How many times can you reinvigorate the detective show? I am constantly amazed by the ability of US TV to come up with new twists on a familiar theme. Just when you think they must have run out ... no, no, there's something brilliant and original and new. Or at least mainly original. Well, new, anyway.
This season? Fighting crime has been made the easiest it ever has been - I think there must be literally someone of every profession, lifestyle and level of mental instability on the job. Hopefully by this time next year there will be no crime whatsoever - because anybody who could possibly be solving it, is.
The new one for this season (or one of the new ones, there must be others that have slipped under even my notice, and I'm trying to work out how I can grow a new head to watch all the TV on offer in my new home) is The Mentalist. Though I won't deny I initially watched it because the term meant something completely different in my youth and I found it amusing in a silly kind of way, I carried on watching because ... well, imagine Derren Brown being allowed to solve crime. It's THAT kind of mentalist (not just someone who's a bit mad).
Starring Simon Baker, the prettiest leading man on the block, who you might remember from Home and Away in the early 90s if you are that kind of old, or from The Guardian. Not the paper, the television series. Here he plays one of those fake TV psychics – the kind who read people's minds and tell them what they want to hear – who due to some bad thing he said on television, suffers a terrible personal tragedy I won't go into right now for spoiler reasons. Ever since he's been helping the police with their enquiries by tricking people into confessing immediately, whether they want to or not.
The problem with this concept - I suppose - is that it's unethical, and members of the cast say so many times. I also suppose that if the person carrying out your interrogation can manipulate people into saying anything they want then, yes, that could be an issue. Still, it makes for good television, so ethics, schmethics.
If I had to guess, I'd say that The Mentalist will continue the line of television shows widely loved in the US but less prized in the UK. Monk is still a huge series, I note, though in the UK Tony Shalhoub's detective with OCD only seems to get on TV when someone's mislaid the Murder She Wrote 2pm afternoon showing tape. The same applies to Psych (a detective who IS actually a psychic, along with one who used to be Charlie in West Wing) - and that one with the female psychic, or medium, called Medium. Or the mathematicians who prove that the best and only way to solve crime, really, is through maths (good old Numb3rs, I really was expecting it to last half a season, shows what I know).
No idea whether anyone's picked up The Mentalist for mainstream British TV, but you can probably make up enough episodes yourself from the premise without actually having to watch one.
Fallen Heroes
Like Sarah was saying over on Organ Grinder, the most exciting television right now is the real stuff (like politics). New series, and returning ones, are struggling to emerge from that shadow - and this after a season shortened by the writers' strike.
The main returnee was Heroes and people expected great things. But that's what happens when you publicly admit that your second series was rubbish but the third will pick back up again. If you make those kinds of promises, people get a bit narked when it's really not that amazing after all.
So what's at fault there? The fact that hopes were too high? Or just that when it started, Lost was in a slump and now it's picked up, people have lost interest in Heroes which has never (quite) lived up to its outstanding premise. I don't know. I'm still trying to find the arsed-ness to plough through Season Two, so I'll let you know when I catch up with the rest of you all.
Backstabbing
What's that you say? What's the worst possible use of my time? When I lie on my deathbed, why might I look back and say, "Oh, if only I'd not watched XXX, I could have ensured world peace or something."
In fewer words, what should you be glad you're not watching?
The Rachel Zoe Project. Frankly. It's stunningly, fantastically terrible. The woman famous for styling such fashionable eating-disorderists as Lindsay Lohan and Nicole Richie is trying to launch her own brand, and is using a whole SERIES on the television to do so. Each episode is like an hour long version of YouTube hit Shoes, but with more backstabbing.
