Burn Notice: Season One

Despite being the most watched series on American cable television, Burn Notice has inexplicably flown firmly under the radar on this side of the pond, despite being thoroughly enjoyable. Series centres on Michael Westen (Jeffery Donovan, the bastard cop from Changeling), a Spy who, whilst working on a deal for the US Government in Nigeria, is burned by his handler. This means that all his bank accounts and passports are frozen, and he is essentially out on his own. After waking up in Miami with his ex-girlfriend Fiona by his side, he hatches a plan to find out who burned him, whilst earning dough by helping folk in need of his Special Ops training. Tonally, it's hard to put your finger on just what makes Burn Notice work so well; Donavan is great, Bruce Campbell amusing and believable as a former Navy Seal, and the Miami location is an easy sell. But it plays like a strange concoction of Grosse Point Blank, meets The Bourne Identity, with a dollop of the A-Team; embracing whatever opportunity for humour that comes its way and not taking itself too seriously. It's also surprisingly clean fun for a cable show, with no bad language or explicit sex scenes, whilst the action is safely PG-13. It doesn't always work, and on an episode-to-episode basis, some of the cases Michael works on can feel repetitive, but the main story arc of him searching for whoever burned him always keeps things moving along briskly enough. Also, Donavan excels as much in the hand-to-hand combat scenes as he does dealing with both the dramatic, and the slightly more comic exchanges - he's got a mischievous smile that really embodies everything the character is about. Some elements undoubtedly fall flat (Fiona's Irish accent that disappears after the pilot), but this is a cool series, that should more that warrant a place in your box set collection.