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| The all-seeing eyes of the mysterious Finch (Michael Emerson) and Reese (Jim Caviezel) in PERSON OF INTEREST. Images: CBS. |
Possessing distinctive features, baby-face eyes and high intelligence hairline, Michael Emerson has had a varied and interesting acting career on US television since the early nineties (of which we heartily recommend his charming and vulnerable performance in the 2002 THE X-FILES Brady Bunch celebration episode Sunshine Days) but it wasn't until 2006 that he truly made his name, deservedly hitting the TV big-league target with his portrayal of Benjamin Linus: the well-read, mysteriously complex and charismatic, but also decidedly bitter, manipulative and intuitively deadly leader of the equally kooky hippies with guns, The Others, in the hit sci-fi/action/character drama LOST.
First revealed whilst pretending to be a newcomer to the ever moving, hard to locate island, arriving there via crashed parachute landing, Linus, despite some wariness to his identity, infiltrated the small group of survivors of the Oceanic Airlines flight 815 crash for a brief time before his identity came to the fore, attempting to find out as much as possible about his new enemies and what would soon be their destinies-for good and bad- with the mysterious islands supreme being, Jacob. Over the course of the five seasons, Linus would confuse, astound, belittle, torture and befriend our heroes, and with every episodes complex building blocks Emerson would rightly win critical acclaim and fan adulation for his constantly evolving role, which often mixed bravery with indignation, and vulnerability with unexpected cruelty. Audiences would never quite be able to pin down Linus's allegiances until the last few episodes of the final season and by then the actor had surely cemented himself as one of LOST's greatest and now iconic assets.
Trailer: Person of Interest 1 Season 2012 Official Trailer Promo LoadTV.biz.mp4 - YouTube
Trailer/behind the scenes: Person of Interest - First Trailer - Starring Michael Emerson and Jim Caviezel - YouTube
Beyond that finale episode of LOST, series co-creator J.J.Abrams has continued to recognise Emerson's talents by recently casting him as series co-lead (alongside film actor Jim Caviezel) in the brand new modern-day crime drama series PERSON OF INTEREST, which debuted to strong ratings and excellent demographics for the CBS channel since it began airing it this September. Keeping a little bit of the Linus character about him, Emerson plays the shadowy Billionaire Bill Gates-esque figure of genius computer/ software developer Harold Finch, who creates the ultimate computer program in the continuing evolutionary process of developing technology used in America's world wide counter-terrorism fight. This Big Brother'ish conception-which predicts nightmare scenarios before they happen- is soon put to good use in hunting down the terrorists, but its actions and abilities also trigger an intriguing sub-universe of statistics, information and personal Social Security Numbers where Finch quickly sees the potential of spotting other types of trouble-makers and future crime portent deadly enough that they too must be corrected and altered. With his US Government superiors uninterested in using the device beyond its initially conceived abilities, Finch, conveniently presumed dead shortly after, goes off the grid, and, paired with his specially selected, also "erased" presence of former Green Beret/ex-CIA agent John Reese (Caviezel), have their own world of pre-cog crime-fighting to begin...
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| Reese and Finch use their resources to look for the next "Person" of interest. |
With its intriguing premise by Abrams - another of his fun and atmospheric sci-fi'ish concepts inspired from past shows like THE TWILIGHT ZONE and THE X-FILES fused with crime drama against our modern day reality of unwanted but mostly necessary surveillance and intrusions into our real lives by post-9/11 agencies/forces whose ultimate powers over us we can only guess at- probably going well beyond any of the kind of things first thought up by George Orwell!- PERSON OF INTEREST, co-written by Jonathan Nolan, (brother of equally talented Christopher Nolan - the pair having successfully brought DC COMIC's BATMAN back to his energised cycle of gritty darkness and realism in cinemas these past seven years), also boasting a strong chemistry between the two lead actors, looks set to be a modern US TV classic that's well worth keeping a look out- you could say a series of interest- when it eventually debuts on British television...
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