{"id":303353,"date":"2026-01-25T19:38:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-25T19:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/303353\/"},"modified":"2026-01-25T19:38:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-25T19:38:07","slug":"patrick-dempsey-in-silly-fox-hitman-drama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/303353\/","title":{"rendered":"Patrick Dempsey in Silly Fox Hitman Drama"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tFor the first three minutes of Fox<\/a>\u2018s Memory of a Killer<\/a>, Patrick Dempsey<\/a>\u2018s Angelo projects suburban normalcy. He visits his pregnant daughter (Odeya Rush\u2019s Maria) and son-in-law (Daniel David Stewart\u2019s Jeff), makes small talk about his dead wife and his job selling office supplies. He drives Maria to her job teaching school.<\/p>\n

\n\tAt this point, Suburban Normcore Dad Angelo drives off in an SUV so boring it\u2019s practically a station wagon and arrives at a lair in the wilderness, his very own bat cave where he changes out of his bland khakis and puffy vest into a sleek, perfectly tailored black suit. The boring car is left behind and replaced by a snazzy black Porsche EV.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tMemory of a Killer\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tThe Bottom Line<\/p>\n

\tToo risible to be believable, not risible enough to be enjoyable.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSpecial premiere: <\/strong>Sunday, January 25, after the NFL playoffs (Fox)
Time period premiere: <\/strong>9 p.m. Monday, January 26 (Fox)
Cast:<\/strong> Patrick Dempsey, Michael Imperioli, Richard Harmon, Odeya Rush, Daniel David Stewart, Peter Gadiot
Creators: <\/strong>Ed Whitmore and Tracey Malone\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\tBecause Angelo isn\u2019t a boring suburban office supply salesman. <\/p>\n

\n\tHe\u2019s a hitman, and if you can\u2019t look and drive like a FREAKING HITMAN, what\u2019s even the point of killing people for money?<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s a ridiculous moment, one that instantly torpedoes any desire the show might have to be taken seriously as a semi-dramatically semi-grounded story about a hitman with Alzheimer\u2019s, because it\u2019s really a show about a dad who treats killing people as cosplay. He\u2019s basically Batman. Alzheimer\u2019s is basically the Joker (and not a very real neurodegenerative disease).<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd the whole thing is just plain silly, which I take as the series\u2019 blessing to say that, while Angelo represents a juicy part for Dempsey, one that he plays serviceably, the best part of Memory of a Killer is how perfect Dempsey\u2019s \u201cI\u2019m a Hitman!\u201d swept-back silver hair looks in every frame. I\u2019m talking \u201cbetter than a werewolf drinking a pi\u00f1a colada at Trader Vic\u2019s\u201d level of tonsorial perfection. The second best part of Memory of a Killer is Angelo\u2019s \u201cI\u2019m a Hitman!\u201d Porsche EV, which is lit and framed so flawlessly every time it appears onscreen that I assume Porsche has covered a goodly portion of the series\u2019 budget. The third best part of Memory of a Killer is Angelo\u2019s \u201cI\u2019m a Hitman!\u201d wardrobe, which should come with ordering instructions.<\/p>\n

\n\tNothing else really comes close to the hair, the Porsche and the suits.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe show is based on the Belgian film De Zaak Alzheimer \u2014 \u201cZaak\u201d means \u201ccase\u201d in Dutch, if you\u2019re hoping to learn Dutch from reading TV reviews \u2014 which was itself based on a Belgian novel of the same name and was previously adapted in English as the 2022 Liam Neeson film Memory<\/a>, which you probably don\u2019t remember, which isn\u2019t an Alzheimer\u2019s joke, just a reflection on some percentage of Liam Neeson\u2019s recent cinematic output. You may, incidentally, be confusing Memory with the Michael Keaton film Knox Goes Away<\/a>, about a hitman with a different, non-Alzheimer\u2019s neurodegenerative disease \u2014 Creutzfeldt\u2013Jakob, if you\u2019re hoping to acquire medical knowledge from reading TV reviews \u2014 but they\u2019re different movies.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnyway, Memory of a Killer was adapted for Fox by Ed Whitmore and Tracey Malone, with a pilot directed by Daniel Minahan, who has directed enough prestige cable dramas that it\u2019s disappointing how much Memory of a Killer looks like a broadcast show.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe basics, again: Angelo\u2019s daughter and annoying son-in-law think that he sells copiers, requiring frequent trips out of town. Instead, he goes to his bat cave and dons his hitman garb and goes into the city, where he kills people at the behest of Dutch (Michael Imperioli<\/a>), who runs an Italian restaurant. Clearly there\u2019s a good deal more to Dutch\u2019s operation than just pushing pasta, but critics have only been sent the first two episodes and the depths of his dealings haven\u2019t been explained.<\/p>\n

\n\tDutch has a bumbling nephew (Richard Harmon\u2019s Joe), who serves as Angelo\u2019s spotter, which is a thing hitmen have. In the first half of the pilot, Angelo kills some triad boss, even though the boss is attending his daughter\u2019s birthday party, which presumably is ruined. Angelo has a code. Angelo\u2019s code is very dumb. At least in the second episode, another killer mocks him for it.<\/p>\n

