The Guilty Pleasure of STRIKE BACK

I have to confess that I have gotten hooked on the Cinemax series Strike Back. It is all very well and good to promote all of the imaginative work that goes into both drama and documentary work when it comes to original material from HBO, but I have to believe that Strike Back is committed to not taking itself seriously. It thus emerges as the reductio ad absurdum of action narratives based on the buddy genre. It is a bit like Lethal Weapon in that it discovered that its strength resided in its ability not to take itself seriously. However, it made that discovery sooner than Lethal Weapon did; so the question will be whether it has more staying power. The second series managed to slip from my attention, but I have been able to catch up with it through the Comcast On Demand service. That should position me to then move into the third series with a relatively smooth transition. There is a lot to be said for self-parody when so much of what is happening in the real world would also be taken as self-parody by a detached observer.