"You are being watched. The government has a secret system, a machine, that spies on you every hour of every day.
I know because I built it. I designed the machine to detect acts of terror but it sees everything - violent crimes involving ordinary people ... people like you. Crimes the government considered irrelevant.
They wouldn't act so I decided I would but I needed a partner. Someone with the skills to intervene. Hunted by the authorities, we work in ssssecret. You will never find us. But victim or perpetrator ... if your number's up - we'll find you."
The thriller opening words to the new series Person of Interest that zones in on an ever-increasing fear: that someone somewhere's watching our every move.
JJ Abrams (creator of Lost, Fringe and Undercovers) is one of the executive producers and the show highlights the modern conflict between the need to see everything that people are doing and the need for privacy at the same time.
M-Net Series has confirmed that they've scooped the rights to it for a new year premiere - it starts on Thursday, 19 January at 20h30.
The story centres round John Reese, played by
Jim Caviezel who makes his comeback after being quiet for ages. I haven't seen him headline anything since the Passion of the Christ - obviously got stereotyped after all the hype of the movie.
Reese is an ex-CIA agent (of course) who's reportedly dead - which is how he wants it. He's suffered a personal tragedy and wants to escape life.
Enter Billionairre Mr Finch and Reese finds new purpose as Finch's muscle and partner, which he manages to pull off brilliantly. I never imagined he could be an action star but as you'll see from the trailer, he's perfect - and huge.
Lost's Michael Emerson plays Finch, a dude with a limp who speaks the cool opening words. He's developed a machine that can gather every bit of info on people. The machine watches, calculates and spits out numbers of people of interest.
They're either people who're about to do something that's going to result in someone else's death or it's them who's going to die. Finch and Reese never know.
All they can do is watch closely to work out which way things are going to go and then they intervene to try to change the course of the tragedy.
I've spied on the first few episodes and found it an intriguing take on the concept of what a frenemy technology can be. Here's a behind-the-scenes first look at it, with bits and pieces by the cast and producers too ... see what you think:
Flash fact
The titles stay the same for each episode but with one change: the person of interest in the episode gets zoomed in on for a moment as the regular credits surround them.
My fave line in the trailer:
"I think it's a really interesting meeting of science fiction that really isn't science fiction anymore - it's actually fact."