Leverage

A former insurance investigator turned fixer, Nathan Ford assembles a small crew of specialists to take on crooked corporations and corrupt officials who abuse ordinary people. Each episode pairs a clever con with a moral target, as the team scouts, plans, and pulls off elaborate schemes that look one way to the mark and another to the audience. The show balances heist mechanics with personal stakes, revealing pieces of the characters' pasts while keeping the focus on using illegal skills for a kind of rough justice. It stays episodic enough to be jump-in friendly, while recurring plot threads give longer arcs weight.

Leverage premiered in 2008 on TNT, created by John Rogers and Chris Downey. Timothy Hutton led a roster including Gina Bellman, Christian Kane, Beth Riesgraf, and Aldis Hodge, with episodes directed by various television veterans across its run.

The series wasn't a major awards magnet, though it did earn industry attention for its ensemble work and production values. It maintained steady recognition among cable dramas and drew praise from genre groups, without scoring big wins at the Emmys or Golden Globes.

Leverage built a devoted fanbase who appreciated its mix of humor and moral playbook, and it helped popularize modern television heist formats that emphasize character skill sets over lone masterminds. Its influence led to continued interest years after the original run, including a later revival that reunited much of the cast for new missions.

Critics and viewers tended to like the show's chemistry and inventive plots, and on fan-driven platforms it averages about 7.585/10 from 413 votes. Main themes include trust among flawed people, the ethics of illegal acts used to correct imbalance, and the creative application of expertise to outthink more powerful opponents. Episodes vary in tone, sometimes leaning more comic, sometimes more tense, but the cast's rapport keeps the series lively throughout.