Person of Interest ou Personne d’intérêt au Québec est une série télévisée américaine créée par Jonathan Nolan et produite par J. J. Abrams.

PERSON OF INTEREST est diffusée en simultané depuis le 22 septembre 2011 sur CBS aux États-Unis et sur Citytv pour les deux premières saisons, puis sur le réseau CTV au Canada.

En Belgique, la série est diffusée depuis le 28 août 2012 sur La Une, chaîne du groupe de la RTBF, au Québec, depuis le 5 septembre 2012 sur le réseau V, en France, depuis le 6 mars 2013 sur TF1 et en Suisse, depuis le 30 juin 2013 sur RTS Un.

La série est aussi rediffusée dans le cadre d’une syndication sur la chaîne du câble américaine WGN America et également sur Netflix États-Unis, depuis l’automne 2015.

Person of Interest  est souvent citée comme étant une des meilleures séries diffusées sur une grande chaîne américaine.

Les critiques soulignent entre autres la capacité que la série a à s’améliorer saison après saison, ses personnages très travaillés ou encore son ambiance réaliste d’une Amérique post-11 septembre.

Si la série est parfois désignée comme étant « la meilleure série de science-fiction actuellement diffusée », Person of Interest s’inscrit dans une thématique bien réelle, notamment depuis les révélations d’Edward Snowden sur la surveillance globale mise en place par les États-Unis, et soulève de nombreuses questions quant au respect de la vie privée. Elle a été nommée pour un Primetime Emmy Awards en 201211,  2012, 2013,2014.

John Reese, un ex-agent paramilitaire de la CIA présumé mort, est engagé par le mystérieux milliardaire Harold Finch. Dans le passé, ce dernier a conçu un système de surveillance de masse pour le gouvernement voulant éviter un nouveau 11 septembre. Le système est capable de prédire les actes terroristes dans le monde, en s’appuyant sur de nombreuses données comme les enregistrements des caméras de surveillance et des appels téléphoniques, ou les antécédents judiciaires.

Cependant, la Machine repère aussi les crimes entre citoyens ordinaires considérés comme mineurs par le gouvernement. Les autorités ayant décidé de ne pas tenir compte de ces données, Finch s’est laissé une porte de sortie et reçoit chaque jour les numéros de sécurité sociale des personnes impliquées à New York ou dans ses environs. C’est avec l’aide de Reese qu’il va tenter de retrouver ces « Persons of Interest » (trad. litt. : « Personnes d’intérêt ») et de découvrir si elles ont le rôle de victime ou de coupable dans l’affaire concernée.

Traqués par le lieutenant de police Jocelyn « Joss » Carter, ils sont aidés par un autre lieutenant, anciennement véreux, Lionel Fusco, qui leur fournit des informations et garde un œil sur sa collègue policière. Mais l’arrivée dans New York de deux justiciers va également contrarier plusieurs organisations criminelles.

Acteurs principaux

Jim Caviezel: John Reese

Michael Emerson: Harold Finch

Kevin Chapman: le lieutenant Lionel Fusco

Amy Acker: Samantha « Sam » Groves alias « Root » (invitée saison 1, récurrente saison 2, principale à partir de la saison 3)

Sarah Shahi : Sameen Shaw (récurrente saison 2 , principale à partir de la saison 3)

Person of Interest is an American science fiction crime drama television series created by Jonathan Nolan that premiered on September 22, 2011, on CBS.

It is produced by Nolan, alongside J.J. Abrams, Bryan Burk, and Greg Plageman. It stars Jim Caviezel as John Reese, a former CIA agent who is presumed dead.

He is approached by a mysterious billionaire named Harold Finch (Michael Emerson) who is trying to prevent violent crimes before they happen by using an advanced surveillance system dubbed “The Machine”, which turns out to have evolved into a sentient AI.

Their unique brand of vigilante justice attracts the attention of two NYPD officers, Jocelyn “Joss” Carter (Taraji P. Henson) and Lionel Fusco (Kevin Chapman), whom Reese uses to his advantage as he investigates persons of interest.

Reese and Finch are later aided by Samantha “Root” Groves (Amy Acker), a highly intelligent computer hacker and contract killer whom the Machine later identifies as its “analog interface”, and Sameen Shaw (Sarah Shahi), a former ISA assassin who unknowingly dealt with the “relevant” numbers found by the Machine.

From season 3, the series sees the advent of a new rival AI called “Samaritan”, which is brought into existence by Decima Technologies. Much of season 4 is centered on the struggle between the two competing AIs and their human agents.

The series was renewed for a fifth season to debut mid-season during the 2015–16 television season.

The fifth season, which consists of 13 episodes, is expected to premiere in spring 2016.

CBS has yet to announce whether it is the final season or not, although the writers have written it as a final season.

The series has received generally positive reception from critics, including an increase in acclaim when the series introduced more serialized storylines and its exploration of artificial intelligence.

John Reese, a former Green Beret/Delta Force operator and CIA operative, is burnt out and living as a vagrant in New York City after the death of the woman he loved; he is presumed dead.

He is approached by Harold Finch, a reclusive billionaire software genius who is living under an assumed identity.

Finch explains that, after September 11, 2001, he built a computer system for the government that uses information gleaned from omnipresent surveillance to predict future terrorist attacks.

However, Finch discovered that the computer was predicting ordinary crimes as well.

The government is not interested in these results, but Finch is determined to stop the predicted crimes.

