~Beyond the Border~ > Sara's Audio-Visual Import-Overflow Retail
Person of Interest
NekoNekoRex:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvpYO8ldP-0
(paraphrased mostly from Wikipedia)
Person of Interest is an American Crime Drama created by Johnathan Nolan (Cowrote the Dark Knight movies), with J J Abrams (Directed The Force Awakens) as one of the Executive Producers. It's not your ordinary C.S.I., however.
Set in a modern-day New York, John Reese, a former Special Ops CIA Agent, is hired by mysterious billionaire Harold Finch. Finch has designed and maintains an Artificial Intelligence named The Machine.
The Machine has access to the entirety of New York's camera networks, its citizens' email accounts, cell phones, computers, etc. Essentially the NSA in AI form. Its primary purpose is to predict terrorist attacks, sending social security numbers of suspected terrorists to the government. However, a secondary purpose made by Harold uses the same predictive abilities to foresee violent crimes by ordinary people in New York.
It gives the SSID of the main subject of these violent crimes to Finch. Finch, John, and later in the series a few others, are tasked to use their own skills and technology to figure out the nature of the crime and prevent it from happening. Rather then work with police, they act as vigilantes - making them just as wanted as the perpetrators of crimes they stop, but also allowing them to be much more heavy-handed with their methods of saving lives and dealing with the various scum and villainy they encounter in the New York streets.
Being an American Drama, it has quite its share of explosions, gun play, and violence. However while the series starts with a rather episodic nature with the typical subjects of crime and corruption, it quickly picks up an extremely interesting storyline that deeply explores the nature of Artificial Intelligence, the modern debate of security versus privacy, and heavily references current events in the world of technology. It's highly divergent from regular crime drama in that the characters actively act to prevent crime, and not just react to crime happening.
Currently Person of Interest is airing its fifth and final season (the pilot of which aired tonight), but sadly CBS is trying to quickly rush it out with only 13 episodes and two episodes a week.
My friends online got me hooked on this series, so far I've watched every episode from the start to the latest episode, and I'd been eagerly awaiting the start of the current season (though saddened that its being ended and rushed out). Person of Interest is literally the only thing that will get me to turn on and pay attention to my cable television for anything that's not just boredom or passing interest in what my roommate is watching, which probably says a lot for how much I normally appreciate my television or anything airing on it.
While the fact I was actively watching it with friends was probably one of the major reasons I've stuck through with it, the fact the plot is extremely well-written and the subject matter is geared towards my interests played a much bigger role in the fact I've enjoyed it and can highly recommend it to other people to watch. While you nerds may scoff at a 'not anime' series, I recommend you give this one a try.
qMyon:
I don't usually watch many TV series, but this one was one I actually kept with for some time. The premise was interesting, and it was a pretty good watch overall. Nice to know at least it's getting an ending. Now I have to find someplace to watch it.
Nobu:
I got sucked into watching a bunch of episodes, including the first few, while visiting my parent's place. Can confirm this is a good series.
It's basically Snake and Otacon teamed up to do vigilante work in a major city, except replace Otacon's weebness with badassery.
NekoNekoRex:
I am super excited for this season though, I watched the pilot last night and I was on the edge of my seat the entire time. It was a really intense episode, I can only imagine it gets better from here.
It was pretty hard to choose a video that best fit the OP. I thought about using one of the trailers for the show but either they reveal way too much about the plot later on, or they don't reveal anything at all about the AI aspect.
The opening of the show is a really nice in-between though, but its surprisingly hard to find a decent upload of it on Youtube.
Jq1790:
For those with Netflix, this is a series they've been carrying; my mom has rather liked it and even I(someone who finds it REALLY hard to get into most non-anime, especially crime shows of most degrees[For example, Law & Order of any flavor is boring as HECK to me and does less than nothing anytime I run across it], though not to scoff-levels of dislike so much as simply not finding that attachment somehow) have been sucked in here and there.
Definitely agreeing with the recommendation to give it a try if any of the aforementioned things in the OP are even a little up your alley.