Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders

CBS has wisely cast familiar faces in key roles, which gives the show a leg up given that the characters can barely pass for one-­dimensional.... There’s something comforting about the fantasy of a government task force leaping to your aid hours after a vacation takes a detour to hell.

No doubt plenty of people will be able to ease into the show’s groove thanks to its workmanlike adherence to the franchise’s established and efficient structure, but anyone unmoved by procedural formula won’t find much excuse to go beyond their already established borders.

Beyond Borders, like its predecessors, is by no description a good show, but you can see the warm-bath appeal of its consistency and the insidious way in which it combines splatter-film scare tactics with pop-psychology platitudes and affirmations.

The last thing we need as viewers is any show this terrible, scary or not.

In other words, more of the same, with the added twist that all the victims are American and all (or most) of the criminals are not.... Imagine the situation reversed--a show in which tourists to America were continually victimized in horrific ways--and you see the problem.

Logistically, the producers get some credit for approximating all these far-away locales. But any ingenuity pretty much ends there, and Sinise’s character is so gruff and gravely as to make David Caruso’s old “CSI” role look emotionally effusive.

Moving on from the prevalent misogyny of the original Criminal Minds, CBS' new spinoff Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders is a pure distillation of xenophobia. A shameless combination of international b-roll and Trump Era paranoia.