From Ray Ellis of Blogcritics:

• TV Review: Flashpoint: A Different Kind Of Cop Show, eh?
  “It’s in the backstories that Flashpoint differs from the usual procedural cop show. It’s not the slam-bang take no prisoners action adventure to which American audiences are accustomed. There’s plenty of tension and stress in the pilot episode, but it’s tempered with an underlying sense of emotion. It achieves something very rare in American television—it causes you to empathize with all the characters, rather than just dropping bodies to and fro.” Read more.

From Brian Stelter of the New York Times:

• Canadians Sneak Across Border, Hide on CBS
  “At a time when television networks are cutting costs and production is increasingly moving overseas, the Canadian collaboration could be a new model for TV.” Read more.

From Jennie of Variety:

• Toronto finally takes centerstage
  “So often the generic backdrop in films and series, Toronto finally gets top billing this year.The city’s sleek glass towers, graffiti-sprayed back alleys and even lake-front beaches are featured in two Canadian-made drama series under production this summer. “Flashpoint,” following the ops of an elite police unit, and “The Listener,” about a telepathic paramedic, are destined for primetime on Canuck broadcaster CTV as well as CBS and NBC, respectively. First out is “Flashpoint,” which preemed at 10 p.m. July 11on the Eye, the first series since Paul Haggis-created “Due South” to “reverse” simulcast in the U.S.” Read more.

From CTV:

• Q&A with ‘Flashpoint’ star Hugh Dillon

From Virginia Bellafante of the New York Times:

• When Family and Job Come Into Conflict, a Policeman’s Lot Is Not a Happy One
  “Within the first few minutes of “Flashpoint,” a new action series beginning Friday on CBS that may be too languid for its own good, a special-ops cop named Ed Lane (Hugh Dillon) blithely telegraphs his sentiments on work-family balance. Ed has a shaved head and an intense face that suggests he has seen a lot of bad things go down in dark places; he probably wears aviator glasses when he sleeps.” Read more.

From Sandy Caetano of Metro:

• CTV’s new drama Flashpoint delivers action
  ““It has all the characteristics of a typical swat team and does all the things swat teams do, but this team in Toronto also has trained its men and women in psychological pro­filing and negotiation,” says (executive producer Bill) Mustos. “And this is what distinguishes them from all the other swat teams in the world.”” Read more.

From Ted Cox of the Daily Herald:

• HBO presents a pat war drama; CBS surprises with ‘Flash point’
  “The shooting, when it comes, is tense and deliberately ambiguous, but that’s when “Flash point” veers off the obvious course. Instead of treating Lane as a hero, it plunges into the procedural matters following any police shooting. It finds its true drama in the boring bits U.S. cop shows tend to ignore. It captures Lane’s stoic guilt and his tangled obligations to colleagues and family. At the end of the pilot, he seems a compelling figure.” Read more.

From Travis Fickett of IGN:

• Flashpoint: “Scorpio” Review
  “The first thing you need to know about Flashpoint is that it’s not of the Jerry Bruckheimer mode when it comes to action. The series is less about helicopter shots, explosions and “high octane” action sequences than it is about the human cost of crisis situations. And while the focus is on the elite squad, called “Strategic Response Unit,” the show spends time on those causing the crime and their families as well.” Read more.

From Kevin McDonough of SouthCoastToday.com:

• Is there any point to ‘Flashpoint’?
  The new series “Flashpoint” (10 p.m., CBS, TV-14) doesn’t have anything half as juicy. In fact, I’m not sure what it’s got. It has the talented and engaging Enrico Colantoni (“Galaxy Quest”) as Sgt. Gregory Parker. He spends the first hour negotiating, in broken Croatian, we’re told, to a enraged man who just shot his wife and has taken an innocent bystander hostage. Because the violent man is shouting in Croatian — or at least we think it’s Croatian — we don’t understand his history or motivations. The rest of the “Flashpoint” characters are speaking English, and I’m not certain I understand where they’re coming from, either.” Read more.

From John Doyle of the Globe and Mail:

• An action show that shoots and asks questions later
  “Flashpoint (CTV, CBS, today, 10 p.m.) is far from being classic TV drama. It’s neither brilliant nor bad. It’s an attractive blend of high-octane action and very human drama. Essentially, it’s about the professional and personal lives of the team members of the Strategic Response Unit (SRU) in Toronto.” Read more.

