2008 Summer TV Preview: In Plain Sight

In Plain Sight - Season 1

Premieres: Sunday, June 1, 2008 at 10:00 p.m. EST

Network: USA

Creator(s): David Maples and Paul Stupin

Starring: Mary McCormack, Frederick Weller, Lesley Ann Warren, Nichole Hiltz

Website: USANetwork.com

In Plain Sight is a new USA series, which centers on Mary Shannon (Mary McCormack), a U.S. Marshal who works with the Federal Witness Protection program. Her job is to manage and protect the people in hiding. These people include career criminals, thieves, murderers as well as innocents who were unfortunate enough to have witnessed a crime and now need to abandon their old lives and go into hiding. Mary Shannon’s job is to look after these people and make sure they stay alive and well hidden.

As part of the nature of her job involves secrecy, Mary isn’t able to tell her friends or family exactly what she does for a living. This adds a whole new layer of complication to Mary’s personal and professional life. Among the people in her life are her co-dependent mom, Jinx (Lesley Ann Warren) and sister Brandi (Nichole Hiltz). As their lives are fairly messy due to their own personal issues, Mary has to manage dealing with them, keeping her work a secret and trying to maintain a relationship with her on-again-off-again boyfriend Raphael (Cristián de la Fuente)). Finally, Mary has her partner Marshall Mann (Fred Weller). I’m assuming his name is actually Marshall since it’s listed with two L’s but I guess that makes him Marshal Marshall Mann, which is just weird and hopefully won’t go unaddressed in the pilot.

Few things go together as well as summertime and USA series. Maybe it’s due to the summer months generally giving us more excuses to get away from the TV, which makes for a better time of year to get involved with lighter shows or perhaps it’s just because I’ve grown accustomed to so many of USA’s series airing during the warmer-weather months (Monk, Psych, Burn Notice). Regardless, I’m really looking forward to this show.

The premise is interesting enough and with the whole Witness Protection thing, there are virtually endless possibilities for Mary Shannon’s character in terms of the people she’s assigned to protect. Plus from the promos (below) it looks like there's a serious, action/thriller side to the show, mostly pertaining to Mary's work and then a somewhat lighter side, having to do with her family and personal life that could offset the drama and keep the series from being too dark. USA seems to thrive off series that are both funny and occasionally serious without being too heavy. In that respect, In Plain Sight looks like it’ll fit right in on the network.

For the full 2008 Summer TV Premiere Schedule: CLICK HERE

Here’s some previews:

Click here for information on how to enter our In Plain Sight giveaway!

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