In the US: Thursdays, 10/9c, CBS
In the UK: Five. No air date yet
Out of all the new shows in the US last year, there was one big winner, the conclusive champion triumphing over all others: The Mentalist. Created by Rome‘s Bruno Heller, it sees former ‘psychic’ Patrick Jane (Simon Baker) join up the the California Bureau of Investigation to hunt down the serial killer, Red John, who killed his family and offer his unique services to solve other crimes while doing.
Jane isn’t a ‘real’ psychic, but uses all the powers of those frauds – cold reading, misdirection, observation, etc – to deduce who the guilty party is. Although it might not be called Sherlock Holmes, that’s essentially what Jane is – a man whose ability to observe and deduce is so powerful, he knows who the guilty person is within seconds and just has to spend the rest of the episode proving it.
Despite the Red John storyline, The Mentalist is essentially a standalone show in which every episode has little to do with Red John. Instead, unlike all those serial shows that were so hot a few years ago, The Mentalist made it to the top of the ratings through not requiring the viewer to know anything or to pay that much attention: instead, you can dip into and out of The Mentalist whenever you want, content in the knowledge that you’ll just get to see that nice Simon Baker being very charming and quite clever while solving a generic crime story.
And frankly, as pleasant as that is, I’m bored of that now.
