After 10 years of serving his country as a covert operative, Michael Weston is living every spy’s nightmare. While in the middle of a dangerous mission in Nigeria, Michael’s contact informs him he has been ‘burned’. When a spy gets fired, they don’t get a letter from human resources... they jeopardise his life, freeze his bank accounts, dump him in Miami, and flag him on every government list known to man. Michael begins a mission to find out who issued his burn notice so he can put his life back together. In order to fund his own personal investigation, Michael enlists the help of the only two ‘friends’ he has: ex-IRA operative and his ex-girlfriend Fiona and Sam Axe, a washed-out military intelligence contact whom the FBI are using to keep an eye on Michael. He’s also forced to deal with the family he went half-way around the world to get away from, particularly his mother. Now stuck in Miami, Michael must confront the bad memories of his childhood and repair the broken relationships he once left behind...

Burn Notice is comedy-drama series which follows the life of an American government operative, Michael Weston, who has been black listed for reasons unknown. A burn notice has been issued, which means that his bank accounts are frozen, he has no career history and can't move outside of Miami without being arrested. With no idea why he's been targetted, and by whom, Weston enlists the help of his old friends to get to the bottom of the mystery.

However, in order to live, Weston decides to use his years of training to act as a sort of freelance problem solver. Each week, a little like The A-Team, Weston and his team (ex-girlfriend and ex-IRA operative Fiona Glenanne, and former Navy SEAL and semi-retired intelligence operative, Sam Axe), tackle some bizarre crime that no one else can solve.

As Weston digs deeper into the surroundings of his burn notice, the more complex the mystery becomes. I doubt I'm spoiling much here, but over the course of this first season, Weston does get the information he seeks and discovers who placed the burn notice on him, but that only leads to more questions.

One thing that did strike me about the ending to Season One, was that it felt a little like the run up to a huge reveal that Weston would go on to become employed as a sort of Michael Knight (Knight Rider) character at the head of a huge private organisation. The final scene with Weston in a black car about to drive up into the back of a large lorry was very reminiscent of the old Knight Rider TV series.

The acting is uniformly good - with Bruce Campbell (playing Sam Axe) being about the best thing in the show. Sharon Gless guest stars on a number of episodes as Weston's mother. Fans of '80s police drama Cagney & Lacey will recognise Gless as she used to play Christine Cagney. Lucy Lawless, who is better known for playing Xena in Xena: Warrior Princess, also makes an appearance in one episode.

Extras are a bit of a mixed bag. We get a "Burn Notice" commentary on every episode. This could have been an interesting extra, but what starts off as a promising idea never really works as it should. Basically instead of having to listen to a dull audio commentary for every minute of every episode, key scenes have been picked for each episode. In places this is interesting, but more often than not there's nothing much of interest to be learned.

Then on the fourth disc we have Character Montage (1 min, 30 sec - which is just a bunch of dull clips from the episodes where people say the characters names); Girls Gone Burn Notice (2 min, 20 sec of clips of girls in bikinis walking around - a collection of all of those beach scenes that are spread throughout the episodes); Action Montage (2 min, 43 sec - a collection of running, fighting and car chase segments from the series); Gag Reel (3 min, 9 sec of mistakes and silly improvised lines - mostly by Campbell); Audition Footage (9 min, 33 sec worth of audition pieces by Donovan and Anwar); Saving Grave TV Show Music Video (3 min, 07 sec music video for... er... Saving Grace. Why this is included here is anyone's guess); and a trailer for the DVD release.

Apart from the odd audio commentary segment, the extras are pretty pointless and not really worth watching once - let alone several times.

But, it's the episodes that are important. This is a show that's well worth owning. Even though the show starts to become a bit formulaic - with Weston and his gang tackling a new job every week - there is an ongoing thread in which Weston attempts to find out why he's been burned.

9

Darren Rea