WHEN the writers’ strike was looming and everybody was panicking, CBS, like everyone else, was looking for a sure thing to fill the void if the strike lasted indefinitely.
That possibility was about as likely as betting that Americans would rush each week to watch yet another elite team of cops (from Toronto, yet) tough out hostage negotiations and/or defuse bombs, bust gangs and talk suicides into rediscovering the joys of life.
They should have taken their chances on the void.
But instead, they bought into a Canadian TV cop drama, “Flashpoint,” which debuts tonight. Right off, and not to be a bigot or anything, but cops with wide, red hat-bands just don’t do it for me. They look like Eloise at the Plaza. OK – maybe I am a bigot after all.
Anyway, the show revolves around the aforementioned elite cop force (are there any non-elite forces left?) called the SRU – Strategic Response Unit – based on the Canadian Emergency Task Force.
Unlike most of these “elite team” shows, these guys are sensitive negotiators who try not to kill despite the fact that the two most elite among them happen to be sharpshooters – whose job it is to climb on top of buildings and shoot to kill should negotiations break down and things get dangerous.
On tonight’s show, that’s just what happens when a brutish, mad grunter-of-a-Croatian goes a’ hunting for his estranged wife, who’s working in an office building. And here’s where not just the situation, but the plot, starts to come undone.
The mad grunter shoots the wife and takes another woman hostage. Never mind that a bystander sees the grunter threatening with a gun and just walks away, or that after the grunter shoots to kill, he, too, just walks away.
Didn’t anyone hear the shooting in the totally open atrium?
He takes the hostage outside, gun at her head, and the cops just put up a rope while the spectators stand behind like it’s a red carpet. The best part of this show is the acting, which is generally excellent – particularly that of Hugh Dillon as Ed Lane, the conscience-riddled sharpshooter.
Too bad the writing isn’t as on-target as Lane’s high-powered automatic.