Cast Highlight- Gina Bellman

This week, I decided to highlight the person who plays "Sophie" on Leverage, Gina Bellman. I had never heard of this actress until I started watching the show, but from the moment I first saw her, something wouldn't let me take my eyes off of her. Not only is she truly a beautiful woman, but she also has a sense of authoritativeness that lets you know she's in control whenever she's on screen (a quality that is very rare for TV actors *not that all of them suck too bad).

Gina was born in New Zealand in 1966, and moved to England when she was 11. Her career as an actress didn't really start till 1984 when she landed a role in the BBC drama "Grange Hill". Soon after, she got a part in another BBC drama "Blackeyes" which quickly made her a TV star over in the UK.

Most of Gina's work has been done over in the UK (which is why many of us probably hadn't heard of her), but she did manage to land a couple movie roles in her career, including "Sitting Ducks", "King David", and "Seven Days to Live".

Now, Gina is of course working on filming the second season of "Leverage".

The Origins of Leverage.

It's been said more than a few times, that creation of truly original content is something that just doesn't seem to happen very often anymore. Something always seems to be based off of something that's already been done, and sadly, frequently doesn't even build on it's forefather.

I mention this, because as I was looking around for new stuff to write about "Leverage" (which I of course do constantly). I stumbled upon some surprising information about the show. It's apparently not as original of a show as I thought. "Leverage" is the American version of the hit BBC show "Hustle", staring the highly famed actor, Robert Vaughn.

"Hustle" is still an extremely popular show over in the UK. It premiered its 5th season last month to an audience of 5.7 million (As I mentioned earlier "Leverage" premiered to 5.6 million), and is currently airing here in the USA on AMC. To me, It's no surprise that a successful show like "Hustle" would eventually come to the United States after seeing other UK successes do so well here (ie-The Office).

Latest Episode Recap

Last night's episode of "Leverage" was perhaps one of my favorites of the season so far, it had very little action in it but contained a well done suspenseful feud. This was the second of 2 episodes directed by famed Star Trek actor Jonathan Frakes.

Summary:

This episode, entitled "The Juror #6 Job" took the show into a courtroom. In the beginning of the episode one of the main character's got a letter notifying her that she had jury duty. When she got the the court, she couldn't help but notice something fishy was going on. Eventually she persuaded the rest of the team that they should take this trial up as a job and get to the bottom of it. It turned out, that some very powerful woman decided to hijack the entire trial to ensure that she got desired results. When the Leverage team caught on to this, they hijacked it their own way and turned the trial into a flat our feud between hijackers.

Other Noticed Things:

The commercials for this show were pretty much in line with all the previous episodes commercials, but there were a few things I noticed.

First of these, was that there seemed to be a great abundance of chocolate commercials, mostly for Hershey's, Dove, and M&M's . I'm not sure if this is because Valentines is right around the corner possibly, or perhaps the average TNT user likes chocolate a lot... I guess next week will tell since Valentines day will be over.

Next, I noticed a new commercial for another TNT original content show called "Saving Grace". This is a show that TNT has already had some success with, and I'm guessing will be taking Leverage's Tuesday-slot when it's season ends in 2 weeks.

As far as product placement goes, I didn't really notice any of it in this episode, but will continue looking for it in the future.

Cast Member Highlight- Timothy Hutton

Due to the lack of news coming out about the show "Leverage" I decided it might be fun to highlight a member of the show's cast each week with a short bio and my opinion on them.

So... Who better to start off with than the main reason I chose this show to blog on, Timothy Hutton. As I mentioned before, Mr. Hutton won an Oscar almost 30 years ago for the 1980 film Ordinary People. This also made him the youngest male actor (age 20) to win an academy award. Ordinary People is one of the 2 films I think that have had the biggest effect on me as a person. And although it's a rather depressing movie, It's something that for some reason gives me a ray of hope whenever I'm feeling down. This film, is what began Hutton's real career, as it was his first feature film role.

However, since this film, Hutton has somehow managed to stay out of the limelight. It's reported that this is something he desired, as he turned down staring roles in hit films like "Risky Business" and preferred to take lesser roles in smaller films and television shows.

