When NBCUniversal (now one word instead of two) added Sleuth to its stable of cable channels in 2006, it was an alright idea for a channel: Nick at Nite with guns. For its first couple of years, Sleuth's 24-hour lineup was comprised of reruns of NBCUniversal-owned
cop or detective shows like
Dragnet,
Magnum, P.I.,
Miami Vice and the always-worth-revisiting
Homicide: Life on the Street.
But like so many other channels, of course, Sleuth has strayed from its original purpose. These days, DirecTV channel 308 is an ill-defined dumping ground for reruns of current original shows from its sister station USA (
Royal Pains,
In Plain Sight)--and
Walker, Texas Ranger. With content like a doctor show (
Royal Pains), a cop show with very little detective work because of its focus on witness protection (
In Plain Sight) and a cop show with no detective work that's only watchable when Conan O'Brien's around to butt in with snarky and appalled commentary (
Walker), the name Sleuth doesn't make much sense anymore. Cloo--the new name that Sleuth will assume on a yet-to-be-confirmed future date
a la the still-inane 2009 conversion of its other sister station Sci Fi to Syfy--makes even less sense. What's next? NBCUniversal rebranding USA as YouSA? (They also own Telemundo. Maybe they should rename it YouEse.)
Occasionally, Sleuth has done something nice like temporarily revive a show I've longed to see again (
Keen Eddie,
The Rockford Files) or air a 007 marathon or the surprisingly good 1973 made-for-TV caper movie/unsold anthology show pilot
The Alpha Caper, which isn't on DVD and stars Henry Fonda as a forcibly retired parole officer who teams up with the ex-cons he used to watch over--two of whom are played by Leonard Nimoy and Larry Hagman--to hijack a shipment of gold. But otherwise, as a fan of the private eye and caper genres, I've found Sleuth to be a wasted opportunity, regurgitating too many of the same broadcast network procedural reruns that can already be found on USA (
House,
NCIS).
Unless it's airing a
White Collar episode I've never seen before or a
Burn Notice rerun with a useful spy tip I need to jot down, Sleuth isn't worth my time. The channel's so cheap it doesn't have any on-air hosts or any original programming that could have given Sleuth a distinctive personality, like how breezy procedurals have become USA's forte or how FX has become synonymous with edgy comedies and gritty and violent but intelligently written dramas (the only original show that Sleuth has produced is a 2006
I Love the '80s-style special about
"America's Top Sleuths").
It's owned by NBCUniversal and it's called Sleuth (that is until the name change to Cloo takes place), so why isn't the channel diving into the NBCUniversal library, with its vast history of influential crime shows, and pulling out classic sleuthy properties like
Columbo (R.I.P. Peter Falk) or the other
NBC Mystery Movie shows? Shouldn't a channel called Sleuth be a little, uh, sleuthier?
Also, as someone who stopped finding
Law & Order interesting after an ailing Jerry Orbach left the mothership (although the later pairing of Jesse L. Martin and Jeremy Sisto was a great and too-brief one during the mothership's
Law half, as was the duo of Chris Noth and Annabella Sciorra on
Criminal Intent), I don't think Sleuth needs to be another repository for
Criminal Intent and
Special Victims Unit reruns (TNT has exclusive rights to reruns of the mothership, which explains its absence on the NBCUniversal channels' schedules). Okay, maybe
Criminal Intent is tolerable once every weekday, but a five-hour Goren-thon like the ones Sleuth often does is overkill. Plus, Sleuth is the sixth channel on the dial that currently airs
Criminal Intent reruns, after USA, Bravo, Oxygen, WGN and the local MyNetworkTV affiliate. Enough already, man.
