Joan of Arcadia (2003–2005)
7/10
Interesting, well acted ... and a little frustrating.
4 August 2008
The serious tone, interesting stories and good acting are the hallmarks of this series. It's pretty well done, but it's also a little frustrating. The basic storyline never changes, but still, you always want to see how each story ends up.

The basic idea of the series is as follows: "God" uses a high school girl (Joan) to do good in the world; he generally asks her to do things that are outside of her element. She always reluctantly accepts, never knowing why, and good comes of it.

The show is fairly well-written and is also well acted, particularly by Joe Montagne. His character is conflicted, intelligent and well-intentioned. He also commonly goes "against" the grain of everyone else. This makes him pretty interesting to watch and even though he's not the lead. While the other actors go a really good job, his performances seem to outshine everyone else.

The rules of the show are pretty well laid out along the lines of the aforementioned premise. While this generally works fine, it's a bit frustrating after a while in the same way the X-Files series is: one person always experiences extraordinary stuff, but no one else seems to be able to know about it. In this case, the eternal creator of the universe spends time asking a high school girl to do things, and everyone must remain oblivious. To some people, this is how the world works, to others, it makes you want to scream "good grief" ...

This show has some great writing, but eventually the repetitive premise may become bothersome. Until that happens to you (if ever), it makes for really good viewing.
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