Try to get yourself on the blacklist

James Spader as Raymond Reddington and Megan Boone as Elizabeth Keen

There’s a new crime drama on cable these days, and no, it doesn’t involve forensics or procedural nitty-gritty. “The Blacklist” has been compared to the film “The Silence of the Lambs” – what with a female FBI agent and an enigmatic male sort of informant in their custody helping solve a crime – but its producers point out that while their female lead character Elizabeth “Liz” Keen (Megan Boone) initially starts out naïve like Clarice Starling from “Lambs,” their male lead, Raymond “Red” Reddington (James Spader), isn’t a psychopath, or a cannibal for that matter. In fact, they describe the show more as a journey of discovery for both the characters.

Spader notes, “The basis of their relationship is very real. It’s clear, even from the pilot, there is a past between the two of them that she is not aware of; but he has an intimate knowledge of her past and her childhood.”

In the said pilot, “The Blacklist” jumps the gun on the thriller aspect of the show. Red is actually a former government agent that as eluded capture for decades and, suddenly, he’s right there at the FBI to surrender. He has an offer to help nail a terrorist, in fact. The catch: He only wants to work with Liz, a young FBI profiler on her first day of work.

The heart-pounding narrative continues with an action-packed abduction of a little girl, and ends with a mystery about Liz’s life revealed. It’s something that would make her question if the relationships in her life are real – as does her working with Red, who is obviously connected to her in ways she has yet to understand. All this uncertainty is definitely an ace for a show where none of the people are who they appear to be.

“The relationship between Red and my character is something that I asked the producer to keep secret from me, because Elizabeth doesn’t know,” Boone says. “So as long as Elizabeth doesn’t know, as long as the audience doesn’t know, I’m not going to know either. It’s good for me to keep the mystery – it’s a very important element.”

Of his character, Spader relates, “Reddington hits the streets, at a certain point; he has to work as an asset, and therefore, as an asset, he’s got to move freely in public and so on. So I think that (“Silence of the Lambs”) imagery will end fairly soon, you know.”

There is also a bit of dark humor to the show, something that Spader himself brought on to his role. “I saw that right from the start; I saw that the opportunity for that and… I like juxtaposition of drama and humor and I think humor plays well in crisis… I spoke to (executive producer) Jon Bokenkamp about it and he liked that.”

Whereas most police procedural dramas tend to focus on the job, “The Blacklist” trains its sight on the home front – on meeting these characters and knowing who they really are, on what’s happening there and the secrets people keep. So far it’s started out as an edge-of-your-seat thriller, and in untangling this web of mystery, the show promises to be gripping as it goes on.

“Anybody can be in that blacklist,” Spader says with a grin. “That’s the beauty of the show. It keeps the pressure on. If you’re not up to standard, you may end up in it.” You may not want that, but show’s list of viewers is what you really should be on.

“The Blacklist” pilot season airs regularly on Wednesdays at 10 p.m., first and exclusively on AXN.

Try to get yourself on the blacklist

Source: Mb.com.ph (October 14, 2013 at 08:00AM)

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