Tuesday

Last night I watched the first episode of the new US detective series Numb3rs (yes, that's a '3' instead of an 'e'). It involves a professor of mathematics who catches serial killers using (from what I can tell) advanced chaos theory-like equations (so, a bit like Pi meets Columbo). For example, last night he applied an equation to the seemingly random sites of rape victims to deduce where the perpetrator probably lived - and he was right! With the help of his brother, an actual detective, they found and killed the guy. At times it does feel a bit like an elaborate hour-long lesson in maths (annoyingly 'math' to Americans), but it is rather good. The cast is quite low-key: I only recognised Peter MacNicol (the weird guy from Ally McBeal), and Judd Hirsch (the tall guy from Taxi). The reason I mention it on Stranded Cinema, however, is because it's produced by Ridley Scott and his brother Tony (and bears the 'Scott Free' logo at the end). The style of the show bears some of the annoying Tony Scott-isms, direct from his latest films, of fast camera movements, jump-cuts, and montages to portray otherwise dull 'man writing equations on blackboard' scenes. Overall, whilst this is a brilliantly original idea for a detective series, it is still a detective series - and there are far too many of them around at the moment. Plus the title sequence is awful. Hopefully these little problems will get ironed out as the series progresses - so far it appears there have been a further three seasons in the US, so something must be right about it.