Leverage

After spending what seemed like the longest time writing eulogies for celebrities who have died and a six part history of music videos (I think it was the longest series of articles I've ever written in this blog), I thought I would relax and just plug one of my favourite shows currently on the air. Leverage starts its second season tomorrow night on TNT at 8:00 PM Central.

For those of you who have never seen Leverage, the series centres around a team of former con artists, hackers, and thieves, banded together under by former insurance investigator Nate Ford (Timothy Hutton) to right corporate and government wrongs against the average person. The average episode of Leverage plays out like a good caper movie, with the team not only playing elaborate con games, but usually having to break into some place as well. Creators John Rogers and Chris Downey were obviously inspired by such classic movies as Topkapi and Ocean's Eleven.

Of course, what often makes the classic caper movies so great are their casts, and Leverage has a great cast. In addition to Timothy Hutton, the series features Gina Bellman (perhaps best known as Jane on Coupling) as con artist Sophie Devereaux, Christian Kane (who appeared on both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel as Wolfram & Hart lawyer Lindsey McDonald) as martial artist and heavy Eliot Spencer, Beth Riesgraf as cat burglar Parker, and Aldis Hodge (who appeared in the films Die Hard with a Vengeance and the Coen Brothers' remake of The Ladykillers) as hacker Alec Hardison. Each and every one of the characters is well developed, with original personalities. There is no doubt in my mind that Leverage is both one of the best acted and best written series currently on television.

To give you a taste of the series, I'll leave you a character recap of my favourite character, the beautiful Sophie Devereaux, courtesy of TNT.TV: