Legends

[Martin's] got his own troubles, and at least up front they make for some engaging television.

Legends, which is based on a novel by Robert Littell and produced by a team that includes "Homeland" veterans Howard Gordon and Alexander Cary, has an unusual sense of melancholy, which seems to emanate from Bean's soulful performance.

In the early going, the series works best as sort of a modern-day “Mission: Impossible,” and could actually use more of that show’s caper elements.

When it isn't outlandish, it has a more seriously entertaining side in the mystery of a hooded man who was mortally wounded while trying to tell Martin that even his identity as Martin is not real.

The 10-episode series, based on a book by Robert Littell and premiering Wednesday, has been constructed as a wide and solid if somewhat workmanlike platform for the British actor's considerable talents.

It’s a pleasure to watch Bean fall into his “legends,” or fake identities, even as the show pushes the boundaries of what TV audiences might accept when it comes to instantaneous computer heroics.

It's all a fairly standard spy-thriller template, but the cast and crew give Legends an edge. Trust Howard Gordon ("Homeland," "24") and company to devise a well-plotted mystery.

Legends is too pockmarked with standard issue dialogue and situations to merit any awards for the series as a whole. But Bean, who this time is assured of staying vertical, might have enough pop in his performance to break on through.

The high concept is poorly served by a conventional, lazily executed case-of-the-week structure. The show is exec-produced by Howard Gordon of 24 and Homeland fame, and if only he had brought his A game the way his star brought his, Legends could be more memorable.

He may not even know his real identity, which is what makes him so good at taking on imaginary aliases. From there, the show seems a bit predictably structured, but Bean lends a strong and complex presence to the idea.

[Bean's] nearly the only reason to watch this retread mashup of team-based crime/spy shows and the "Bourne" films.

Maybe Legends will get better, but if TNT expects Bean to carry this show, they’re going to have to give him better villains and better back-up support.

It's no fault of Bean's, who is riveting as he occasionally morphs into character before his colleagues' amazed eyes. The rest of the series could use a personality transplant.

If you can get past the clichéd writing and appreciate Legends as a force of sheer cast magnetism and hyperactive camera tricks, it’s a solid distraction from the problems of the real world.

Darker and less escapist than TNT’s other new summer entry, “The Last Ship,” Legends offers a down-and-dirty hero with rough edges but surrounds him with a cadre of cleaner, less sullied colleagues, making for somewhat of a tonal mish-mash.

To its credit, Legends goes a bit beyond the expected stings, as a shadowy figure prompts Martin to doubt everything he knows and question whom he can trust. For the most part, though, almost everything here feels culled from earlier variations on this theme.

The outlook for his head and neck here is much better; Legends, though, is on wobbly legs.

And yet, after watching the first two episodes, it's a shame that Legends (and TNT) weren't a bit more ambitious with the show. The pilot is splashy and action-packed, but overall the lack of complexity--and yes, I know I cited that as a plus earlier--makes it less satisfying.

The show is off to a rocky start, but there's the chance each week that it might redeem itself because a well-tailored script could rectify most of its issues.

The story sort of has a “Bourne Identity” element to it. The pilot is an eye-roller, with the main storyline featuring Bean infiltrating a survivalist camp.

The potential of that longer story arc, as well as having Bean back on screen with his head reattached to his torso, may be enough to make Legends work despite the familiarity of that crime-solving-team template.

Legends wants you to take it very seriously, but throughout the two episodes I've seen, it plays like a parody of the kind of show it wants to be.

Legends makes a grand show of setting up a tortuous, vaguely Don Draper–like interior journey for our lone-wolf hero--in the pilot, he's stalked by a shadowy figure who intimates that Martin doesn't know all there is to know about his true self--but the character is such a pile of overworked cop-show and spy-show elements (he's in too deep, he's a cranky and sarcastic maverick who resents authority, his work destroyed his marriage, etc.), that there's not much to him beyond the charisma that Bean naturally brings.

The show could have been a fascinating dissection of self and Bean’s performance could have been tied to something expansive. But Legends is knee-deep at best, relying on feeble plots of the week and high-tech wizardry that borders on the unintentionally comic. The supporting cast is as shallow as Bean is deep.

Presumably Legends is meant to seem more serious than those shows ["Rizzoli & Isles" and "Major Crimes"] and skew more male in its viewership, but it succeeds only in being more mechanical, predictable and thin.