Started off promisingly, in a dystopian future (don't you just love those?) but quickly (and more cost-efficiently) relocated to the present day, where a cop from the future tries to track down several criminals who have escaped justice in her time. The whole "fish-out-of-water" thing works for about half an episode, then suddenly everyone acclimatises to their situation and we end up with what is basically a cop show with some futuristic or sci-fi elements.
Add to that the ridiculous way the criminals are first shown to be noble freedom fighters battling a repressive government run by mega-corporations, then quite pointlessly become bloodthirsty desperadoes, forcing you to change your originally somewhat sympathetic view of them. Cardboard characters acting out a one-dimensional cop series that tries to take itself seriously as a sci-fi programme but fails miserably. I soon gave up. I see it's being renewed for another season. Just shows you.
Verdict: 
I've always liked Damian Lewis since I saw him in the quirky, one-season "Life", and here he shows just how versatile an actor he can be. You surely know the show: it's won Emmys and been voted one of the best shows of the year, and quite rightly in my opinion. Although not an original idea --- it's a rewrite of an Israeli series called "Prisoner of war", which I'm really annoyed I just missed the first showing of --- but it's a great subject. In case you've been living on Mars for the last year or so, it concerns a US soldier who is found alive when he was presumed dead. He returns to the US as a hero but nobody knows he has been turned, and is working for his erstwhile captors to bring down the US Government. No-one, that is, except one CIA operative, and she has a history of mental illness, so who's going to listen to her?
Heading into its third season, this is a show you should really make time to see. If you thought "24" was unrealistic (it was), this is on the far end of the scale. A human story as much as a terrorist one, it's a programme that successfully blurs the lines between what is a freedom fighter and what is a terrorist, even what is a patriot, and asks some unsettling questions. It's also a deep journey into one man's mind, to see what makes him turn against his country, and if he is in fact justified in doing so.
Verdict: 
(When it returns later in the year for a third season)
I like a good political satire, and over twenty years ago, no-one did it better than "Yes Prime Minister" and its prequel "Yes Minister". Now that show has been revitalised for the twenty-first century, but rather than being a simple "re-imagining" of the original, it's got the writers who created the first series working on it, so in every sense possible it's the new, improved "Yes Prime Minister."
So they say. But I don't know. When something is as loved and deeply ingrained in the TV audience's consciousness as this series, how can you really remake it? It would be like trying to resurrect "Last of the summer wine" or "Fawlty Towers" with a whole new cast. Doesn't sound likely. And yet to a degree this is working, mostly due to two things: firstly, writers Anthony Jay and Jonathan Lynn have duplicated the situation of the coalition government currently in power in Britain, and have relocated their new Jim Hacker, the PM, to Chequers, country retreat of the PM, with his duplicitous Permanent Private Secretary, Sir Humphrey Appleby to keep an eye on him.
The second thing is that the spirit of the original show has been kept very much alive, with Sir Humphrey running vocabularistic rings around poor old Hacker, and confusing him so much that the PM often doesn't know what he's doing. They've also kept in the long, rambling, often almost incomprehensible speeches Sir Humphrey will sometimes give in answer to a simple question, and they're minor masterpieces in themselves. However, moving with the times they've included a female character, and really I don't see her working as other than, well, a token female.
Time will tell if the new show will end up being as popular as the old one, but let's be honest about this: the new guys have got some pretty big shoes to fill!
Verdict:
This is a very clever show about what we would call here in Ireland a "chancer", a con-man who blags his way into a law firm without ever even having attended law school, never mind graduate! He has however an analytical mind and a seemingly photographic memory, and he soon begins to not only learn from his new boss but teach him a thing or two about morals and ethics himself.
Sounds a little hackneyed yes, and to be fair it is, but the style and wit of the show save it from descending into being just "another show about lawyers", and god knows we've plenty of them! The leads are charismatic, the stories interesting and the subplots engaging. "Suits" also throws you the odd curveball, so that when you think a story will end happily it doesn't, which makes it in my book a little more realistic than a lot of the shows out there, legal or otherwise.
Finished the first season and I see the second is about to start, so looking forward to that.
Verdict:
Surprisingly, for something a) created by Steven Spielberg and b) touted by all my favourite sci-fi mags as being the next big thing, this bored the hell out of me. The idea in itself is not too bad: Earth is overcrowded, to the point that people are restricted as to how many children they can have and they live in cubicle-like apartments. The discovery of time travel allows those who want to start a new life to travel back to the Triassic or Cetaceus or something period --- the time the dinosaurs were stomping around, anyway --- and re-colonise the planet in that time, to try to build a new world which will avoid the mistakes of the current one. Only one catch: the time machine only works in reverse so the trip is strictly one-way. If you change your mind later, tough: you can never go home.
Well, two catches really. The other is that it's crap. I was bored by the fourth episode and just deleted the rest of the ones on my box. I found I couldn't care less about the characters, which is never a good thing and always a good indication as to my own level of interest and investment in the series. It seemed to be moving too slow, and you know, the idea wasn't bad if a bit "Jurassic Park"; maybe if I'd given it a chance it might have developed.
But I'm a busy man and have much to watch. If something doesn't hook me from the third or fourth episode I have to assume that it's not going to, and that's when I press the delete button. As I did here.
Verdict: