Pilot episodes have a big job to do, involving viewers with the characters, themes and stories of their particular world. I’ve built up a modest collection of DVD box sets for the first seasons of American shows, and plan to write about their debut episodes.

If you were going to pitch Burn Notice for British tv, the obvious way would be to say that it’s ‘Spooks meets Hustle‘. That is, it combines the espionage drama of the former with the geezery jokiness of the latter. Dig a little further and you’ll realise that, in terms of tone and technique, it borrows from one of my favourite shows when I was a kid — The Rockford Files.

The similarity kicks in early with a laconic voiceover as intelligence operative Michael Westen has a bad time in a well-realised Nigeria (a few market stalls and lots of colourful cloth work wonders, seriously). He’s there to pay a bad guy not to blow up an oil terminal, and is just arranging the financial transaction when he discovers he’s the subject of a burn notice. That is, he’s been fired, and no longer has access to the intelligence community resources he was able to call on. That said, he’s still a resourceful sort, and manages — after taking out a couple of goons and borrowing a motorbike for a chase sequence — to fly back to Miami in something like one piece.

There’s an interesting mix of reality with glitz and tits when the action shifts to Florida, and I’m not sure it’s entirely successful. And I suspect the reason is because of the tension between the different forces involved in crafting the pilot. There’s a solid story here, but just to make sure the viewers aren’t tempted to turn over, the show is packed with images of babes in bikinis, and redundant use of stopframe and fancily processed imagery should, god forbid, the audience be unable to bear 60 seconds of tradecraft voiceover without hip hop beats and slick edits.

For all that, Burn Notice is a strong show, and one I will continue to watch. The problems are minor and understandable given the unforgiving market for new television. And there’s plenty to relish. Michael Westen is an intriguing protagonist, who shares some of the familiar issues of the pop fiction spy, but also has a domineering mama who manages to track him down more easily than Mossad. There’s humour there for sure — being tailed while you’re giving your mum a lift to hospital pretty much defines entertainment — but also a rich vein for writing that could serve well to explore what really makes Westen tick.

There’s an intriguing supporting cast too, with Michael having an Irish ex who there seems to be unresolved issues with, and a former trainee who provides him with his first job, looking into the disappearance of some artwork and jewellery from a property developer’s mansion. Add a landlord who’s a former Georgian minister of culture hoping that Michael will clean up his nightclub’s drug problem, and a washed-up friend who reckons ‘tanning is an art and a science’, and you’ve got a rich mix of characters I want to know more about.

The whole package reminds me of Steely Dan — breezy jazz tunes that are easy on the ear but smuggle in sordid stories in the lyrics. Show creator Matt Nix, who wrote the pilot, has crafted something sly and witty here, and I’ll be coming back for more. Fingers crossed, the focus will be more on Michael’s complicated situation as the series goes on, and less about the surface glamour of Miami. One thing I think we can all agree on is that the 21st century doesn’t deserve a Miami Vice comeback, as the Michael Mann film sadly demonstrated.