John Walker's Electronic House

It’s great to be wrong.

I can’t even be bothered to watch Reaper any more, but I’m totally into Chuck.

The two shows have so much in common – both feature a reluctant regular guy who works in the nerd section of a large store, thrown into a fantastical situation where they have to fight evil/crime. Each has nerd buddies, nerd gags, and a wise-cracking geek best friend. Except one ran out of steam by the second episode, while the other, despite seemingly having nowhere to go with its concept, is really, really fun.

Episode two of Reaper was such a terrible mess. It was an almost scene-for-scene reprisal of the first, with a different monster-of-the-week, and apparently completely different parents. Sock, the comedy buddy was still funny, but the second he went off screen, it was like watching roadkill. Episode three I couldn’t even survive halfway through. It was the exact same episode again, ringing more hollow than before. And this time the jokes felt deeply contrived.

But there’s better news. Chuck. The potential didn’t seem to be there – a guy gets all of the government secrets from every American agency downloaded into his head, and rival CIA and NSA agents are assigned to keep an eye on him. So where can that go? Surely secrets are update constantly, and how exactly are they going to apply it? Rather well, it seems.

Each week the team of three – Chuck (Zachary Levi), Sarah Walker (Yvonne Strahovski) and John Casey (Firefly’s Adam Baldwin) – are either given a mission, or stumble upon one, where the two super-agents are forced to rely on Chuck, and his constantly entertaining bemusement and fear, to complete their tasks.

So there’s constant fight scenes, kung fu, daft gadgets (“How was I supposed to know Karina had a remote controlled jetski – it’s not usually an option in real life,”) and Chuck’s “flashes” where visual stimuli trigger information from the information in his brain. And that’s all fun. But it manages to get the in-between stuff right too. Chuck lives with his sister, and he has to keep his new life a secret from her, which leads to domestic issues. But not tiresome Clark Kent rubbish. It keeps it short, but realistic. Then there’s Chuck’s “cover” – he and the astonishingly pretty Sarah are pretending to be a couple, which of course leads to potential romantic friction. And again, rather than being a pain in the arse, this is done really nicely, and even manages to be touching occasionally.

It’s all-round great, and it would be lovely to see it survive a first season. Where Reaper’s pilot appeared to have great, sharp writing, the following episodes revealed that they used it all up in one go. Chuck’s pilot was over-serious and convoluted, and did not portray the strength of writing that was to come. It’s been consistent, and really smart. It’s second best to this year’s best, which is perhaps not too fair, since this year’s best – Pushing Daisies – is possibly the best in a decade. And maybe I’ll find the words to say why, soon.