Box Watch: Suspect Behaviour

With a history of Law & Order and The Shield on my sheet*, one might have safely assumed that I transferred my cop show tastes to CSI, Without a Trace, Cold Case and/or Criminal Minds when the runs of L&O, et al finished. Nuh-uh. The flashwhizzbang-don’t-dare-change-channels style of most of them is not to my taste and even though they’re led by great actors like William Peterson Laurence Fishburne/David Caruso/Gary Sinise, Anthony Lapaglia, and Mandy Patinkin Joe Mantegna there are so many pretty people** in those shows that, well, call me shallow but I find it really annoying. That and they always get their man***.

Which brings me to three reasons why I’ll be trying Minds spin-off Suspect Behaviour:

1. Janeane Garofalo for whom I’ve carried a film and TV torch since The Truth About Cats and Dogs and The Larry Sanders Show;

2. Michael Kelly who first dirtied my eyeballs in The Shield as a nasty wee serial killer, and then showed smarts and compassion as one of the few sympathetic officers in Generation Kill;

3. and Forest Whitaker. Nuff said.

The title may be an awkward mouthful. It may be a spin-off of something I’m dubious about (with dubious reasons, yes). Don’t know who’s behind the camera, or who’s writing it.

But talent like that, in one show, is something I’m not passing up.

* The Wire has largely ruined my cop show enthusiasm – I can now only watch running, shouty, gun-drawing homicide cops with the same detachment that I enjoy Hellboy, The A-Team or Transformers.

** A rather scathing Vidiot review of Cold Case put me off sight unseen (can’t find the link, sorry).

*** L&O cops may have always got their offender, but sometimes they still got away with it in court.