The Listener is absolute Drenn.

[Guy Gardener]

Imagine 24 if Jack Baur got all the honest answers he asked for by just being pleasant and persisting with a charming smile, imagine Psych without the Humor or the Mentalist without the clever savvy or any of these shows with out a drip of sexiness?

That's the Listener.

What if Mat Parkman had his own show?

Although, we don't like Parkman because he's a teep, we like him because he's tuns of fun over weight with the IQ of a shaved baboon but still gets gorgeous girlfriends and wives. He gives the worst of us a little hope.

Until I realized how derivative this show was, about what it was borrowing and where it was borrowing from, I had no idea why this was a TV show. A paramedic who off duty solves crimes by reading minds. What the fuck? His entire recycled plot is that he walks into a situation of every bad cop drama ever made but instantly knows whodunnit and how but has to drip feed the information to the authorities so that he doesn't get accused of being an accessory without a lick of sweat of effort?

Sounds like a bully to me, picking on the mundanes.

No tension no twists or turns. No flavour.

bah humbug.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

Charlie Brooker agrees with you

From Screen Burn

...
The Listener isn't a very good example of a high-quality American import. Mainly because it's Canadian, but more importantly because it's rubbish. In fact even the title is rubbish. You know why it's called The Listener? Because the main character listens to things.
OK, so they're not common-or-garden things. He listens to people's thoughts. He's telepathic, just like the chubby Keanu Reeves-lookalike policeman in Heroes. That's actually a fairly interesting premise, so why pick the most boring title imaginable? It's like creating a Superman series and calling it The Flyer.
Anyway, The Listener himself is a paramedic called Toby. And this is the next disappointment; he's a massive puss. He looks like a cross between Frodo Baggins and the mono-browed teenage pie-full-of-twat who used to star in the 1989 Yellow Pages commercial about the kid who needed a French polisher to fix a scratch on a coffee table following an early example of a Skins party in his parents' house. Apparently Toby's been a telepath since birth, which is odd, because each time he hears a thought dribbling out of someone's skull he pulls a confused face, as though it's never happened before. I call it a "confused face": actually he just looks gormless, as if he's about to start going "buhhhhh" and bumping into the scenery. It's like he's trying to impersonate a stupid dog being amazed by its own bowel movements.
His powers aren't even particularly impressive. For one thing, he can't hear everything, only just enough stuff for the writers to be able to move the plot along a few notches. In the first episode, he's trying to find out where a bad guy has hidden a kidnapped woman and her kiddywink, yet despite standing RIGHT NEXT TO HIM several times, he doesn't pick up anything, thereby forcing him to break into said bad guy's house later to look for clues. For all the good his powers do him, he might as well be pulling fortune cookie predictions from his arse and following their instructions to the letter. That would pull in 20 times more viewers, even if they stuck to their literal-titling policy and called it The Adventures Of Magic Bum Man.
Anyway, 99% of the stuff he does manage to hear (when the screenwriters let him) consists of useless trivia. At one point he hears his boss thinking, "Man, I'm grumpy when I don't get to watch the wrestling", so he decides to cheer him up by offering to lend him a WWF video. It really is that exciting.
And wait! It gets even worse than that. The writers can't even decide exactly how his powers work, because sometimes he sees thoughts as well as hearing them. For instance, he "sees" the bad kidnappy guy in a vision at one point, which is why he recognises him when they cross paths later. That's not listening! That's looking! Why didn't they call it The Looker-And-Listener? These people are idiots.

 

[backstept]

chubby Keanu Reeves-lookalike

 

[cb31]

I've heard nothing good about this show yet, I think I'll have to skip it!

 

[Temis the Vorta]

They're ripping off Heroes! Peter Petrelli is already a (sometimes) psychic paramedic!!!!

Gawds, do they realize they're ripping off a show that's tanking? Great timing!

He's telepathic, just like the chubby Keanu Reeves-lookalike policeman in Heroes.

In what universe does Greg Grunberg look remotely like Keanu Reeves, even if he lost 50 lbs?

For one thing, he can't hear everything, only just enough stuff for the writers to be able to move the plot along a few notches.

They are DEFINITELY ripping off Heroes!

The writers can't even decide exactly how his powers work

NBC should sue for copyright infringement.

Hey, when things get boring, he can lose his powers for half a season. Or get amnesia. Or go evil. There's just so much they can do with this!

 

[Guy Gardener]

Oh. I forgot to mention how funny his "name" was.

Toby Logan.

As in Spider-Man/Wolverine.

The only thing I can possible think that might save this show is maybe something like...

"Toby, we're you're family and we want to take you back to Witch Mountain."

 

[Listener]

I kind of like the name.