Television musings and Leverage
Like many people, when it comes to tv shows, I suffer from SASS - Short Attention Span Syndrome. When a new show comes on, the writers/actors have one, maybe two, chances to capture my attention. If it's a show peopled by actors I'm unfamiliar with, they'd better grab it within fifteen minutes, or it's hasta la vista, baby.
In some cases, a show that has actors I'm familiar with and enjoy watching will have a much better chance of keeping me as a viewer than a show with unknowns, even if its a show I'm not 100% wild about. House retained my viewership the first year mostly because of Hugh Laurie. Bones, of course, has David Boreanas. However, just because I like a certain actor doesn't necessarily mean I'll watch the show. Nicholas Brendon could not make me watch more than 30 minutes of Kitchen Confidential, and despite the fact that I like both Alyson Hanigan and Neil Patrick Harris, I have never been able to get through more than five minutes of How I Met Your Mother.
So, because of my SASS, and because there's just so much out there anymore what with the non-big three networks also producing original series, a show really has to grab me to keep me coming back. Last night, I watched just such a show.
I got quite a bit of feedback when I posted on Monday that I had forgotten to watch the pilot of Leverage. The consensus seemed to be that it was watchable without being outstanding. I disagree.
I FREAKING LOVED IT!!!!! LOL
Seriously, I loved every single minute of it. The cast is great with an instant chemistry that I totally bought into. Tim Hutton's rather dissolute, possibly alcoholic, leader, Nathan Ford, looks careworn and bitter, but his heart is still pure. *g* The others are the kind of charming criminals that bring to mind Robert Wagner's Alexander Mundy from the 1960's show, It Takes a Thief. And I loved the way the show gave us background on these characters in very brief flashbacks that told us quite a lot about them without boring us or taking us away from the main plot for too long.
I loved CK's Lindsey McDonald on Angel, and was pissed at his ending because I was convinced he was redeemable. Here, he gets that chance at redemption. He plays Eliot Spencer, a "retrieval expert" who can kick the shit out of guys twice his size (and look damned sexy while doing it *g*) and who hates guns. He can also identify the make of a gun just through the sounds of the weapon firing, or identify a fighting style after one encounter. Though technically he's a 'bad guy', by getting involved with this group, he gets to fight for the little guy, and you can see that his character kind of loves that.
The other actors, though unknown to me, filled their roles with such joie de vivre, that it took no time at all before I fell in love with each one of them. And one bit of casting I really loved was the casting for the tech nerd. By Hollywood standards, the role should have been filled by a doughy, pasty-faced, pale-skinned white guy with poor social skills (and possibly BO) who still lives in his mother's basement. But on this show, our tech genius, Alec Hardison, is a tall, slender, beautiful, wise-cracking, chockfull of personality, young urbanish black man played by Aldis Hodge. (Dear casting people for Stargate: Universe. Please take note that your tech guy does not have to be stereotypical. Not that I think for one moment you'll break away from the stereotypical./bitter)
The women characters are both thieves, though one is a cat-burglar (Parker played by Beth Riesgraf), expert in breaking into just about any security system, and the other is a scam artist (Sophie Devereaux played by Gina Bellman), using her beauty and British charm as a means of suckering in the mark.
Anyway, the 'capers' were your usual over-the-top kind of stuff, very Mission: Impossible, as was pointed out in comment s to my original post by edhed and melagan, but I loved the cast of characters so much that the grandiosity of the plots didn't bother me - also, I loved the original Mission: Impossible tv series, so the comparison is a good thing. I know a lot of people on my flist like Burn Notice, which also has over-the-top plots, and while I really like the cast of Burn Notice, I never find the plots as entertaining as I found the first two episodes of Leverage.
So, to boil down all those words into a short synopsis, I really liked Leverage, and I'll be tuning in again next Tuesday at 10pm.
In some cases, a show that has actors I'm familiar with and enjoy watching will have a much better chance of keeping me as a viewer than a show with unknowns, even if its a show I'm not 100% wild about. House retained my viewership the first year mostly because of Hugh Laurie. Bones, of course, has David Boreanas. However, just because I like a certain actor doesn't necessarily mean I'll watch the show. Nicholas Brendon could not make me watch more than 30 minutes of Kitchen Confidential, and despite the fact that I like both Alyson Hanigan and Neil Patrick Harris, I have never been able to get through more than five minutes of How I Met Your Mother.
So, because of my SASS, and because there's just so much out there anymore what with the non-big three networks also producing original series, a show really has to grab me to keep me coming back. Last night, I watched just such a show.
I got quite a bit of feedback when I posted on Monday that I had forgotten to watch the pilot of Leverage. The consensus seemed to be that it was watchable without being outstanding. I disagree.
I FREAKING LOVED IT!!!!! LOL
Seriously, I loved every single minute of it. The cast is great with an instant chemistry that I totally bought into. Tim Hutton's rather dissolute, possibly alcoholic, leader, Nathan Ford, looks careworn and bitter, but his heart is still pure. *g* The others are the kind of charming criminals that bring to mind Robert Wagner's Alexander Mundy from the 1960's show, It Takes a Thief. And I loved the way the show gave us background on these characters in very brief flashbacks that told us quite a lot about them without boring us or taking us away from the main plot for too long.
I loved CK's Lindsey McDonald on Angel, and was pissed at his ending because I was convinced he was redeemable. Here, he gets that chance at redemption. He plays Eliot Spencer, a "retrieval expert" who can kick the shit out of guys twice his size (and look damned sexy while doing it *g*) and who hates guns. He can also identify the make of a gun just through the sounds of the weapon firing, or identify a fighting style after one encounter. Though technically he's a 'bad guy', by getting involved with this group, he gets to fight for the little guy, and you can see that his character kind of loves that.
The other actors, though unknown to me, filled their roles with such joie de vivre, that it took no time at all before I fell in love with each one of them. And one bit of casting I really loved was the casting for the tech nerd. By Hollywood standards, the role should have been filled by a doughy, pasty-faced, pale-skinned white guy with poor social skills (and possibly BO) who still lives in his mother's basement. But on this show, our tech genius, Alec Hardison, is a tall, slender, beautiful, wise-cracking, chockfull of personality, young urbanish black man played by Aldis Hodge. (Dear casting people for Stargate: Universe. Please take note that your tech guy does not have to be stereotypical. Not that I think for one moment you'll break away from the stereotypical./bitter)
The women characters are both thieves, though one is a cat-burglar (Parker played by Beth Riesgraf), expert in breaking into just about any security system, and the other is a scam artist (Sophie Devereaux played by Gina Bellman), using her beauty and British charm as a means of suckering in the mark.
Anyway, the 'capers' were your usual over-the-top kind of stuff, very Mission: Impossible, as was pointed out in comment s to my original post by edhed and melagan, but I loved the cast of characters so much that the grandiosity of the plots didn't bother me - also, I loved the original Mission: Impossible tv series, so the comparison is a good thing. I know a lot of people on my flist like Burn Notice, which also has over-the-top plots, and while I really like the cast of Burn Notice, I never find the plots as entertaining as I found the first two episodes of Leverage.
So, to boil down all those words into a short synopsis, I really liked Leverage, and I'll be tuning in again next Tuesday at 10pm.