As the 2010s hit, high-concept TV series quickly swept in and began to replace formulaic procedurals and sitcoms with bigger-budget serialized stories. However, CBS somehow managed to land on the best of both worlds, with a TV series that was definitely high-concept and ambitious in scope, but was still digestible enough in pieces to appease CBS’s core audience.
On September 22, 2011, CBS premiered Person of Interest. The series one of the first TV projects from Jonathan Nolan, Chris Nolan’s brother and longtime collaborator, following their conclusion of The Dark Knight trilogy. The series quickly became a hit, with Seasons 1-2 (released a year apart) rocketing through the ratings to make the show a weekly appointment viewing for anywhere from 12 – 14 million viewers. Person of Interest ended up running for a total of five seasons; viewership was declining by seasons 4 and 5, but was still fairly strong for a show that was aging into its fourth and fifth years on the air, with the Final Season averaging about 6 – 7 million viewers per episode. The series was a genre show, and never earned much in the way of Emmy nominations, but it did get consistently nominated (if not awarded) by various awards shows and organizations that focus on genre entertainment (IGN, People’s Choice Awards, the Creative Emmys, Saturn Awards… even the NAACP Image Awards).
In short, Person of Interest was one of the most successful early high-concept genre shows, which was able to run with the biggest of broadcast shows. It also opened the door for Jonathan Nolan to find his lane as a TV creator, while Chris Nolan continued his growth and evolution as a feature filmmaker. After Person of Interest ended in 2016, Jonathan Nolan moved on to do HBO’s Westworld with his collaborator/wife Lisa Joy. After Westworld ran from 2016 – 2022, Nolan and Joy moved on to executive-produce Amazon Prime Video’s Fallout TV show (which premiered in 2024 and is headed for Season 3), based on the popular game series. Obviously, things worked out for Jonathan Nolan, but in another world, Person of Interest could’ve carried him longer than it did.
If you don’t know what it’s about, Person of Interest follows a reclusive billionaire tech guy who goes by the alias “Harold Finch” (Michael Emerson). Finch develops a cutting-edge computer program for the government (“The Machine”) that can rapidly correlate all kinds of data to predict potential terrorist attacks and identify the likely culprits, before they can strike. Since Finch is not active in the field, he recruits former special forces operative-turned-CIA-agent John Reese (Jim Caviezel) to be his field agent. The pair embark on a mission to locate and neutralize threats The Machine identifies, even when the government doesn’t deem them worthy, or doesn’t want to intervene, for one shady reason or another.
Person of Interest was ahead of its time. The series wrestled with moral and ethical questions, on both the personal and the socio-political levels, at a time when technology was on the verge of rapidly changing the world (social media, digital clouds, drone warfare, smartphones, advanced surveillance tech, etc.). Looking back at it now, the topics of terrorism and authoritarianism seem much more complicated and layered, now that we’re living in a world where digital surveillance and data is being exploited (if not weaponized) in frightening ways. It’s a sign that Nolan and co. were on the pulse, if time is only proving them right (and it is).
The cast of Person of Interest is also a big reason why the show was so successful. If Jim Caviezel only has this series and his portrayal of Jesus Chris in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, he still has one of the more impressive TV/film runs out there. Michael Emerson became a breakout actor playing one of the main villains of ABC’s LOST; Person of Interest solidified Emerson as one of the best character actors in TV, and cemented his relationship with CBS, with the network tapping him to be the villain in the supernatural procedural series Evil, which ran from 2021 to 2024. Taraji P. Henson paused her breakout film career (Hustle & Flow, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Smokin’ Aces) to return to television, playing an NYPD detective who begins to zero in on Reese and Finch’s operation. Joss Whedon alumna Amy Acker continued her fan-favored run as a “Root,” a hacker who becomes obsessed with The Machine. Rounding out the cast was Sarah Shahi (The Rookie, Sex/Life, Paradise), who joined the cast in Season 2 as a covert operative/assassin.
Person of Interest is a rare mix of sci-fi, action, and a policing/espionage procedural. If you haven’t checked it out yet, you’re sleeping on one of the best sci-fi shows of the 2010s, which is only looking better with age. You can stream it on Paramount+.
