Great cast – led by Oscar winner Timothy Hutton, the cast are an absolute delight, and include Brit beauty Gina Bellman, geek favourite Christian Kane and a host of great guest stars, including Wil Wheaton and Jeri Ryan, who did a stint on the show to cover for Bellman’s pregnancy. They also have real chemistry, making them one of the most believable teams on TV.
Great lines – some of the best banter on TV, particularly the odd-ball bromance between Kane’s hard man Elliott and ubergeek Hardison (played with joyful aplomb by Aldis Hodge).
Have you ever been to Kiev? The cakemaker of Kiev could whoop all our asses. This is the BUTCHER.
Geek joy – this is a show happy to embrace its inner geek. Not only do you have the unbridled geekiness of Hardison, but it’s clear the writers aren’t strangers to the joy of geekdom, from the crowd pleasing casting of Wil Weaton as Hardison’s computer hacking rival, to a stream of Star Wars one-liners, to a running in-joke about Doctor Who.
The women kick ass – you know I can’t resist a kick-ass woman, and it’s great to say that Leverage fixes the one main problem of Hustle, which is that most of the time all the girls get to do is be pretty and distracting. Here super-thief Parker (Beth Riesgraf) gets to blow things up and kick people and to be as oddball and eccentric as Elliott, making it clear this isn’t just a game for the boys.
It’s a fantasy for our time – just like the shows it can be most closely identified with (the A-Team, Burn Notice) this is a show about fighting for the little guy; the whole point of the team is that yes, they are a bunch of crooks, but now they do bad things for good reasons. ‘The rich and powerful, they take what they want. We steal it back for you. Sometimes bad guys make the best good guys. We provide... "leverage". In a world where we face daily reminders that the rich are running wild when everyone else suffers, how can you not buy into this show?
It’s slick and suspenseful: it’s rare you’ll guess all the twists and turns (even if you do, there’s a lot of fun to be had on the way) and the show moves at a tremendous pace, making it one of the most enjoyable rides on TV.
It is quite aware how ridiculous it is, and has enormous fun with it: Leverage both builds and then happily punctures its own mythology. So Elliott, for instance, isn’t just kick ass – he’s impossibly kick ass; Parker isn’t just a masterful thief, she’s bonkers and unbeatable. The show builds these mythologies then has fun plays with them: there’s huge amounts of joy to be had from the deadpan way both of them reveal hints of their pasts, and there’s always a sly nod to the audience at the same time, the ‘look what we got away with’ grin that keeps you onside rather than going ‘c’mon, that’s insane!’.
You don’t have to be in on the story arc, so you can jump right in: it’s very loose. Basically, insurance investigator Ford became a disillusioned alcoholic when his young son died of cancer, having been refused funding for experimental treatment by the very firm Ford worked for. At the start of the show Ford is approached by a shady figure to carry out a robbery to steal back some design plans: he assembles a team from his underworld contacts – the very people he has spent years tracking - to carry out the robbery only to be double crossed. The team seeks to right the situation, and gets a taste for being the good guys. Once you know that, you can pick up the rest as you go...
Mark Sheppard! Yes, one of the best characters in Leverage is Mark Sheppard’s supremely slimy Stirling, who plays Nathan Ford (Timothy Hutton’s nemesis). Any show with Sheppard in is watchable, and this is one of his best roles – he plays it with a relish that makes you almost on his side...
So go on, watch it. You’ll thank me.
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