Back in the 90s, there was a nifty little show on NBC called The Pretender, which I should probably do a Lost Gem on at some point. It starred Michael T Weiss as an almost unique genius who can be anyone he wants to be and uses his skills to help the innocent and punish the guilty by pretending each week to be a different person.
If that all sounds a bit familiar, maybe it’s because you’ve been watching Burn Notice, in which Jeffrey Donovan plays a spy who uses his skills to help the innocent by pretending to be all kinds of other people.
What’s interesting is that Donovan actually played Weiss’s brother, another Pretender, on The Pretender.
And this week, who should guest star on Burn Notice except Michael T Weiss. There’s fun for you.
I’m Rob Buckley, a journalist who writes for UK media magazines that most people have never heard of although you might have heard me on the podcast Lockdown Land or Radio 5 Live’s Saturday Edition or Afternoon Edition. I’ve edited Dreamwatch, Sprocket and Cambridge Film Festival Daily; been technical editor for TV producers magazine Televisual; reviewed films for the short-lived newspaper Cambridge Insider; written features for the even shorter-lived newspaper Soho Independent; and was regularly sarcastic about television on the blink-and-you-missed-it “web site for urban hedonists” The Tribe. Since going freelance, I've contributed to the likes of Broadcast, Total Content + Media, Action TV, Off The Telly, Action Network, TV Scoop and The Custard TV.
