Television: Burn Notice

The tagline for cable channel USA Network is Characters Welcome and that resonates a lot with me. I have a deep hatred of reality TV and unscripted shows. Somebody said that drama is life with all the dull bits taken out. That means that Reality TV is drama with all the dull bits left in. Although occasionally lovely in person real people, as far as TV goes, are quite dull and if they are going to great lengths to be interesting for the sake of TV, that makes them unstable. For a network to buck the populist trend and corroborate my critique, makes me feel vindicated.

Burn Notice is already into its second season on the USA Network. It’s a hard show to catch. It’s not shown on any Canadian network but it is available on the new Super Channel subscription service. It’s a show that deserves a wider audience, but that’s the beauty of cable. They are not slaves to audience meters. Michael Weston is a spy, in the full James Bond sense of the word. He’s a multi-linguist, he’s knows his weapons, he’s a master of subterfuge. He’s an ass-kicking, cool dude. But then he gets fired without warning in the middle of a case - the titular Burn Notice. He has no money, no ID, no plan. Thankfully, he is stranded in Miami, which makes for a far more exciting backdrop then say, Wisconsin or Navan. Michael is stuck in Miami until he finds out why he was burned. To assist him he has an ex-girlfriend, a friend of dubious motives and an overbearing mother.

If I were to pitch this show in one phrase it would be MacGyver meets The Equalizer. Michael's primary focus is to clear his name and get his job back, but he’s a good soul and cannot resist a sob story. He helps the helpless and with the aid of some chewing gum, a dozen bottles of peroxide and various cell phone parts, he can trace the activities of a cheating husband or bring down Miami’s most notorious drug cartel.

In a TV landscape populated with talent shows and teen melodrama it’s good to have a bit of old fashioned hokum. Burn Notice is good solid entertainment. There’s no subtext, it’s not complex but it can be clever. And for those of us who are not up to speed with the latest espionage techniques, Michael provides a helpful voiceover. Jeffery Donavan is a great find as Michael and Sharon Gless channels her inner Pat Butcher to play his Mum. Bruce Campbell is enjoying himself immensely supping beer in South Beach hotspots and playing the fool as Michael’s friend and most-times ally. But Gabrielle Anwar, playing his trigger happy ex, Fiona, is where it all could have gone horribly wrong. Allow me explain.

I was slightly concerned in the very first episode when they announced that she was Irish and she used to be a gun runner for the IRA. I braced myself for yet another awful Hollywood Irish accent but also grimaced because it still seems too soon to be making light-hearted japes about “The Troubles”. But then again, it didn’t seem to take that long for Hollywood to take the IRA from threat to heroine. Sign of the times, I suppose. Hell, Harold and Kumar just escaped from Gitmo! But curiously, the writers decided to back track on the Irish issue. And then I got really mad. She announced in an episode two or three that she couldn’t walk around Miami “talking like a leprechaun” and would therefore no longer be speaking with a brogue. A word to the writers: leprechauns only exist in the minds of US tourists and in the paraphernalia the Irish sell to them. And no Irish person would even use the word leprechaun, let alone compare their accent to one. But I’ve decided to overlook that shameful blip. Anwar is quite good in the role, bringing a great sense of fun laced with menace and let’s face it, and I’ve witnessed far more offensive things on television. Rock of Love, for example.