I Watch TV: Leverage Redemption

Leverage: Redemption

Let me catch you up: the Leverage team were five criminals, a hacker, a hitter, a grifter, a thief and a mastermind, who more-or-less reformed and took down worse criminals, often corrupt politicians or corporations who used money and laws to stop people getting justice. After five seasons the show stopped with (in fiction) two of them retiring to get married.

This picks up on the anniversary of the death of Nate (the mastermind) with the others trying to get Sophie (grifter) out of her funk by going to a museum and committing a crime. There they discover Harry Wilson, tax lawyer and fixer to the rich and evil, having a crisis of conscience and about to commit a crime against his rich and evil employer. Caught up in his story and need for redemption they re-form the team and start taking on clients.

Complications! Because they have other teams around the world the hacker has to go off and support them*. So they get a replacement, his foster sister who has her own criminal past to work out.

There’s a bit of talking about themes, how seeking redemption is a process not and end, and also how they’ve had to step up their game as corporations and criminals have become more blatant and even brutal since the show was last on. And how they aren’t they good guys, they step in when the good guys have failed, and they don’t do good, they inflict pain onto the bad guys to make them squeal. They’re the last resort for many people, and a couple of times they’re only coming in after horrific crimes have been committed, profited from, covered up and the perpetrators moved on to a new scheme.

After five seasons there was a bit of exhaustion to the show. They’d done classic heists, cons and fights, fictional and real, and variations on them. The characters had gone through their relationships with crime, and each other, and learned more about what they do and what each other do, cross-training, making themselves unstoppable crime machines individually, and as a team. They’d covered various bad guys, gone international, gone up against governments, criminals and corporations, corrupt small towns, billionaires, street thieves, stolen weddings, elections, miracles and priceless artefacts. Was there anything new to do?

Maybe not, but the gap between original and revival refreshes things, the change in status quo with the three returning regulars each taking more control at various times, and the emergence of new and more horrible villains and technologies do enough to make the return worthwhile. Most crime shows are still serious, gritty, grim in tone, and Leverage can go there, but it frames their actual shenanigans as gloriously fun. We’re allowed to enjoy the cleverness of the schemes and cons.

There’s a season-long bad guy who keeps popping in and out, a security company who only seem to have evil clients, but you don’t need to pay attention, it just adds to it when you realise that these are the same guys who were in the opening pair of episodes, causing trouble again. The first two and the last two episodes are paired, and also linked if only by being Harry Wilson stories, but other than that they mostly are dip in and out (exception, one character’s love interest arc.)

Watch This: For cons, heists, tricks and bad guys getting their comeuppance, and maybe even some cool characters
Don’t Watch This: Leverage has been done, no need to bring the walking corpse back out of the mausoleum

 

* This is Hardison, played by Aldis Hodge, an actor whose adult career took off with Leverage and has since been on an upward trajectory; thanks to other commitments he only appears in 3 episodes. Like Nate (dead) he continues to cast a shadow over the series even while absent.