"STOP EVIL!": THE LAUNCH OF "CRIMINAL MINDS: SUSPECT BEHAVIOUR"

They know who you are are! The new CRIMINAL MINDS: SUSPECT BEHAVIOUR team. Image: CBS/PARAMOUNT.

With the success of SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and the emergence of Hannibal Lecter in the early nineties, the genre of psychopathic serial killers on the loose throughout America has led to the emergence of a new sub genre whose TV shows universe they inhabit have become extremely successful. From THE X-FILES through to the CSI series and then, more recently, the hit CBS series CRIMINAL MINDS (which has gone through several lead actors in its six series so far, including Mandy Patinkin, and which currently has Joe Mantegna), viewers of such atmospheric evil, and the hunt by our heroic detectives, police officers and forensics teams for their clever and disturbing perpetrators, have clearly enjoyed being terrified and surprised by whats been shown. Now, with the latter series hit ratings continuing, its makers at CBS/PARAMOUNT have launched a spin off: CRIMINAL MINDS: SUSPECT BEHAVIOUR, which keeps to the same basic kind of format as its flagship father show but has a brand new, more emotionally complex core group of lead actors to get to know and like, whose characters they play have been described as being damaged and needing to support each other in their lives and difficult and dangerous assignments by the show's producer Edward Allen Bernero, with the excellent Academy Award winner Forest Whitaker intriguingly cast as the big series lead, playing the cool headed and intelligent, martial arts practicing Special Agent Sam Cooper, who had previously appeared in a prior episode of CRIMINAL MINDS as a then audience tester for a spin-off series, with team-mates including Janeane Garofalo (a comedian/actress who was great in the seventh season of 24 as a computer programmer within the FBI) and UK actor Matt Ryan, backed up with regular appearances from CRIMINAL MINDS popular computer technician Penelope Garcia (played by Kirsten Vangsness).

Lengthy series preview trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOupaR2Ff-o

So far, CRIMINAL MINDS large writing staff and production team haven't yet run out of ideas in the way they terrorise suburban America, or the shows other worldwide fans, on a weekly basis, nor come to the end of their stockpile of fine actors of all types, shapes and sizes to inhabit the minds of said sadists and serial killers. Reaction to the opening episode of SUSPECT BEHAVIOUR, which started its run this week in the US (and is sure to be on the UK's SKY LIVING HD channel by the Summer), and which garnered a strong 12 million viewer rating, was deemed okay to good, with signs being that the show will improve as it goes on (and at least we'll be getting our moneys worth acting wise with the always interesting calibre of Whitaker as series lead). So, enjoy being terrified by what you see in the new series and, as Nick Ross said at the end of CRIMEWATCH U.K., "Don't have nightmares!"