A couple of months ago, one of my flatmates tipsed me of a TV show called Burn Notice, which he claimed to be some of the best stuff he has seen in years. As this is a guy whose tastes I respect, and who spends most of the day watching TV shows, I thought I’d check it out. I’m glad I did.

Michael Westin is a CIA “affiliate” who, while on a mission on the Ivory Coast, receives a so-called “burn notice”, effectively meaning that he’s been suspended. All his accounts are frozen, he is under FBI and CIA surveilance, and he is unable to get out of Miami, the city he had tickets for when on the Ivory Coast.

Now, Mike is a bit miffed. You see, one isn’t burned unless the Agency suspects you of something incriminating. And seeing as Mike can’t remember ever having done something he wasn’t asked to do, he’s somewhat confused. So he sets out to clear his name, and discover what the Hell has happened/been done to him. But in order to do this, he needs cash. To get cash, he needs work. To get work, he needs papers. Which he hasn’t got, seeing as the CIA doesn’t normally give reference papers to fired field operatives.

You can probably see where this is going, eh? And right you are. Mike hires out his talent to people in need of help, in order to fund his investigations. Thus, we have the basic structure of the show. Every episode Mike works one case or other, while at the same time looking into the business of the pesky burn notice. This is pretty standard stuff, you’ll probably agree, but Burn Notice does what most quality TV shows do: They mix these two quite flawlessly.

Addtionally, Mike solves each episode plot in ways which most of the time are so pretty cool and intelligent, elevating the show over your run-of-the-mill show where the plots are resolved in the same way every time. Or, wait, that’s not what run-of-the-mill shows does; that’s what bad shows like CS-fucking-I does. But wait again! Bad shows, to my experience, actually is run-of-the-mill shows, too.

Furthermore, Burn Notice has great dialogue (not Whedon great, of course, or VM great), some fun characters, nice character development, and all sorts of good stuff like that.

So. Would I recommend this show to you, my gentile readers? Yep. Without hestitating. However, I would also advise you to wait. The season ended with a humungous cliffhanger, and the next season isn’t set to air until next summer. (This was a summer show on the channel USA, which I’d never heard of before, but had the sympathetic slogan “Characters first”.)

Oh, and the show also reminded me a bit of a Frederick Forsythe novel, with a lot of revelations about life in the intelligence services. And that’s something I always enjoy.