Jeffrey Donovan Fans

How do you crash a party? Visit USA.com for the answer from Jeffrey himself.

One of the best aspects of this job is that, occasionally, you stumble across a pleasant surprise. You pop a show into the DVD player, not expecting much, and it turns out to be thoroughly engaging in a totally unexpected way.

That’s the case with the relatively unheralded “Burn Notice,” a spy thriller that debuts at 10 tonight on USA. The series is not great television by any means, but it has a kind of breezy charm and sly wit that make it one of this summer’s better new shows.

The lighter side of espionage has pretty much fallen by the wayside. Something about 9/11, secret C.I.A. prisons and the poisoning of former K.G.B. agents in Europe has cast a pall on spy spoofs.

And that’s why the casual irreverence of “Burn Notice” is a little
unsettling; the USA Network’s new series is a jaunty, tongue-in-cheek
drama about an American spy who gets kicked out into the cold.

In tonight’s premiere a wisecracking agent for hire named Michael
Westen (Jeffrey Donovan) recounts his covert intelligence work in a
cool, sarcastic voice-over, like that of a pulp-fiction private eye.
“Know what it’s like being a spy?” he asks. “It’s like sitting in your
dentist’s reception area 24 hours a day. You read magazines, sip coffee
and every so often someone tries to kill you.” Michael is in the middle
of a secret operation in Nigeria, bribing thuggish warlords to lay off
an oil field, when his employers inform him that he has a “burn notice”
in his file and is blacklisted.

Somewhere along the line, summer television forgot the true meaning of fun.

A short, simplistic, even childish word, but important. There’s a fun deficit going on in TV on these sunny days.

Plenty of people would vehemently disagree. Why, we’re a stone’s
throw away from fun on any given night. “America’s Got Talent” or “The
Next Best Thing” or any reality competition that a coma patient with
eyes half open can keep up with — if that’s not fun, what is it?

Wallpaper masquerading as primetime programming. Background noise.

NOW that the Cold War is over and hot spots are popping up all over the world, a spy could get burned if he’s not on his game every minute. That’s the premise behind “Burn Notice,” the surprisingly fun new series on USA that stars Jeffrey Donovan as Michael Westen, blacklisted spy extraordinaire.The show opens with a voiceover from Westen narrating the action as he nearly loses his life in Nigeria when he discovers that he’s no longer recognized by his agency. Amnesia a la Jason Bourne? Nah - burn notice a la the CIA.