If you're looking for a procedural drama of a very different color, or even if you don't care for the procedural format, you might just fall in love with 'Person of Interest' (Thu., 9PM ET on CBS). It certainly had one of the stronger pilots in this new premiere week.

Jim Caviezel is brilliant as an emotionally haunted and physically menacing former government operative, while Michael Emerson captures much of the same genius that made Benjamin Linus a stand-out character on 'Lost,' but without the evil undertones.

The premiere did a great job of setting up the very simple premise. Mr. Finch (Emerson) built a machine after 9/11 that can predict who will be involved in criminal activities. The machine for the government's purposes isn't interested in smaller crimes, but it's these crimes that kept Finch up at night.

So he hacked into the system, and all he can retrieve is a social security number. That number leads to someone who's going to be involved in a violent crime, but it's unclear if they'll be the victim, the criminal or something else.

He recruits John Reese (Caviezel) to be his operative in trying to find out what's going to happen, and the prevent it. And with this guy, you're looking at much more of an action procedural than the traditional forensics and investigative variety that permeates network television.

Reese does some recruiting of his own, finding a reluctant participant in the dirty cop ring that he's investigating. In exchange for wiping the records of this guy's involvement, now he has an inside man in the NYPD.

The show did a smart thing, too, by having the first "person of interest" turn out to be the ringleader behind the upcoming violent crime, rather than the victim. Right there we see just how interesting a take on the format this is going to be.