The show starts when Detective Jack Larsen played by Dylan McDermott transfers to the TAU from New York City's homicide division. He is a confidence, strong personality, with a questionable behaviour that has landed him in trouble in the past. Alongside him there is his boss Lt. Beth Davis who is played by Maggie Q. She is a strong, focused and experienced in the field, driven by a traumatic personal tragedy in which she was a victim within a stalking case. The other two members of the TAU team are Detective Ben Caldwell who is played by Victor Rasuk who is young but eager detective then there is a deceptively smart Detective in Janice Lawrence who is played by Mariana Klaveno. The other main cast member is Amanda Taylor played by Elisabeth Röhm who is the mother of Jack's son. She left New York and moved to Los Angeles in order to start a new life at the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office. She currently serves as the TAU's Deputy D.A.
While the TAU cast remain the same each episode the rest of the cast changes with a new case happening every week. Each week there is a different plot with a different cast, stalker and stalking incident however the background of the main cast stays the same every week.
In the first episode 'Pilot' there is two stalking cases; the first one is about a man who has a liking for setting people on fire, with setting his ex girlfriend on fire in a car in one of the first scenes. The other stalking case is when a college student is charged with assaulting one of his fellow students. It turns out that he was actually just defending himself from one of his old roommates, a guy named Perry - who turns out to be a reoccurring character. After Beth deals with his case he follows her home.
In the second episode 'Whatever Happened to Baby James?' a woman kidnaps Thomas who is believed to be the same age as her son that went missing, she believes that Thomas is her son and holds him hostage. Perry confronts Beth after she punches him in the face after the last episode. The third episode 'Manhunt' is about a man who plays on various women phobia's therefore putting there fears into their own houses. While up to now I think that the stalkers are pretty normal however this one was a little weirder because it is obvious that this stalker had to know a lot about the victims in order to find out their phobias.
In the first few episodes the only continuing storyline is Perry stalking Beth, as he finds out where she lives and comes into her house when she is out. Alongside this he also has hundreads of photos of Beth stuck to his wall in his college bedroom. The problem with him though is that Beth keeps rejecting his intentions, therefore he starts to take it one step further and does some research into her. He finds out that she moved away after an ex boyfriend started a fire that killed all of her family. In a desperate attempt to get close to her, he goes and finds her ex boyfriend Ray. Ray and Perry travel back to Los Angeles in order to get closer to Beth. Ray eventually kills Perry after annoying him too much and because he also wants Beth however Ray believes that only he can have Beth. After killing Perry, Ray goes to Beth's house and kidnaps her, so that she is his. Ray takes Beth to a house in the countryside and holds her hostage, he tells her that all he wants is for her to come back to him; she agrees however he doesn't believe her and keeps her hostage. The rest of the TAU finally find her and rescue her as the house ironically sets on fire.
I think that each of the storylines are very important because they move away the focus from Perry's obsession with Beth which after each episode is slowly building up. From my perspective I started watching it because I wanted to find out about other stalking stories in order for my film to be the best it could be. I think that this programme is very important in showing just how many people get stalked and how easily it is. I think that this programme shows that it is not just woman that get stalked but also men. The show highlights that there are also many reasons why people do stalk; usually it is because they have a jealous streak or because they aren't mentally well and therefore it is all in their head.
While I think it was good that they had different storylines each week, I think a lot of people would have preferred if they kept to one stalking account and didn't have so many episodes in the series. I think that this was a big problem, altogether there was 20 episodes and each of them an hour long. There were a couple of hiatus which isn't good for a programme because once people are getting into a programme they want it to be on regularly but with the hiatus they then forget when it is.
At the start of the series it started pulling in over 9 million viewers however once it moved from Wednesday's to Monday's the viewing figures went down relatively fast. CBS cancelled Stalker at the end of the first series. Due to the fact that is quite a creepy thriller and having to put on TV at 9pm, this is the wrong time I think to target the adult audience that they were most probably after they should have aired it at 10pm because this is the time that a lot of people sit down and watch television.
Overall I actually really enjoyed this series because I found it interesting however I acknowledge the fact that this program isn't for everyone and that some person won't find it quite as interesting as I did because it isn't to their taste.
While the TAU cast remain the same each episode the rest of the cast changes with a new case happening every week. Each week there is a different plot with a different cast, stalker and stalking incident however the background of the main cast stays the same every week.
In the first episode 'Pilot' there is two stalking cases; the first one is about a man who has a liking for setting people on fire, with setting his ex girlfriend on fire in a car in one of the first scenes. The other stalking case is when a college student is charged with assaulting one of his fellow students. It turns out that he was actually just defending himself from one of his old roommates, a guy named Perry - who turns out to be a reoccurring character. After Beth deals with his case he follows her home.
In the second episode 'Whatever Happened to Baby James?' a woman kidnaps Thomas who is believed to be the same age as her son that went missing, she believes that Thomas is her son and holds him hostage. Perry confronts Beth after she punches him in the face after the last episode. The third episode 'Manhunt' is about a man who plays on various women phobia's therefore putting there fears into their own houses. While up to now I think that the stalkers are pretty normal however this one was a little weirder because it is obvious that this stalker had to know a lot about the victims in order to find out their phobias.
In the first few episodes the only continuing storyline is Perry stalking Beth, as he finds out where she lives and comes into her house when she is out. Alongside this he also has hundreads of photos of Beth stuck to his wall in his college bedroom. The problem with him though is that Beth keeps rejecting his intentions, therefore he starts to take it one step further and does some research into her. He finds out that she moved away after an ex boyfriend started a fire that killed all of her family. In a desperate attempt to get close to her, he goes and finds her ex boyfriend Ray. Ray and Perry travel back to Los Angeles in order to get closer to Beth. Ray eventually kills Perry after annoying him too much and because he also wants Beth however Ray believes that only he can have Beth. After killing Perry, Ray goes to Beth's house and kidnaps her, so that she is his. Ray takes Beth to a house in the countryside and holds her hostage, he tells her that all he wants is for her to come back to him; she agrees however he doesn't believe her and keeps her hostage. The rest of the TAU finally find her and rescue her as the house ironically sets on fire.
Stills from Stalker.
I think that each of the storylines are very important because they move away the focus from Perry's obsession with Beth which after each episode is slowly building up. From my perspective I started watching it because I wanted to find out about other stalking stories in order for my film to be the best it could be. I think that this programme is very important in showing just how many people get stalked and how easily it is. I think that this programme shows that it is not just woman that get stalked but also men. The show highlights that there are also many reasons why people do stalk; usually it is because they have a jealous streak or because they aren't mentally well and therefore it is all in their head.
While I think it was good that they had different storylines each week, I think a lot of people would have preferred if they kept to one stalking account and didn't have so many episodes in the series. I think that this was a big problem, altogether there was 20 episodes and each of them an hour long. There were a couple of hiatus which isn't good for a programme because once people are getting into a programme they want it to be on regularly but with the hiatus they then forget when it is.
At the start of the series it started pulling in over 9 million viewers however once it moved from Wednesday's to Monday's the viewing figures went down relatively fast. CBS cancelled Stalker at the end of the first series. Due to the fact that is quite a creepy thriller and having to put on TV at 9pm, this is the wrong time I think to target the adult audience that they were most probably after they should have aired it at 10pm because this is the time that a lot of people sit down and watch television.
Overall I actually really enjoyed this series because I found it interesting however I acknowledge the fact that this program isn't for everyone and that some person won't find it quite as interesting as I did because it isn't to their taste.
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