Leverage: Redemption, let’s do some good

Leverage: Redemption is a series for anyone who is tired of stories about rich people being cast as heroic. This series is about a group of criminals who force justice on the rich by making them pay for their misdeeds. Cheers to them!

Leverage: Redemption is based on the 2008 series Leverage. It has most of the previous cast intact, although Timothy Hutton as Nathan Ford is notably missing. The cast makes up for it by referring to dear Nate constantly.

The new series is a freevee original. Season 1 has 16 episodes and season 2 is approved. (You can also see the older Leverage on freevee.)

The show is about a team with a con artist, a thief, a hacker, and other previously criminal types. They are now out to help the little guys who get screwed over by the corporate power imbalance.

The women on the team are Sophie (Gina Bellman), Parker (Beth Riesgraf), and Breanna (Aleyse Shannon). Breanna is a hacker, trained by her foster brother Hardison (Aldis Hodge). Hardison is on the team but elsewhere for much of the season. Breanna is young and almost as good as her teacher. She makes a good replacement for Hardison and adds another woman to the team.

Christian Kane as Eliot and newcomer Harry (Noah Wyle) are the male part of the team for most of the episodes. Harry was once a lawyer for the corporations that polluted, destroyed, endangered, and got away with it. Now he’s trying to redeem himself by working against the people he formerly helped. The interesting thing about Harry’s decision is that as a lawyer representing corporations he never broke a single law. Everything he did was legal. But on the leverage team, he’s breaking the law all the time to get justice.

Excellent guest stars came and went depending on the story in each episode. One semi-regular character was a U.S. Marshall (Andrea Navedo) who was in a relationship with Eliot. Most of the storylines were about the planning and execution of the cons used on various bad guys. Not much personal life was developed for the characters, things were merely hinted at.

The series was set in New Orleans. The team lived and worked in a converted bar. The series was created by Chris Downey. Beth Riesgraf and Noah Wyle both got in on the directing action.

I really enjoyed the Robin Hood vibe of this series. I liked the ingenious ways the team worked their cons on the powerful people they brought down. The series had drama, action, and humor. We need more television about the rich being held to account for their greedy sins.