\n\tJoe and Dutch know nothing about Angelo\u2019s life in the burbs. Maria and Jeff know nothing about Angelo\u2019s bat cave or the fact that he has a pimped-out \u2014 decorated, clearly, by Design Within Reach of Hitmen \u2014 apartment in the city. Why does Angelo need such an expensive bat cave, Hitman Porsche and bespoke suits? Why can\u2019t he stay at a Motel 6 instead of owning a pied-a-terrorist? Does he only kill in New York City or does he have pimped-out pads everywhere? Honestly, if I were Maria and I learned what Angelo did for a living \u2014 and Maria will surely eventually learn what Angelo does for a living \u2014 I would be concerned about the \u201chitman\u201d thing, but freaking enraged about the profligacy of his hitman lifestyle.<\/p>\n

\n\tOh, and Angelo has a brother who lives in some sort of facility \u2014 a decent facility, but not a facility so nice that it couldn\u2019t be upgraded if Angelo spent less on suits and new Porsches \u2014 because he is in the deep stages of Alzheimer\u2019s. It wasn\u2019t caught in time for early therapies and a nurse says it would have helped if they\u2019d known when the brother started forgetting things like his bank code.<\/p>\n

\n\tFive minutes later, Angelo forgets the code to his hitman apartment\u2019s security system.<\/p>\n

\n\tRuh-roh.<\/p>\n

\n\tAlso, Angelo has killed a lot of bad men and he\u2019s maybe being followed by a mysterious stranger, and soon other people may start suspecting things \u2014 which, combined with his forgetfulness, isn\u2019t good.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt takes very little time to see why previous adaptations of De Zaak Alzheimer have been feature films; the combination of suspense caused by neurodegenerative disease \u2014 so far treated exclusively as a plot point in a way that is just a wee bit icky \u2014 and the suspense caused by a secret criminal double life is not endlessly sustainable. Two hours? Sure. An HBO or FX show with six to eight episodes per season? Possibly with very careful writing. An ongoing broadcast show in which the language, sex and violence all have to be sanitized to the point of nothingness? Nah.<\/p>\n

\n\tMemory of a Killer is, in fact, the third Fox procedural to premiere in the past 13 months about middle-aged professionals struggling to do their jobs under cognitively-altered circumstances, rendering \u201ckilling people\u201d and \u201cAlzheimer\u2019s\u201d interchangeable with \u201cdoctoring\u201d and \u201cwhatever\u2019s off with the main characters on Doc<\/a> and Best Medicine<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThis is a weird formula, Fox. Please go back to more civilian contractors helping professionals solve crime.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd the writing in Memory of a Killer is not, unfortunately, all that careful. It\u2019s clumsy throughout. It\u2019s big things like the leaden exposition of the dialogue filling us in on Angelo\u2019s professional backstory. It\u2019s medium-sized things like the volume of foreshadowing dialogue about not forgetting things long before we get a diagnosis for Angelo. And then it\u2019s little dumb things like consecutive scenes in which we meet unrelated characters named Linda (Gina Torres) and Belinda \u2014 the sort of thing where a network note should have been, \u201cCan the character we\u2019ll never see again be named Barbara?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMemory of a Killer is clunky and silly, and any rough edges that could exist on a cable show with different decency standards and 10 more minutes per episode have been sanded down.<\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking of \u201csanding down,\u201d Dempsey really is solid, but Angelo is so overly smooth and his hitman schtick is so overly slick and so much time is spent with Angelo being a loving father and grieving widower and caring brother, that I kept pondering how hard it is to craft a good antihero for broadcast TV. It isn\u2019t impossible, but this isn\u2019t it.<\/p>\n

\n\tWith simmering menace \u2014 \u201csimmering,\u201d because he spends a lot of time making pasta sauce \u2014 Imperioli comes closest to the sense of danger that\u2019s absent in Dempsey\u2019s performance. Rush makes Maria innocent and sweet, but not interesting. Stewart makes Jeff insecure and annoying, but since he\u2019s the first one to think Angelo\u2019s behavior is odd, he\u2019s practically the show\u2019s protagonist. There\u2019s also a detective named Dave (Peter Gadiot), who is a detective named Dave and that\u2019s about it.<\/p>\n

\n\tI was \u2014 full credit \u2014 never bored watching Memory of a Killer. Lots of things happen in the two episodes I\u2019ve seen. Too many of them, though, are risible. This is the sort of show that inevitably strains credulity as it goes along. If the suspension of disbelief becomes oppressive within three minutes, that\u2019s not a story I want to invest in long-term.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the first three minutes of Fox\u2018s Memory of a Killer, Patrick Dempsey\u2018s Angelo projects suburban normalcy. He…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":303354,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[263],"tags":[18,117,9702,19,17,49697,86939,327,93620],"class_list":{"0":"post-303353","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-fox","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-memory-of-a-killer","14":"tag-michael-imperioli","15":"tag-movies","16":"tag-patrick-dempsey"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}