alexandral | I love British TV: ITV The Fixer (Reply)

Admittedly, I watch and love too much TV that isn't produced in the British Isles: HBO's "The Wire" aka the Greatest show of our time, Japanese and Korean shows that share the winning concept that a TV show MUST have a definitive ending instead of lasting indefinitely until it is dead of old age, Russian shows that are realistic, tragic and serious like "Idiot" or "Children of Arbat". I love them all.

British TV for me reigns in period costume drama adaptations. No-one in the world makes costume dramas as good as BBC or ITV. What else? Of course, Doctor Who and it's spin-off are fabulous. Forget my current disapproval of the Doctor number Ten and his facial expressions. Any show that has lasted as long as Doctor Who and is still collecting one of the biggest wide age range fandoms on and off the Internet must have something going for it even if it not my personal cup of tea of the moment.

The Fixer
But sometimes a non-costume-drama British show comes along that deserves to be noticed in a serious way (yes, "Spooks" seasons 1-4, I mean you too). This year it is "The Fixer" by ITV (first recommended to me by

the_grynne, thank you!). For anyone who watched and liked "La Femme Nikita", "The Fixer" is a no-nonsense male Nikita set in London. It is all about John Mercer, a man who was serving a life sentence for killing his uncle and aunt, people responsible for the physical abuse of his sister. But one day a nice man Lenny Jameson came along and told John that he can be free. It wasn't apparent at the start but John's freedom is nothing but a bigger cage and his job is to be the government's hit man for it's black ops. And of course, Lenny is not that nice at all. Throw in a femme fatale played by Tamzin Outhwaite. The result is a realistic and hard show I can't wait to watch the fifth episode of.