The first time I saw Jeff Goldblum it was on the short-lived TV series Tenspeed and Brown Shoe. I was reminded of that program when I was watching two new shows on NBC’s Must-See Thursday-night lineup: Andy Richter's Andy Barker PI and Jeff Goldblum’s Raines. The latter has elements of Monk, Medium, and Tenspeed and Brown Shoe.
Jeff Goldblum stars as the eccentric LAPD Detective Michael Raines who like Monk is obsessive and has not been the same since suffering a traumatic event. After recuperating from being shot in the line of duty, Raines returns to work but now he has begun to see murder victim Sandy Boudreau (Alexa Davalos) as a vision. Like Medium, Raines talks to the victim except this vision is a figment of his imagination not a ghost. The vision starts out as two-dimensional character and as Raines learns more about her she develops more layers. When Raines finds her killer she will disappear.
The only person Raines confides in is his former partner, Charlie Lincoln (Malik Yoba). Like Jeff Goldblum’s character Lionel Whitney from Tenspeed and Brown Shoe, Raines speaks to the audience through a noir-style voice over complete with sax music in the background. Raines also shares Lionel Whitney's love for detective novels. He even considered writing a novel himself but becoming a police officer got in the way. He found out that the images he had in his head weren’t like real life.
I always find it amusing when fictional TV cop/detectives make it known that they are real unlike the fake cop/detectives on TV, in the movies, or in pulp novels. This show makes the distinction between Raines' "real world" and the world of his pulp heroes Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and Ross Macdonald but it does so with great reverence.
Article comments