Why You Should Be Watching 'Leverage'

The Robin Hood story has been done and re-done in many different ways over the years.

Often what we get is not a mere remake of the classic tale, but modernized storylines based on the Robin Hood theme, with vigilante-style defenders of the weak doing illegal deeds to ensure justice.

One such tale has found success on cable TV, and has become one of my favorite shows.

The show is TNT's "Leverage," but we could also call it "Robin Hood and his Merry Men and Women."

Timothy Hutton stars as Robin Hood, er, Nathan Ford, a former insurance investigator who leads a ring of ex-criminals in helping good people who've been wronged by the rich and powerful.

The general premise is that clients of the "Leverage" team are unable to find justice through traditional legal means, usually because of technicalities or a lack of evidence. So Ford and his bunch use a series of cons and generally illegal means to catch the bad guy.

It's not a brand new story, or premise, but creators John Rogers, Chris Downey and Dean Devlin have put a fun and fresh spin on it.

Two things really make this show work for me: the actors and the stories.

I also enjoy the fact that, even though it's set in Boston, "Leverage" is filmed in my home state, in Portland, and it's fun to recognize filming locations while watching episodes. But I was already a fan of "Leverage" before the filming was moved to Portland - Season 1 was filmed in Chicago and Los Angeles.

The cast is probably the show's greatest asset. Hutton is fantastic as Ford, a flawed by inherently good character who has discovered, begrudgingly, that he can do more good by playing fast and loose with the law.

The rest of the top-billed actors are pitch-perfect for their roles, with Gina Bellman playing grifter Sophie Devereaux, Christian Kane as hitman Eliot Spencer, Beth Riesgraf as thief Parker and Aldis Hodge as hacker Alec Hardison.

These actors mesh really well, play perfectly off each other and bring a great deal of obvious chemistry to the set.

The individual episode storylines are almost always intriguing. They typically have a caper feel to them, with each show's plot built around a specific con the team is trying to pull off. Unlike most popular TV dramas, there's rarely much mystery or "whodunnit" going on with "Leverage." We generally know within the first 10 minutes who the bad guys are, and the rest of the episode follows the team's efforts to pull off impossible con jobs to bring about justice.

It's fun, and engaging, and typically has just enough humor to keep things from feeling overly heavy.

If I have a criticism about the show, it's that sometimes "Leverage" tries to do a little too much in the way of special effects. It feels, at times, like they're trying to produce movie-quality effects on a TV budget, and often those effects are very obviously fake.

With computer generated imagery (CGI), you should either go all the way or scale back to a level you can pull off and keep realistic, and sometimes I find myself wishing "Leverage" would scale back just a tad.

But that's a relatively minor flaw, because it's not a constant issue and because everything else about "Leverage" is so good.

Sources:
Rose City ready to star again in 'Leverage' filming, Portland Tribune
Leverage, TNT
Leverage, Yahoo! TV