The drama “Buried Bruce Willis” brought future stars to television

Bruce Willis never made the jump from actor to director like contemporaries like Kevin Costner and Denzel Washington, but he was still no slouch behind the camera.

In addition to writing on projects like Hudson Hawk, Willis also built a unique filmography as a producer. He worked behind the scenes on his own films like Hostage in 2005 and even helped bring Steve Irwin to the screen with 2002's The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course, all through his Cheyenne Enterprises with producing partner Arnold Rifkin.

The strongest project that Willis focused on as a producer and in which he was not involved as an actor is hard to find today: “Touching Evil.”

The 2004 series is headlined by some big stars just before they hit the big time. Jeffrey Donovan played Detective David Creegan several years before his long-running appearance on Burn Notice (which also aired on USA Network).

Vera Farmiga portrayed Creegan's partner, Detective Susan Branca, before taking on major roles in The Departed and Bates Motel.

Bradley Cooper appears in a recurring role as an FBI agent long before The Hangover, American Sniper and A Star Is Born.

Based on a long-running British drama, Touching Evil follows Creegan as he works his way back into his job after a bullet in the head and a subsequent stay in a psychiatric hospital.

The show embraces its noir roots from the start, beginning above the clouds on the Golden Gate Bridge. Then we fall to Creegan, driving and determined but with intentions that we question as we see him enter a house. He pulls out his gun like he skipped the badge part and now just goes hunting.

The opening ends with Creegan finding a cat alone in a room and then a masked man comes at him from behind and shoots Creegan in the head. The character falls through a window and falls as an appetizer and dessert to his major brain injury.

One might expect the story to move on to a new character here, with Creegan serving as an atmospheric plot device. That's not the case in Touching Evil.

The content of “Touching Evil” was better suited to an HBO-level streaming service or channel. It has all the regular routines of a crime drama, but due to the dark premise and unpredictable main character, the story has to lean more towards the gray lines that can separate good and evil, sane and crazy, hero and villain.

The police dramas in 2004 just weren't quite there yet. The pressure to catch the bad guy and wrap things up in about 40 minutes was too much at the time.

FAST FACT: The invaluable website JustWatch.com states that “Touching Evil” is not currently available to stream.

Creegan's struggles since taking a bullet are sometimes presented just for laughs (he says this led to a chemical inability to feel shame), but it also leads to some of the best aspects of the series. Imagine a recurring character named Cyril, played by Pruitt Taylor Vince. The former psychiatric patient finds it difficult to distinguish between reality and fantasy and is initially considered a suspect.

Creegan completely dismisses the possibility.

He is able to talk to Cyril and vacillates between challenging and accepting his fantasies about interplanetary travel because he sees himself in him. It's a rotating question in the series: After his injury, recovery and imprisonment, does Creegan identify more with the misfits and crooks than with his colleagues?

“Touching Evil” was canceled after just one season. It was far more challenging and darker than America's more straightforward dramas, and was given neither room to breathe nor time to find an audience.

Some mistakes were made.

Most noticeably, Creegan has a family that is sometimes too clumsily integrated into the series, mostly serving as a distraction more than anything else, as if no one has quite figured out how they factor into the plot, and it's talked about throughout Series still debated.

Overall, the 13-part series is a worthy story. A moment between Creegan and Branca at the end of the series fits perfectly with the series' theme of how precious the boundaries between extremes, especially life and death, are.

Branca: “Sometimes I worry that you want to go back. As if it were better there.”
Creegan: “If I thought it was so great there, I wouldn’t work so hard here.”

Some critics saw something special in the series, including Gillian Flynn, then a critic at Entertainment Weekly long before she wrote the bestselling “Gone Girl.”

“'Evil,' however, is much more compelling than just an odd-couple crime show or even a good serial killer show.” Echoing the surreality of “12 Monkeys” and the Hughes brothers' hyper-stylized “From Hell” (no surprise, since it is about the brothers) “Evil” has created a bitter little fairytale land.”

The pilot episode (promotional copies can be found on home video) revolves around a child abduction and is an impressive work. The steamy noir look of the series sometimes contrasts perfectly with the bright colors of the city. There are several impressive sequences (particularly for 2004 television), including a chase through a house of mirrors at a fair (starring none other than Cyril).

The quality of the pilot is less surprising when you learn that Allen Hughes directed it. He returned to direct two more episodes, and at that point the filmmaker (along with his brother Albert Hughes) had just made the documentary American Pimp and the Alan Moore adaptation From Hell.

In the 90s he made a name for himself with “Menace II Society” and “Dead Presidents”. Hughes always makes “Touching Evil” a real eye-catcher without ever seeming too pretentious. It's cinematic and avoids the flat, simplistic look of other shows in the cop drama genre from the pilot.

“When I first read the script I knew this was going to be something really special. I had never read anything like that on television. And when they were stupid enough to trust me with the role, I knew they were just as crazy as me,” Donovan told PopGurls about the pilot, which was adapted by Bruno Heller.

According to Donovan, there was some concern about whether to star in “Burn Notice” after “Touching Evil” failed to find a large audience from the start.

“The broadcaster had a superstition, a hesitation at first because he had already been involved in 'Touching Evil', which had failed. “We really wanted Jeffrey, and fortunately this time he's far from failed,” Fox TV Studios president David Madden told The Hollywood Reporter in 2013, when “Burn Notice” surpassed the 100-episode mark.

The cast is reason enough for Touching Evil to be properly released today, but Willis' involvement shouldn't be overlooked either. He and his producing partner Rifkin took center stage, driving and promoting the show.

If Touching Evil had been a success like its British counterpart, we might even have seen a cameo from Willis. The actor was never above television, starting out on “Moonlighting” early in his career and eventually landing guest roles on “Friends” and “That '70s Show.”

“I'm producing a TV show called 'Touching Evil' that's really good,” Willis told Black Film in 2004, adding that he intended to appear on the series at some point.

That's an exciting “what if” to ponder, but fortunately Willis has had a varied and long career in which he has happily and unafraid openly addressed “what ifs” about himself as an artist through his work .
“Touching Evil” was one of those works, and there is no reason to bury it today.

There was a setback in 2004, but the series deserves a second Creegan-style attempt to rejoin the beautiful madness of the living.

Zachary Leeman is a reporter who has published on sites such as Breitbart, LifeZette and Mediaite. He is also the author of the upcoming novel “Nigh” from publisher Gilded Masque.