The Mentalist 2007 detective show
The Mentalist (2007, United States)
Patrick Jane reached the celebrity status as a mentalist, or to be more precise a con man and fake psychic, who used his natural charm into a skill that allows him to read through the lies of others. But after one of his TV appearances, he returns home to find his wife and daughter murdered by a serial killer known as Red John. This changes his life completely - he decides to use his grief to track down Red John, so he becomes an independent consultant for the California Bureau of Investigation. He can use the skills he gained as a con man to guide the detectives through the tricky cases, in which knowledge who tells the truth and who lies is the most important. Also, as an independent consultant, he can bend the rules a little bit and do things the officers would not be allowed to. Jane is assigned to a team led by Teresa Lisbon, who initially doubts he could be useful to CBI, but once Patrick proves he can bring the results much quicker than through the good old-fashioned police work, she takes him onboard.
TV series based on an old trope in crime stories - pair a loose cannon with a by-the-book partner and see them clash. The Mentalist have almost cliché setting, a maverick independent consultant, who for some reason is indispensable for the CBI, but not indispensable enough to actually make him part of the agency, and a serious woman in charge of him, who reluctantly allows him to do things his way as long as he solves the cases. The cast was good enough to keep it fresh for a while, some of the episodes had quite interesting plots, but with time the cosy nature of the mysteries in each episode began to clash with the darker, underlying tones of the search for Red John. Overall it was a middle-of-the-road show, it had some good mysteries, some good characters, an interesting story arch, but some episodes were a bit too light and on a verge of being comedy-drama to keep the whole show consistent.
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