Flashpoint [CBS, Fridays, 10/9C] looks like a lot like an updating of SWAT – for most of the first two acts. The members of Toronto’s Strategic Response Unit [based on the real Emergency Task Force], Team One, are called in to deal with a hostage situation – which is resolved, uncharacteristically, before the end of the second act.

The teaser introduces SRU Team Leader Ed Lane [Hugh Dillon] and sets up the team’s shift preparation and a hostage situation. When the call comes in, assignments are made and the team rolls. Onsite, Jules [Amy Jo Johnson] and Ed take up sniper positions [Ed winds up being lead when her location isn’t as good as his] and Sergeant Gregory Parker [Enrico Colantoni] tries to talk the gunman into putting down his gun.

To this point, Flashpoint is a smoothly executed cop show as it cuts back and forth between the events leading up to the hostage taking and the team’s shift preparations. The difference comes in the second act, when the situation is resolved and we follow Ed through the regulation follow-up investigation. Now we’re into something different – the way the day’s work affects Ed – leading up to the ep’s compelling final scene.

At first Flashpoint seems like just another cop/SWAT series, but then it takes a turn that changes the game for the characters and the audience. As skilfully as the first two-thirds of the episode are produced, the flashpoint pilot doesn’t quite fully engage us until after the resolution of the hostage situation, when Dillon takes Ed through some strange and affecting moments. When Parker tells him that he’ll one day have to do the math on the “I’m fines,” Flashpoint goes from being about cops to being about people – people working a job that has incredible ramifications. From that point on, it’s appointment TV.

Final Grade: B

Showtime’s Dexter – one of the five or ten best series on television comes to CBS [Sundays, 10/9C] in a somewhat different, but equally effective form. The series, which features a serial killer who only targets other serial killers – and lives by a code instilled in him by his late adoptive father – does not glorify the character but, rather, seeks to understand what kind of circumstances can lead to the creation of a psychopathic personality, while tackling a truly bizarre myster!.

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The folks at CBS just love giving us their insights into each week’s episode of CSI. We have another ten things you didn’t know about this week’s installment, called "Laying Down With Dogs."  This CBS logo is freaking me out man…

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Continuing in their unique promotional campaign for their hit series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, CBS has released another ‘Behind the Crime Scene: Ten Things You Didn’t Know’ list. This one is about the upcoming rebroadcast of the episode titled ‘Cockroaches’, which airs this Thursday at 9PM EST. ‘Cockroaches’ was directed by Academy Award and Golden Globe Award winning Director, William Friedkin (The Exorcist, The French Connection). Here is list of fascinating facts and trivia about the episode ‘Cockroaches’.  (more…)

Los Angeles CA, January 16, 2008

As we all know, most shows are currently in reruns until the end of January when new episodes will be trotted out for February Sweeps Weeks. To put themselves ahead in the ratings game, CBS/Paramount has come up with a unique way to draw viewer interest to the reruns currently airing of CSI and has sent around a publicity image titled ‘Behind the Crime Scene: Ten things you didn’t know about this week’s episode of CSI’. This week’s rerun of CSI is a rebroadcast of the episode ‘Go to Hell’, which airs this Thursday, January 19^th at 9pm EST on CBS. Above is the publicity image containing the ten things we didn’t know about ‘Go to Hell’. (more…)

This evening CBS presents a unique documentary, In God’s Name [ 9/8C], in which twelve of the most influential spiritual leaders in the world talk about the most pressing questions of our time and discuss how and why they have been able to deal with some of the most of the most devastating events in recent history.

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