Breakout Kings

What is the opposite of over-hype and ballyhoo? Whatever it is, that is what greeted the launch of new US crime drama Breakout Kings this week. 

Neatly tucked away on that home of the obscure and the cancelled Universal, Breakout Kings isn't a bad show. It stars (well the only person I recognised) DomenickLombardozzi who played Herc in The Wire and here he plays, well, Herc from The Wire. The basic premise is a US Marshall has the bold, for bold read only on TV, idea that the best people to capture escaped convicts are convicts themselves. Yeah I know, that old set a thief to catch a thief type scenario. So a small group of cons are temporarily released to catch any escapees. The carrot being a cushier prison and a month off their sentence for every capture. So we have a streetwise, ex gang leader, an alluring female con artist, and a  socially inept, genius prodigy as our crack team. So far this doesn't really sound too promising, having a vague similarity to that Jerry Bruckheimer's The Chase turkey. But Breakout Kings has a bit going for it. The show zips along at a fair old pace, it is well played, and has some snappy dialogue. But what surprised me most was that the characters seemed to really stand out. Sometimes it takes me a while to differentiate who is who. But the characters are well written, likable and, for their cliched origins, quite fresh. There was also a neat twist at the end that I didn't see coming.

   

Now all I have to see is if Breakout Kings passes my two episode test. Of late I've been ditching shows after a few episodes. Alcatraz and Grimm being amongst them and Once Upon A Time is clinging on by its, high concept, finger nails. 

I'm hoping Breakout Kings does pass the test. I'm rooting for it and have my fingers crossed.

Over