Person of Interest - Seasons 1 and 2

L-R - Detective Joss Carter (Taraji P. Henson), Root (Amy Acker), Harold Finch (Michael Emerson), John Reese (Jim Caviezel), Detective Lionel Fusco (Kevin Chapman) and Agent Sameen Shaw (Sarah Shahi)

An ex-Special Forces soldier and CIA assassin is picked up by an Army interrogation expert turned New York homicide cop for beating down a gang of spoiled bullies. Released, he is contacted by a reclusive billionaire with an unusual proposal. Thus begins Person of Interest, an Equalizer for the surveillance age.

The central conceit is that Harold Finch was asked to create a programme to trawl through data in search of threats to national security. What he creates is The Machine, an almost godlike system with access to practically any networked device, capable of predicting any threat to the United States and sold to a secretive government cabal for one dollar. As an unintended side-effect of its programme, the Machine also predicts premeditated threats to private citizens, and it is these threats that Finch seeks to neutralise.

His main problems in this endeavour are that he is a slight, nervous intellectual with a gammy leg and no combat skills, and that the Machine only presents him with a social security number, with no indication of what the threat is, or even whether the number presented is for the victim or the perpetrator. The first of these is resolved by hiring ex-CIA badass John Reese to be the brawn to his brains, the latter by legwork and networking. Joss Carter is the cop who first pursues and later works with Reese, while her partner Lionel Fusco is a once-dirty cop at first coerced into helping Team Machine, later a willing participant.

The show is primarily an anthology, but with a strong arc plot. The arc antagonists of Season 1 are a mysterious gangster named Elias, who is seeking to control the entire New York underworld, and an organisation of corrupt NYPD officers known as 'HR'. While Elias is caught and imprisoned, and HR badly weakened by the team's efforts, the finale introduces Root, a young woman with a chameleon's gift for impersonation and whose technical skills rival Harold's own, but whose experiences have led her to believe that people aren't worth the effort of saving.

I said to my girlfriend, "I'd recommend this series,
but I know your favourite character doesn't come in
until Season 2."

Season 2 brings in a resurgent HR, the Special Counsel's office responsible for operations proceeding from the Machine's intelligence product, and Decimer, a shady corporate group seeking to control the Machine. Together with Root, these groups shift the focus from a general threat to the public to a specific threat to the Machine itself. Season 2 also introduces future regular Sameen Shaw, an agent for the Special Counsel who is betrayed by her superiors when her partner questions their motives, and more importantly the real star of the show, the Belgian Malinois Bear (played by Graubaer's Boker.)

The series is framed using the Machine's perspective, multiple camera angles and facial recognition blocks tracking people around the world, and this is used to delve into the characters' backstories as the Machine analyses older files for information on potential threats and victims. Perhaps the greatest achievement of the series is that through only these file snippets and the jumble of recorded voices used to relay the social security numbers to its administrator via payphone, the Machine is transformed into a character in its own right.

While Reese and Finch are pretty settled characters, mostly explored through backstory, Carter and Fusco provide a much richer ongoing character development. Carter is forced to evaluate her priorities when given evidence that the 'Man in the Suit' responsible for a number of redacted homicides is doing real good. Fusco is if anything even more interesting. Introduced as a simple dirty cop, he is seen struggling for redemption and later shown to have been a good man brought down by loyalty more than greed.

Season 3 is kicking off on Channel 5 next week, and if it keeps to standard will warrant an episode-by-episode update.