COMMENTARY
Pergament: CBS looks north of the border for police drama
With the NBC reality show “America’s Got Talent” passing for quality summer entertainment, you can’t blame CBS for looking to Canadian talent to carry a scripted series.
“Flashpoint,” which CBS agreed to carry during the writers’ strike, is a standard- issue police series that is passable summer entertainment. The series, filmed in Toronto, will be simulcast on CTV starting at 10 p. m. this Friday.
The biggest clues in the advance screener that the series is Canadian come when one of the officers is referred to as a “constable” and an actor delivers the Canadian pronunciation of “process.” (You would hope at least the “constable” line would be edited).
Outside of border cities, the American audience might not realize it was shot north of the border because Toronto isn’t mentioned in the pilot script and two of the show’s stars are familiar to the American TV audience. Enrico Colantoni, who is Canadian, starred in “Just Shoot Me” and “Veronica Mars.” Amy Jo Johnson, an American, starred in “Felicity.”
However, only music lovers may recognize Hugh Dillon, the rugged-looking Canadian actor who was in a hard-rock band called the Headstones. His seemingly ultra-confident character, Ed Lane, is the focus of the pilot.
In the pilot the cops, played by Colantoni, Johnson and Dillon, are part of a response unit that is sent in to defuse a hostage situation involving a violent, foreign-speaking man.
Colantoni is the calm leader of the unit, which specializes in some intense situations. The dialogue can be wooden, but the action is tense at times, even though the hostage situation is pretty routine by police series standards.
Of course, there are the obligatory scenes in which we learn our heroes — or Canada’s heroes — have some personal crises and sometimes forget their marriages and their families are more important than the thrill of their jobs.
And then there’s the stress and inquiries that come after one performs his or her job as close to perfectly as can be done under imperfect circumstances.
The series is best in the scenes without dialogue, primarily because they allow the tension and personal anguish to speak for themselves.
Otherwise, the points being made in “Flashpoint” are about as subtle as an uzi or some other high-powered weapon. But it shows that Canada’s got talent that can help pass some time during the summer, when viewers are held hostage to American TV’s obsession with cheap reality shows.
Rating: “Flashpoint”: 2q stars out of 4
‘Burn’ is back
If you missed the first season of the USA Network series, “Burn Notice,” be advised it shouldn’t take long to catch up to its charms when it returns for its second season at 10 tonight on basic cable.
The attraction isn’t the absurd plots, which find blacklisted (“burned”) spy Michael Westen (Jeffrey Donovan) using his guile to wiggle out of impossible situations. He is helped by a washed-up, easygoing intelligence contact, Sam (Bruce Campbell), who serves as comic relief. It isn’t his improving relationship with his needy, chain-smoking mother, a role Sharon Gless can play in her sleep. It isn’t even the show’s sexy costar, Gabrielle Anwar, who plays a former ex-IRA operative, Fiona, who used to have romantic sparks with Michael.
No, the primary charm is in Westen’s deadpan narration, which often dryly explains how his philosophy of spying behavior and human behavior keeps him alive in Miami.
The show has added another sexy woman, Trica Helfer (“Battlestar Galactica”), who plays a ruthless operative whose plans are unclear. She has little to do in the first two episodes, in which Michael has to use his amazing instincts to save a computer geek and a woman being stalked by a bad guy.
“Burn Notice” isn’t exactly must-see TV on a Thursday night, but if you’re looking for a light, silly, breezily-paced, entertaining show, then you won’t be as disappointed as Michael’s mother often can be.
“Burn Notice”: 3 stars
