Some human distractions in a ‘heavenly’ teleserye

After an extended hiatus, the hit love team of Dingdong Dantes and Marian Rivera is back on TV via the new “heavenly” teleserye, “My Beloved.”

The series is billed as “different” because it has a super- or supranatural element: Dingdong plays an angel. Of course, he’s no cute little cherub with tiny wings and playful Cupid’s bow and arrow, but a tall, buff and golden presence—with long tresses, to boot.

The series premiered recently and spent much of its running time laying out the backstory. The opening sequence was really compelling—a multivehicle car wreck that included a passenger bus. After that literally slam-bang beginning, the series depicted the sad fate of two young girls who were made to believe that their mother had run off with a lover, and whosefather soon expired from a gunshot wound.

Now all alone in the world, the girls were taken in by a kind aunt—who turned out to be the exact opposite, a mean exploiter of child labor, etc.

Flash-forward some 10 years later, and the sisters, the older one now played by Marian (the younger one by Jennica Garcia), are still being oppressed by their supposed benefactress. But it turns out that they’ve been watched over all this time by the buff angel played by Dingdong.

The first telecast ended with Marian about to be raped by a spurned suitor, and the angel hovering into view just in the nick of time.

Our initial notes: Dingdong’s “angelic” look is really striking, a welcome deviation from his usual hunk-next-door projection. Marian performs more naturally than usual, but she’s too soft and sweet for the character she plays—an orphan who’s been exploited, insulted and made to work really hard for years and years.

Dingdong’s showcase

When will Marian realize that each role assigned to her has its own specific requirements, and that she can’t simply play variations on her “signature” screen persona from series to series?

Given Marian’s apparent lack of interest in making her character in “My Beloved” grittily believable, it looks like the new teleserye could be more of a challenging showcase for Dingdong, since he’s being tasked to play not just an angel, but one who breaks a heavenly “rule” and is thus sent down to earth as a human being. The shift from one to the other could be a real test of the actor’s acuity and resolve, so we hope he’s up to its many possibilities.

Some distractions: The two young girls were made to mouth dialogue that was too verbose and explicative, and too old for them.

As the girls’ aunt, Chanda Romero was too predictably nasty; and even after the girls had already become young women, she didn’t age one bit.

Finally, after its literally “smashing” opening sequence, the show settled down to a standard, predictable unfolding of its subsequent scenes, so they came off as anticlimactic.

But, hopes are high that the new show can still recover and come into its own as one of the more unconventional TV offerings this season.