pilots

But Isn’t Judging CBS’ Frankenstein Detective Pilot The Exact Mistake Frankenstein Warned Against?

Photo: Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images

Scared, panicky, quick to anger and confusion: looks like somebody didn’t internalize the lessons of Mary Shelley’s groundbreaking sci-fi novel. In an announcement made yesterday, CBS placed a pilot order for Frankenstein, which, yes, is a detective show effectively starring one of Frankenstein’s monsters. Reads the show’s logline, “A San Francisco homicide detective is mysteriously brought back to life after being killed in the line of duty but as he resumes his old life and he and his wife realize he isn’t the same person he used to be, they zero in on the strange man behind his resurrection — Dr. Victor Frankenstein.”

But while the announcement summoned a lot of modern pitchforks (which, of course, are just very funny tweets about pitchforks), isn’t leaping to a conclusion about something precisely what Frankenstein wanted to steer the world away from? Wouldn’t Shelley’s tragically maligned creature instead beg the viewing audience to open their minds to the possibility that Frankenstein’s monster might actually be good at solving crimes? And also, in an unrelated question, does CBS’ Frankenstein take place in a universe that does not contain the book Frankenstein? If not, you’d think a detective could riddle this mystery out pretty quickly. And then, back to a related vein, what is the likelihood we’ll get to see a Detective Bride of Frankenstein spin-off any time soon?

Would Frankenstein Want Us to Judge CBS’ Frankenstein Pilot?