circus sideshow featuring a blind but clairvoyant boy who offers insight into his fate. And so it goes like this. The best way to deal with it is sit back and enjoy the ride, without expecting the powers that be to explain much. Have no fear: by hook or by crook, they eventually will.
The mid-90s were the heyday of conspiracy TV, and Nowhere Man plays directly to this. Chris Carter's X-Files on Fox was at its peak, and Hertzog's creation was added to the pack (he even drafted composer Mark Snow, originator of the tinkly X-Files opening, to do the theme for Nowhere Man). To top it off, Tom Veil's mysterious turncoat wife was played by Megan Gallager, who went on to be the wife to Lance Hendriksen's character Frank Black in Carter's next series 'Millennium', sealing her dramatic fate as the spouse to men with evil conspiracy problems.
This set of DVDs is attractively presented and peppered with a number of video commentaries throughout the season. Watching Greenwood and Hertzog watch again for the first time in 10 years is rewarding, and I would suggest taking in the commentaries as they roll along. This will enhance your understanding of why things 'were the way they were' at the given moment of the production, without introducing spoilers.
Overall, I recommend this set to fans of this genre or of cult TV, though I hesitate to say it's the work of genius others have suggested. What's needed to enjoy this ride is a good imagination, and a few grains of salt. A masterpiece? No. But it is still more engaging than alot of what was out there, including the last three seasons of X Files.
Great, but where is Strange Luck?!?October 19, 2007 0 out of 2 found this review helpful
Nowhere Man was a wonderful TV show that ignorant executives cancelled before it even had a chance. It's great that so many old, cancelled classics are finally coming to DVD, but what about STRANGE LUCK?
Strange Luck was, in my humble opinion, an even better show than Nowhere Man, but no one has released the complete series of Strange Luck on DVD.
Thanks for giving me Nowhere Man, but give me Strange Luck already!!!
My favoriteAugust 1, 2007 0 out of 2 found this review helpful
This series is one of the best series i have seen. I have waited so long to be able to buy this series on dvd. Now i can enjoy this series whenever i want :)
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