When Mad Men returns to TV next month, chances are I'll find it the smartest show on TV. Lost, due to start its final season in 2010, is probably the most compelling and addictive. Breaking Bad, which I've written about here, wins the Best in Show.
But the show that's the most just plain fun: USA's spy series Burn Notice. Now in its third season, Burn Notice is the story of Michael Westen, a spy who gets blacklisted by the CIA. Forced home to Miami, he takes on a series of jobs -- private investigator style -- while trying to get his old life back.
It's a pleasure each week, watching Michael outfight, outshoot but mainly outsmart a parade of lowlife Floridians, whether they're drug cartels, Russian mobsters, other (less noble) ex-spies or run-of-the-mill con men.
It sounds like it would get old fast, but it doesn't. We never doubt that Michael's plans will succeed; they will, and the bad guys will end up getting themselves locked up or killed. The joy is in watching how Michael pulls it all off without ever -- or rarely -- getting flustered. (An added bonus: Michael's frequent "When you're a spy..." voiceovers, where we learn how to, say, use a flyswatter to shoot down a helicopter.)
It helps that there's a great cast: Jeffery Donovan as the picture of cool as Westen, the great Bruce Campbell as his sidekick Sam, Gabrielle Anwar as Michael's old flame/IRA member Fiona,* and Sharon Gless as Michael's mother.**
*Anwar is a beautiful woman, but she looks thin to the point of being unhealthy.
** I last saw Gless on Showtime's Queer as Folk, where she played the mother of one of the show's main characters, also named Michael.
I''m just coming off the second season, which found Westen going up against a ruthless CIA operative played by Battlestar Galactica's Tricia Helfer, as well as another -- unhinged -- ex-spy named Victor (Michael Shanks), who was one of the funniest, most tragic characters the show has created.
I haven't caught up with the show's third season yet, but by all accounts, it's only gotten better.
Almost as fun as Burn Notice -- in some respects, they've virtually the same show -- is TNT's Leverage, another show where people outsmart criminals through a series of elaborate cons. And like Burn Notice, the show plays out the same way every week: Nathan Ford, a former insurance investigator and his team -- a thief, a hacker, a con artist and a "hitter" (a guy who kicks ass, basically) -- get revenge on people who rip other people off.
Once again, it helps to have a fairly likable cast, including Timothy Hutton as Ford, Gina Bellman as Sophie, the con artist, Aldis Hodge as Hardison, the hacker, Beth Riesgraf as Parker, the thief (a nod to Richard Stark?) and Christian Kane as Elliot, the hitter.
(It helps that I was familar with most of the cast going in. Hutton is well-known. Bellman was the best thing about the excellent British sitcom Coupling. Hodge was the arrogant QB on the first season of Friday Night Lights and Kane was a sometime bad guy on Angel. Riesgraf was unknown to me before this, but her Parker is, well, adorable. Or maybe I just have thing for female characters with limited social skills. See also: Brennan, Temprance and Jenkins, Anya.)
Neither of these shows are ones that keep me thinking about them after they're over (the way Breaking Bad stayed with me for days after it ended, or the way Mad Men's plot secrets are so heavily guarded that what year the season takes place in a big mystery).
Another notable thing about Leverage: it's the first TNT drama that I actually enjoy. That's as opposed to The Closer, which I just sort of tolerate, and shows like Dark Blue, which was just ridiculous. I watched one episode last week -- which was enough -- and promised myself I'd avoid making any comparisons to The Shield, a much, much better Los Angeles-based cop show.
But it's hard not to do that. In the episode I saw, the undercover cops led by Lt. Carter Shaw (Dylan McDermott) have to come up with $100,000 to help another cop who's embedded with some gun dealers. So they set up a fake drug deal, which goes bad, which means they need to rob some real drug dealers.
Now, this sort of thing wouldn't be out of place on The Shield. But that show managed to sell its over the top stories by creating a world that felt very real. Dark Blue's Los Angeles is one that only exists on TV, so its over the top stories seem just that.
Tom Coombe
I like Leverage. It has funny moments. The Closer is predictable. I don't like Saving Grace either.
Burn Notice has hooked me. Thank God for Hulu
Posted by: Chris Casey | August 02, 2009 at 06:22 PM