For a show named The Unit there was a decided lack of childish joke fodder. The Unit, on CBS, follows a team of US super-secret Ranger Special Forces who fight terror around the world while maintaining a cover in their Stepford-styled on base suburbia.

The show is the brain child of producers David Mamet, whose credits include Wag the Dog (screenplay) and Spartan (wrote and directed); and Shawn Ryan (who wrote for the acclaimed FX show The Shield. The Unit offers definite potential to replace the void left by Alias when it stopped being interesting two years ago. To do this however it will have to overcome some clichés and push the limits of the genre.

Dennis Haysbert, best known for his role as President Palmer in Fox's 24, plays the confident and matter-of-fact Jonas Blane, leader of the unit. Joining Haysbert is some serious firepower in the form of the T-1000, known to his friends as Robert Patrick, and a less intimidating Scott Foley as the newbie Bob Brown.

The first episode focused on the team's assault on a hijacked airliner. Arab, of course, terrorists captured a European trade delegation and landed in the middle of Idaho. The "unit" then works their magic and storms the plane, miraculously saving everyone on board. Back on base, Bob's wife, played by Audrey Marie Anderson, was having issues with the housing and secretive nature of "The Unit" and their high-pressure welcome wagon. This, more than anything, struck me as unrealistic. To believe that Brown would move his family and take a new highly dangerous job without telling his wife what he was doing is questionable at best, and absurd at worst. Sounds like you've seen it before? You have. And that's the problem with this show so far. The first episode should be gripping and intense, but instead it all came too easily for the characters by relying on worn out clichés. The threat of terrorism offers the entertainment industry the opportunity to address these subjects in a new and entertaining, if not meaningful, way. The Unit has yet to test these new powers.

The pieces are there to make this a compelling story, complete with a cheating wife angle, but it's all too prefect right now. These are supposed to be the tough Special Forces let them get their hands dirty. I'll be watching it next week but I don't know for how much longer if it fails to move beyond familiar and clichéd territory.