Instinct series premiere review: Is Alan Cumming’s new CBS series a winner?

The Instinct series premiere has now officially come and gone, and we do feel rather confident in terms of some of our feelings about it. If you are looking for a smart, charming crime procedural about a professor and a police detective becoming unlikely partners, this show is right up your alley. Is it going to do much for people who don’t care for the genre? Probably not, but it feels as though it could be a great compliment to an Elementary or some of the other mystery series that CBS has on the air.

Alan Cumming stars on Instinct as Dr. Dylan Reinhart, a professor who is known for studying behavior patterns and is very good at it. He’s so good, in fact, that he ends up getting a visit from Detective Lizzie Needham (Bojana Novakovic), who determines that she could use his help on a case. At first, she plays it cool when it comes to how much she knows about him, but over time she eventually reveals that she’s quite the super-fan and she’s really excited about the opportunity to be able to work with him further.

However, as it turns out Lizzie has a difficult past of her own — her late partner/lover was killed a year ago, and her dog is one of the only connections to him that she has left. Is this somewhat of a cop-show cliche? Absolutely, but thankfully executive producer Michael Rauch (Royal Pains) was wise in circumventing the classic will-they-or-won’t-they dilemma for cop shows. Dr. Reinhart is openly gay and happily married; it’s not a huge component to the show but it doesn’t need to be. It’s natural and that feels perfect.

In terms of the pacing Instinct plays out precisely how you would imagine in terms of the case building up steam over the course of the hour until the eventual murderer is found — someone with an implicit knowledge of Dr. Reinhart’s work. Lizzie ends up getting shot, which leads to Dylan using some of his training from his time with the military / CIA to help her. The two form a nice bond over the episode and eventually share a few fun conversations at the end of the episode. There’s no guarantee that they will continue working together, but we obviously know that they will.

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CarterMatt Verdict

Instinct delivered a very solid premiere that had some humor and a good mystery; beyond that, it did a wonderful job establishing its main characters and the world they live in. We could’ve used more Naveen Andrews, but this show overall did enough that was different from classic cop shows to hold our interest. Plus, we know from Royal Pains that Rauch has a real talent for building out characters and worlds over time. Hopefully viewers watch and support, and this series becomes more than just a footnote because of having a groundbreaking LGBT lead.

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