Rainn Wilson plays an “overweight, offensive, and irascible” detective in “Backstrom,” a new Fox crime drama created and executive-produced by “Bones” creator Hart Hanson that makes Dwight Schrute look positively demure.
I think Wilson is actually an ingenious choice for this show since his deadpan style can be read as either comic or dramatic depending on how his character is framed. What remains to be seen is how this “irascible” detective really differs from Kojak or Columbo or Sherlock or the other irascible investigators of yore. When Backstrom sips that iced coffee, he gives off such Kojak lollipop realness that my instinct is to book Rainn Wilson on a 1977 episode of “Battle of the Network Stars.”
It may be a crime procedural, but it seems some of the comic relief on “Backstrom” could actually be very funny. I'm in.