JulipMarker

James St Patrick is a little bit black James Bond, little bit gangster hip--in short, perhaps he is the next Denzel, a versatile actor with style and who is a pleasure to watch as he plays to and away from the social and racial stereotypes of the 21st century. The overall plot line might sound so-so (street punk becomes drug kingpin leads a doublelife as a night club mogul trying to outwit an old white disco powerenterprise while unwittingly having an affair with a cop, his childhood love, who could could at any moment bring him down) but the writing within this overall plotline and the filming and acting is so strong that one cannot help but check in every week and then impatiently await the next episode to find out who is on top, how, why and what secrets might or might not get uncovered. Behind all of this are exciting issues of trust, greed and social image. Excellent scripting, but even better gestual and facial expressions that often say so much about the internal motives of each character. I think one might keep their eyes on this show--as perhaps these actors need to be nominated for an Emmy, especially Omari Hardwick and Lela Loren.

Excellent, extremely exciting, well-written and acted with flair--Manhattan is transportation back in time to the moment right before the Atom bomb. A picture of American idealism and paranoia, human error and scientific wet dreams. The teams of scientists and the flock of military MPs and support around the 1940s Los Alamos project have come back to life. Manhattan is filmed so that you can almost taste the dust--and want to back up because we all know what is coming. This show is cinematic in its scope, resonant, trying and captivating all at once.

As sexy spy girls go, the fashionable Annie Walker (played by Piper Perabo) is no bad apple against-the-system turncoat changing her stripes again and again as her needle seeks its true north (ie like we saw on Alias or Nikita with their covert smoke and mirrors disguises plus a lot of martial arts as they have no other choice but to work for cancerous outgrowths of the system or heavy hitter secret agencies that are often more powerful than governments). Rather Walker--like that down home kind of Tex-American character name sounds--is a true believer in the system and her true north is found as she keeps trying to protect it. Yet, as a spy who generally believes in the CIA and doing "the right thing", Annie and her entourage often find themselves compromising the system in order to weed out corruption in high places. Fun, sexy, sweet, full of punch and action--this is a show which delights because it is action plus good friendships, based on love and trust in a mire of the ever-distrustful.