Person of Interest is a wild ride. It’s about a reclusive billionaire who programs computers and a former CIA agent who thinks he’s tough. They use some fancy surveillance system to stop crimes before they happen. As they stumble through their high-tech mess, they meet a bunch of quirky characters with their own agendas. This show serves up action, plot twists and a nice little poke at how tech runs our lives. Perfect for fans of crime and sci-fi.

Meet the characters from Person of Interest

John Reese

John Reese is the kind of ex-agent who looks like he hasn’t slept but somehow still manages to be terrifyingly efficient — trench coat, tired eyes, and a gun for every occasion. He says very little and then does something reckless and heroic and you’re like okay, fine, he’s the hero, even though he’ll pretend he hates the spotlight. There’s this weird softness with kids and people in trouble that contradicts his whole “lone wolf” vibe, and he drinks coffee like it’s a survival tool (or maybe that’s tea? I’m almost sure it’s coffee). He’s the silent center of the team, with a past that keeps leaking mystery and bad decisions into every quiet moment.

Joss Carter

Carter is that righteous, stubborn detective who reads the rulebook like it’s a personal letter — fiercely moral, obsessed with justice, and annoyingly good at her job. She’s all courtroom poise and late-night stakeouts, but also has this tender side that shows up in tiny things, like the way she worries about colleagues even when she pretends not to. She’ll chew you out for bending rules and then secretly bend one herself if it’s for the right reason (don’t tell anyone), and she low-key collects pens? I’m not sure but I can totally see her with a drawer of labeled pens. Carter holds the show’s conscience and refuses to let anything look easy.

Harold Finch

Finch is the brilliant, twitchy coder-genius whose brain is constantly doing ten thought experiments at once, and yes he dresses like a professor who buys jackets in bulk. He’s polite to a fault, deeply secretive, and always ten steps ahead, but also very fond of old musicals and classical music that don’t line up with his paranoia about germs — which he totally has, except sometimes he eats takeout off his lap, go figure. He built the Machine and treats it like a child/prophet/obsession, which is somehow both terrifying and incredibly touching; he’s soft-spoken but can deploy terrifying moral calculus on demand. Finch is the quiet heart and the anxious conscience rolled into one, and you can tell he worries so much he practically vibrates.

Lionel Fusco

Fusco starts off as the cliché crooked cop — gruff, defensive, with terrible jokes — and then slowly becomes the surprisingly loyal, weary uncle of the group, which is one of my favorite arcs ever. He loves donuts in theory and mutters about pension plans in practice, yet somehow always shows up when it matters, with just enough snark to keep things lively. He’s awful at flirting, suspicious of technology (most of the time), and inexplicably good at being human when the team needs someone to grumble and then save the day. There’s a softness under the bluster that sneaks up on you; he’s more reliable than he pretends and more sentimental than he’d admit.

Root

Root is gloriously unhinged and brilliant and terrifying all at once — she talks to the Machine like it’s a lover and a god and maybe a messy roommate, and honestly it’s kind of mesmerizing. She’s ruthless and poetic, will cut you off without blinking and then quote a line of Shakespeare two minutes later; she loves chaos but follows a very specific, scary logic. Sometimes she seems cold-blooded, other times she’s oddly tender in a way that makes you second-guess what “tender” even means, and she wears that inconsistency like a badge. Root is chaos theory in human form, scary-smart, weirdly spiritual, and oddly loyal to an artificial intelligence she treats as the only thing that truly understands her.

Sameen Shaw

Shaw is the deadpan, hyper-efficient assassin with the emotional range of an unbothered stone statue — except she absolutely has weird little soft spots and also a secret fondness for bad action movies, which is the cutest contradiction. She says “I don’t do feelings” and then does small considerate things that betray that she totally does, just on her own terms, and she eats protein bars like a ritual, possibly with slight disdain. Shaw is brutally competent, terrifying in a firefight, and somehow more honest than most people about hatred and affection and everything in between, which makes her unexpectedly endearing. She’s the team’s blunt instrument and dark comic relief wrapped in a ponytail and tactical vest, basically the coolest person you’d never want to meet in a dark alley.