I just binge watched the first few episodes of From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series – Director Robert Rodriguez’ sepia-toned remake of his own 1996 film on his new El Rey Network.

Is this what network suits mean when they talk about synergy?

It’s been years since I saw the movie, but so far the series has followed the same plot – just a lot more slowly. Seven hour-long episodes still haven’t covered the ground the film trod in an hour and 48 minutes. Rodriguez fills much of the TV time with flashbacks. These are scenes we’ve seen before – multiple times perhaps – but with an extra drab of exposition or a different character’s perspective.

It is a cops-and-robbers story that turns into a hostage drama and then an outright horror show.

Compared with the all-star movie cast, headlined by George Clooney, Quentin Tarantino, Harvey Keitel and Salma Hayek, the lead actors on the TV series are relative unknowns.

D.J. Cotrona and Zane Holtz play the felonious Gecko brothers, on the run after a bank robbery. Cotrona (G.I. Joe: Retaliation) portrays Seth, the smooth man with the plan. In the Clooney role, Cotrona gives us a Seth who seemingly wants to do the right thing – at least by bank robber standards – but whose plans are frustrated at every turn by his crazy, murderous brother.

Holtz, who played a different kind of brother in The Perks of Being a Wallflower, radiates quiet insanity as Richie, who has visions and hears voices in his head calling him to Mexico. Cool on the outside but roiled inside by violent visions, Holtz brings a needed restraint to a role that had Tarantino bouncing all over the place.

One of the voices calling to Richie belongs to Eiza González as Santánico Pandemonium. In the first few episodes, she appears only in Richie’s visions, beseeching him to, “Set me free.” When she finally materializes in the flesh, well … as goddesses go, she’s a poor substitute for Hayek in every way.

Robert Patrick (True Blood, Last Resort), Madison Davenport (Shameless) and Brandon Soo Hoo (Ender’s Game) play members of the troubled Fuller family: Pastor Jacob, his daughter, Kate, and son, Scott.

Davenport gives a breakout performance as Kate, an ordinary teenage girl in extraordinary circumstances. Her modulated portrayal reveals a young woman who is alternately innocent yet suspicious – desperate for guidance but aware that she needs to take charge of the family at certain times. Davenport is more believable than I recall Juliet Lewis being in the movie.

Patrick holds his own in comparison with Harvey Keitel as the preacher who has lost faith following his wife’s death. He’s not fooling the kids with his impromptu “family vacation” to Mexico. He comes apart whenever the kids probe his behavior but starts to pull it together when the threat to his family shifts from internal to external.

Jessie Garcia (Sons of Anarchy) plays Freddie Gonzalez, the Texas Ranger pursuing the Geckos while plagued by visions of his own.

Rodriguez turned to C- and D-list celebrities for supporting roles. Wilmer Valderrama (That ’70s Show) plays Carlos, the gangster who lures the Geckos to Mexico; Don Johnson (Miami Vice) portrays Earl McGraw, Ranger Gonzalez’ partner and mentor who dies early on but continues to appear in Gonzalez’ mind; and Adrianne Palicki (Red Dawn, Friday Night Lights) plays the woman from Seth Gecko’s past, the one to whom he can’t, or won’t, commit.

Jake Busey (Starship Troopers) chews scenery as archeology Prof. Tanner, a/k/a Sex Machine, providing lots of dense exposition and some sorely needed comic relief. Busey has lost the spiky hair of his Shasta McNasty days, and part of his creepiness stems from how normal he looks – at least when he’s in academic mode. When, as Sex Machine, he whips out a crotch gun that he fires by thrusting his hips, it’s possibly the funniest thing in the series to that point.

There is a lot of gore – Rodriguez loves to make blood spurt and show heads and limbs hacked off – but none of it is realistic enough to be really gory. And even though the two most-recent episodes take place in a seedy Mexican topless bar, none of the strippers strips – even though, for once, nudity would make sense in the context of the story. Strange. It’s cable, after all, and Rodriguez runs El Rey, so presumably he doesn’t answer to network censors.

From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series has been renewed for a 13-episode second season. The big question is: Where does the story go once it runs out of movie plot?

###

Stuart J. Robinson, a college friend of the TV Tyrant, is a writer, editor, media-relations practitioner and social-media guy in Phoenix.