Telepathic detective

Let the lead characters of shows such as The Mentalist, Lie to Me and House try to figure out what people are thinking through fancy-pants analysis of personal tics.

Toby Logan (Craig Olejnik) of The Listener does it the old-fashioned way - through telepathy.

Much like Sookie Stackhouse on True Blood, Toby has spent much of his young life attempting to control the cacophony of other people's thoughts that crowd, uninvited, into his head.

Unlike Sookie, who has so had it with her gift that she is dating a vampire (because he keeps his thoughts to himself), Toby has decided to use his for good.

In TV parlance, this means the solving of crime, with which, as a paramedic-in-training, he just happens to come into daily contact.

It's a promising enough premise, if a bit silly, but it becomes very muddy, very fast.

First of all, Olejnik, who is almost laughably handsome, has really big blue eyes that creator Michael Amo clearly thinks convey that Something Strange and Important is going on behind them.

The result is way too many static shots and close-ups in which Olejnik, through no fault of his own, looks like he is taking a moment to pose for a Paramedic of the Month calendar.

Then there's the whole telepathy issue.

The trouble with portraying people's inner thoughts on television, especially in a procedural, is that the people are always thinking amusing, expository or revelatory thoughts at just the right moment.

No-one's ever just thinking "omigod, I'm so fat" or engaging in life's most embarrassing moment reruns.

Also, and I don't claim to be an expert on such things, much of Toby's information comes through something that is not precisely telepathy and doesn't involve listening.

In the pilot and second episode, he has visions of things that are about to happen, which is precognition, and then receives incredibly detailed images from people when he touches them, which seems more like clairvoyance.

Still, I suppose there's no reason Toby can't be a bundle of psychic abilities that he keeps secret from everyone including his comic relief buddy Oz (Ennis Esmer) and his on-again, off-again girlfriend Olivia (Mylene Dinh-Robic).

In the pilot, a crash victim is hiding the fact that her son was kidnapped and in the second, a series of fires is, well, mysterious.

But in these early episodes, anyway, setting up the show's conceit seems so complicated, and those shots of Toby looking all faraway and psychic so crucial, that the A-plot lacks any sort of dramatic tension.

Toby, meanwhile, is much less interesting than you would think, though there is a flash or two of his past that seems promising.

But as all manner of Detectives With Something Extra must learn, for The Listener to succeed, the narrative, both the episodic and overarching, must be at least as vital and compelling as whatever back story or quirk is being used to make the formula fresh.

Perhaps that will come in subsequent episodes, but it isn't there yet.

• The Listener premieres on Monday at 9.30pm on Prime.

- Mary McNamara

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