Watched the first episode of Crossing Lines yesterday, the European produced show that will bomb on NBC this summer. The show is about a detective squad made up of specialists from 'all over the Eurozone', that mysteriously contains two people from the United Kingdom. The squad is set up by the International Criminal Court (lol wat) to fight cross border crime, because apparently an expanded role for Europol would not be dumb enough for this show. William Fichtner and Donald Sutherland star in a cast otherwise devoid of talent, and I can only imagine were either paid huge sums or were blackmailed into appearing.
In the pilot they race across Europe to stop a serial killer, with all the generic cop show action and cliches you would imagine. There's really very little to say on it, if you've seen an episode of any procedural cop show, you've seen this. Except here it's set all over Europe. They do in the course of the pilot however manage to toss in some CSI-level stupidity by equipping the German 'tech specialist' with a device that records a holographic image of the crime scene, which is a major plot point that helps them solve the case and arrest the nervous guy from Ocean's Eleven. I'd tell everyone to not watch this, but given that it airs on NBC in the US, that's pretty much a foregone conclusion anyway.
I also just watched Under the Dome, the new CBS Horror/Mystery/Drama/Sci-Fi show based on the Stephen King novel where a giant dome suddenly appears over a small town in America closing them off from the outside world completely. The pilot did what it had to do, it set up the overall premise of the dome quite quickly, introduced the most important characters and started a few interesting/freaky story lines. Though nothing about this show is all that spectacular, it's perfectly watchable, and I could see myself getting into this if the overall plot progresses quickly enough.
