Nathan Ford is down on his luck.
Know how you can tell?
The guy’s got a permanent five o’clock shadow, shaggy hair and, in the opening moments of the new TNT series “Leverage,” he’s sidled up to a bar in the middle of the afternoon.
Nathan, played by veteran actor Timothy Hutton, is a former hotshot insurance investigator who quit his job after a family tragedy.
In the pilot, which airs at 10 p.m. Sunday, an aeronautics executive approaches him with a job opportunity. He wants Nathan to recover airplane designs that were stolen from him by a rival.
For assistance, the exec has assembled a crack team of thieves and hackers: Alec Hardison (a very funny Aldis Hodge), who specializes in computer fraud; Eliot Spencer (Christian Kane), a “retrieval specialist” with Jason Bourne-style fighting skills; and the single-monikered Parker (Beth Riesgraf), a daredevil master thief.
There’s just one problem with the executive’s grand plan.
“I’m not a thief,” Nathan tells him.
“Thieves, I got,” he responds. “What I need is one honest man to watch them.”
And, there, we get the premise of the show.
The airplane job is supposed to be a one-time thing, but we’ve all heard that before.
The motley crew eventually comes back together, with the goal of swindling rich bad guys using high-tech gadgets, disguises and Parker’s death-defying stunts (her preferred method of breaking and entering involves rappelling down the sides of buildings).
It’s a fun show — with definite shades of the “Ocean Eleven” movies — if you can overlook the occasional cheesy moment (especially the fight scenes; look for one in a hospital during the second episode that is just laughable).
Still, I’m a sucker for a good caper story, and “Leverage” is working for me so far.
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