What you’ll see is the best broadcast TV cop drama of the season, with a dirty-to-the-touch sleuth played to the hilt by an actor who’s very much up for this.

Viewers may be attracted to Backstrom because of its charming supporting players as much as its abrasive hero. The whole thing grew on me in the course of three episodes provided for preview.

The climax is predictable, but the epilogue is not anything you’d find on a CBS procedural and suggests how good this show and Wilson could be.

Shepherded along by “Bones’” Hart Hanson, this is the sort of meat-and-potatoes drama that doesn’t feel distinctive enough to do much more than tread water on Fox, even with “American Idol’s” kick-start.

Backstrom isn't edgy; he's a formulaic anti-hero with too much emphasis on the anti- and very little evidence of the hero.

Wilson plays the disenchanted slob well. But it’s not long before the politically incorrect insults and Backstrom’s general misanthropy start to lose their impact, and the cop stuff feels formulaic enough that there seems little reason to hop aboard his train.

This is one of those shows where one starts to feel bad for the ensemble, as they trudge through bad scripts, doing all they can to elevate it but sinking into the generic quicksand as Wilson over-acts his way into cancellation.

Rainn Wilson is hilarious in this comedy drama. His character is part Columbo and House. The show is not predictable like many other crime shows on t.v. today. I'm hooked!!!

Eh, haven't really made up my mind on this one yet. I guess he's the new "House" character on FOX. The rest of the characters are good, love Dennis Haysburt.

Backstroke is a detective ,and the show is trying to give a new format with weird and smart-ish detective by solving the cases through empathy....clearly we haven't seen that before....This show needs to get better cause is getting uninteresting by the second, they try to copy HOUSE M.D. And give a complex character through beeing rude and quorkie and having a deep down empathy for people through apathy, **** guessed it House **** you liked house watch the show its his distent cousin , but in the long run its not original, and the cases are getting boring by the episode.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

I was really hoping that I'd like this one, but it's so tonally inconsistent, terribly written, and dull. The pilot episode tried to juggle painfully unfunny jokes with uninteresting cop drama. The jokes themselves feel so forced so that it can remind the audience that this guy is your "totally relatable and silly anti-hero". Even if the insults and jives hit, Backstrom himself is just a formulaic anti-hero. I can't see this show getting a second season unless there are HUGE turnarounds.