Right now, besides continuing his work on "Leverage" and a few smaller roles in upcoming movie, Hutton spends his time just living with his wife, actress Aurore Giscard d'Estaing and two kids.

More News Associated with Tnt/Leverage...

I must admit, that before I started watching the show "Leverage" on TNT (and tv itself since this is absolutely the only TV I watch at the moment) I had always thought that TNT was a station that played nothing but reruns of "Charmed". I mean it seemed like every time I flipped to the station, that's what was on.
However, little did I know, that TNT actually had some extremely successful original content (Closer, the networks most popular show staring Kyra Sedgwick, was the number one show on cable last week). With the success of its original content, it seems TNT is hoping to get more.

With that being said, the renewal of "Leverage" has become TNT's latest move in what is said to be an aggressive plan to ramp up its production of original content. The network hopes to make 60% of its primtime lineup original content by the year 2010. TNT is making great progress on this, as it also recently greenlighted the production of 2 new shows: "Time Heals", a medical drama starring Jada Pinkett Smith, and a police drama called "The Line", starring Dylan McDermott.

Latest Episode Viewing

Unfortunately, there has been little news coming out about the show "Leverage" since it got picked up for it's second season last week. But.. there was a show this past week, which means I owe you all at least one update today.

Brief Summary:

Last weeks show was interesting because it stepped aside from the typical action/suspense plot that the show normally had and took a more dramatic route, focusing greatly on different personal problems the main characters have developed over the course of the show's season. In this episode, the main characters all went to rehab in order to con a man into telling them where some missing money was. This whole set up, was the perfect opportunity for the main character, played by Timothy Hutton to face his alcohol problem that has been driving the rest of the team nuts in the past few episodes.

The episode was open-ended as to whether this problem was resolved or not, so I guess we'll have to wait till the next episode to find out...

Interesting things I noticed:

The commercials during this episode were in general the same as the commercials for all the previous episodes that I've watched. Mostly just the network self-promoting it's other original content. However, I did also notice it promoting reruns of the show "bones" which it must have bought.

However, the most interesting thing I noticed in this episode that I failed to notice in any other previous episodes was product placement. There were a couple commercials during the show that said "this episode of leverage is brought to you by... (Hyundai Genesis being one and a touch screen computer being the other)" Both of these products were featured in the show itself almost immediately after the commercial aired with big logo's so that you for sure knew what that product was.

I'll be back later with more news when I can find it~

Picked up For New Season

On Monday (yesterday) it was announced that "Leverage" will be picked up for a second season, and 15 new episodes were ordered to be made and put on air later this year. In an article I found that included the announcement, there were also many statistics stating how the show has been doing ratings wise. I was very surprised to see that it has been doing so good.

Supposedly, "Leverage" has constantly been ranked as pay-cable's number 1 program during its time slot on Tuesdays. It's December premiere, as I mentioned in an early post captured an audience of 5.6 million viewers, while the rest of the seasons episodes have averaged 3.2 million viewers each so far.

According to Beth Riesgraf, an actress on the show, the show's incredible success may be due to the fact that "it's a fun show that really anybody can watch; it makes people think about [the corporate malfeasance] happening in the world today, and there's something satisfying about seeing the bad guys get messed with while the good guys are helped for once."

For more information on the renewal of the show, and the complete article listing it's statistics you can go Here

Latest Episode Chit Chat

While the most recently aired episode of "Leverage" aired almost a week ago, it has still be fresh on my mind since seeing it. This time I actually got to watch it when it aired.

Besides the show itself, I noticed many different things going on while watching. Many of the commercials seemed to be promotions for 2 other shows on the network in particular. One, a new show called "Trust Me" which seems to be about two friends who work together as creative partners at a top-ranked Chicago ad agency (something that might be interesting to watch as pertaining to programming). And the other, TnT's hit drama (going on it's fourth season), The Closer. One thing I found interesting about this show's information was the fact that it's season finale this past September drew in 10 million viewers, supposedly a new cable record?
Other than the promotion of these new shows, the majority of the other advertisements were for Hyundai cars, and some different insurance providers.

The show itself, I seem to have taken a liking to, after watching this past episode I decided to download and watch all the previous episodes I had missed (I think it was about 8).