He hires Reese to conduct surveillance and intervene as needed, using the repertoire of skills he gained in the military and the CIA.

Through a back door built into the system, Finch receives the Social Security number of someone who will be involved in an imminent crime, at which point he contacts Reese. Without knowing what the crime will be, when it will occur, or even if the person they were alerted to is a victim or perpetrator, Reese and Finch must try to stop the crime from occurring.

They are helped by NYPD Detectives Lionel Fusco, a corrupt officer whom Reese coerces into helping them, and Joss Carter, who in early episodes investigates Reese for his vigilante activities.

Michael Emerson aka Harold FINCH

Although Reese arranges for Carter and Fusco to be partners in the NYPD early in the series, for the entirety of season one neither is aware that the other is also working with Finch and Reese. Periodically, the team enlists the aid of Zoe Morgan, a professional “fixer” who applies her skills to particularly difficult tasks.

The series features several subplots. One significant story arc involves “HR”, an organization of corrupt NYPD officers who are initially in league with budding mob boss Carl Elias and later with the Russian mafia; in earlier parts of this arc, Fusco is forced to go undercover. Another important story line revolves around Root, a psychopathic hacker who is determined to gain access to The Machine. During season two, another organization of powerful business figures, Decima Technologies, is revealed to be attempting to gain access to the Machine.

AMY ACKER

Carter vows vengeance against HR after they have her boyfriend, Detective Cal Beecher, murdered. Reese and Finch encounter Sameen Shaw, an ISA assassin, on the run after being betrayed by her employers. Shaw learns about The Machine in the season two finale and subsequently becomes a member of Reese and Finch’s team. In Season three, Carter delves deeper into her investigation of HR, eventually uncovering its leader; but she is killed. In his grief, Reese briefly leaves the team. The team also battles Vigilance, a violent anti-government organization devoted to securing people’s privacy.

During the second half of season 3, Decima Technologies starts to acquire hardware to bring to life a new artificial intelligence called Samaritan, using the codes from Harold’s old college classmate, Arthur Claypool. In the season 3 finale, it is revealed that Vigilance was created by Decima to make them appear as domestic terrorists. This allowed Decima to obtain all the NSA feeds to make Samaritan operational.

KEVIN CHAPMAN

The Machine creates new identities for the Team so that they can fly beneath Samaritan’s radar.

The Machine

The Machine is an artificially intelligent mass surveillance system that is able to accurately predict premeditated violent crime by monitoring and analyzing all surveillance cameras and electronic communications worldwide.

It divides those crimes based on whether they are relevant to national security; those relevant cases are handled by the U.S. government, while the non-relevant cases in New York City are the focus of the show.

Built by Harold Finch following the events of 9/11, it was originally housed in two unoccupied floors of IFT, the company run by Harold and Nathan Ingram (his best friend from college).

When Finch discovered that the Machine was tracking all premeditated crimes (Episode 2, “Ghosts”), he programmed it to delete the personal, non-relevant cases every night at midnight, explaining to Ingram that the Machine is not built “to save somebody, we built it to save everybody.”

When delivered to the government, the finished Machine was installed in a fake nuclear reactor in Washington State.

SARAH SHAHI

During season two, it moved itself, piece by piece, to an unknown location or locations, and by the end of season four it is shown to have distributed itself to control boxes on utility poles.

An intense believer in privacy rights, Finch originally programmed the Machine so that it would be a complete black box, able to provide only the Social Security Number of people involved with the crime.

While this meant that the government was not able to use it without regard for privacy, it means that numbers Finch and his associates received could belong to a victim or a perpetrator.

Originally unknown to Finch, however, Nathan Ingram created a routine called “Contingency”, on the eve of the government handover, to access the non-relevant data (shown accessed in the Season 2 episode “Zero Day”). Finch is appalled that Ingram has the data sent directly to him and shuts down the routine, before reactivating it after Ingram’s death. To minimize detectability, The Machine feeds him numbers in coded messages through public telephones.

TARAJI HENSON AKA Lt Joss CARTER Season 1 to 3

Within the ISA, the program responsible for The Machine was known as Northern Lights before—after being leaked to the public, Northern Lights was shut down.

The private technology firm Decima Technologies steals some of the Machine’s original code and builds Samaritan, in season three, and replaces Northern Lights in supplying information to the government. Samaritan takes a much more active role in shaping society, and The Machine and its human associates go underground, spending season four under cover.

Much of the series is from the point of view of The Machine, with flashbacks framed as The Machine reviews past tapes in real time.

Over the course of the series, the internal workings of The Machine are shown, including the prediction models and probability trees it uses. In the Machine-generated perspective, individuals are marked by dashed boxes with different colors indicating, for example, what the person’s status is in relation to The Machine and whether they pose a threat. Season four features Samaritan’s point of view, using a different UI—though some episodes jump back and forth between the two UIs.

The Machine in its current iteration started running on January 1, 2002, following 42 failed attempts. During the season 4 episode “Prophets”, a previous generation of The Machine’s source code was shown on screen, which was that of the Stuxnet worm. It generated the first relevant number on February 8, 2005, following three years of training by Finch.

Jim Caviezel: John Reese

Michael Emerson: Harold Finch

Kevin Chapman: Lt Lionel Fusco

Amy Acker: Samantha « Sam » Groves Aka « Root »

Sarah Shahi : Sameen Shaw

JIM KAVIEZEL  AKA  JOHN REESE

Sources Wikipedia