The Listener (NBC)

What is it with all these telepathic and pseudo-telepathic cop wannabes? There's the guy from The Mentalist, who uses his unerring ability to interpret people's non-verbal clues to help the police solve crimes. There's the deception expert on Lie to Me, who's trained himself to figure out when people are lying and often advises law enforcement agencies. Oh, and don't forget the guy in Psych, who's conned the local cops into believing that his skill at noticing even the smallest details is actually ESP, which he uses to help them crack tough cases. And now there's Toby Logan, who really does have ESP, and uses it to, yep, help solve crimes.

This genre is getting pretty tiresome, and The Listener doesn't do much to freshen it up. The crimes here seem standard-issue, and Logan's flashes of mind-reading insights appear at just the right times to advance the generic plots. The better shows in this club rise on the strength of the acting, since the actual plots are all pretty generic. Simon Baker makes the Mentalist into a dashing oddball who's fun to watch; and who better than cynical Tim Roth to play an ultra-cynical expert on falsehoods in Lie to Me? But Olejnik isn't in their league, and neither is this formulaic plodder.