Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating *

Cast: Ashley Zukerman, Eddie Izzard, Valorie Curry, Beau Knapp, Sumalee Montano, Rick Gonzalez, Sammi Rotibi, Greg Bryk, Raoul Bhaneia, Laura de Cartret, Keenan Jolliff, Tyrone Benskin, Mark Gibbon, Steve Cumyn, Dalal Badr, Batz Recinos, Gage Graham-Arbutnot, Ben Carlson, Tamara Duarte, Emily Piggford, Michael Blake, Gia Sandhu.

Any form of art requires faith, from the person painstakingly producing the scene to which others are meant to be inspired, to the audience, singular or large scale, who are the hopeful beneficiaries of the human endeavour, who hope to be blessed by its appearance, by its magnificence.

Faith though can be misleading, it can blind you to the truth, it can lead you astray and forge a path that does not lead to whatever version of the afterlife you subscribe too, and instead take your hand, smile in your face, and then shove you down a large hole where others are being tormented for having the urge to stick with something that quite frankly is far from being plausible, but ultimately destructive in its staying power.

For those that placed their faith in Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol, the sense of television Hell must be forefront in their minds, the smell of sulphur being replaced by the souls of past dramatisations; of other more worthy pieces of art who rose above the weight of expectancy but somehow still stalled, still sank without trace.

It is arguably churlish to pick over the carcass of the unforgiving and insubstantial, but there is sparse enough light to shine on what was billed as the beginning of Robert Langdon’s life and career in symbology, that The Lost Symbol not only fractures under scrutiny, but it has also almost no redeeming features that save it from eternal damnation; a serial that is unfortunately weak, inadequate, and meagre in its delivery.

To have Eddie Izzard in anything is normally such a moment of belief that it almost transcends the screen, a sublime comedian, an actor of huge note, and yet for the first time in the actor’s life the feeling of being absolutely miscast is enough to make the viewer weep. The portrayal of Langdon’s mentor and friend Peter Solomon is one that you can understand full well is the actor’s top priority, and yet it is almost unremarkable, stilled, lacking in any humanity that Eddie Izzard commands with authority; and for that it is almost criminal to see the master of surrealism used in such a casual, disappointing manner.

Yet, as poorly received as Eddie Izzard is, the sheer exhaustive narrative surrounding the entire production is enough to drive the viewer to despair; if they stayed with it till the end, if they were willing to put themselves in artistic harm’s way, then surely, they will know and understand what unacceptable really means, and the only symbol they will need to grasp is that of the thumbs down.

A television blunder, a television drama of disappointment, in Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol there is nothing to find that helps solve the mystery of the unacceptable production.

Ian D. Hall