In the US: Tuesdays, 9pm et/pt, CBS
In the UK: Probably Bravo or Virgin 1
Characters re-cast: 0
Major characters gotten rid of: 0
Major new characters: 0
Format change percentage: 50%
Number of families running America still its independence: Five
There’s a general assumption that the mainly excellent Bourne films have been a good thing. They made the Bond producers think twice about producing another piece of mindless rubbish; instead, they made the only slightly mindless Casino Royale.
Yet they appear to have had rather a bad effect of The Unit. Essentially a tale about the US’s Delta special forces group (with names changed to give the plots a certain leeway), The Unit trod a thin line between being a spy show and being a show about the army. While it could be escapist at times, it did try to attain certain levels of realism and it did this best when it focused on the army side of the characters.
But the surprisingly bad influence of Jason Bourne has finally had an effect on The Unit – and his fingerprints are all over the first episode of the third season, right down to the music, and they haven’t been planted this time.