From Tom Shales of the Washington Post:

• Good Cop/Good Cop: CBS’s Lukewarm ‘Flashpoint’
  “Cops, cops, cops. How network television loves those cops, especially in prime time, where they’ve never had trouble finding air space. At CBS, executives sensed a crying need for more of the same old thing and here it is: “Flashpoint,” the story of a lovable SWAT team going righteously about its business in a big North American city.” Read more.

From Maria Kubacki of Canwest News Service:

• A career at Flashpoint: Hugh Dillon is in demand
  “Once upon a time, Hugh Dillon was a hard-living punk rocker with what he describes as a “HUGE” alcohol and drug problem — experience he put to good use when he played a hard-living punk rocker in Bruce McDonald’s pseudo-rockumentary, Hard Core Logo.” Read more.

From Eric Kohanik of Canwest News Service:

• Hugh Dillon gives arresting performance as tormented cop (again)
  “Hugh Dillon is an arresting rock singer and songwriter. He is an even more arresting actor. Dillon was amazing as tormented homicide detective Mike Sweeney on Durham County, a powerful six-part crime series that aired on Canadian pay TV last year and was repeated on Global earlier this year. He explores yet another complex and tormented character in Flashpoint, a Canadian action-drama series that makes its debut in both Canada and the U.S. tonight.” Read more.

From Mike Hughes of the Hub:

• ‘Flashpoint’ brings police drama to summer TV
  “Flashpoint” is not your typically silly summer show. Its first episode has barely started and an angry man has taken a hostage. Police swarm, snipers aim, death looms. This is fiction, but only slightly. “It was inspired by a real-life event,” said Bill Mustos, one of the show’s producers.” Read more.

From Shannon Boyd of the Whistler Question:

• David Paetkau shoots new series in Toronto
  “Flashpoint is a hot new summer television series starring the Sunshine Coast’s David Paetkau. The high intensity show examines the work and lives of a tactical team in Toronto as they deal with unpredictable and often violent situations that arise in the metropolis. Paetkau’s character Sam Braddock is the newest sniper on the team.” Read more.

From Tony Lofaro of the Ottawa Citizen:

• Police series a dream come true for area actor
  “When actor Michael Cram switched agents five years ago, he was asked what kind of television work he was interested in doing and replied: an ensemble police drama. The Ottawa actor’s dream is finally realized tonight when he appears in Flashpoint, a CTV series that follows the exploits of a highly-skilled tactical SWAT team inspired by Toronto’s real-life Emergency Task Force. The 13-part Canadian series premieres tonight at 10 on CTV and at the same time on CBS in the United States.” Read more.

From Matthew Gilbert of the Boston Globe:

• ‘Flashpoint’ resorts to usual suspects
  “”Flashpoint,” CBS’s new police drama, is just going through the motions. It goes through the motions quite competently and respectably. But it is nonetheless merely re-creating crime-series moves we’ve all seen many times before, with only the faintest afterimage of originality.” Read more.

From Robert Cushman of the National Post:

• Men in blue have never felt so grey
  “Good cop, bad cop, new spin. The central characters of Flashpoint, CTV’s new drama series, are Greg, whose job is to talk people out of situations mortally dangerous to themselves and others, and Ed, who, when Greg can’t make them see the errors of their ways, shoots them. Ed, a champion sniper, heads a team at Toronto’s SRU, one of those dashing television acronyms, here standing for Strategic Reserve Unit. Greg seems theoretically to be his second-in-command, but in practice — judging from the first two episodes, anyway — it is he who makes the running, and he who deserves to.” Read more.

From Joel Rubinoff of the Record.com:

• Hype over Flashpoint greatly exaggerated
  “No one, including me, actually dislikes it, mind you, and the triple-header cast — including Enrico Colantoni (Veronica Mars), Hugh Dillon (Durham County) and Amy Jo Johnson (Felicity) — are competent acting pros who make the show’s generic scripts bob and weave with the zing of an experienced prizefighter.” Read more.

From David Hinckley of the New York Daily News:

• Canadian cop show ‘Flashpoint is no flash in the pan
  “Putting the show on Friday nights at 10 in the summer – a low-rated time slot in a low-viewership season – suggests CBS doesn’t think it’s all that likely to catch on. But it’s more nuanced than the average cop drama, and for that reason, more intriguing. Viewers who find it and stay with it could have a keeper – at least for the 13 episodes CBS has ordered.” Read more.

From Alan Sepinwall of the New Jersey Star-Ledger:

• Sepinwall on TV: ‘Flashpoint’ review
  “There have been cop shows in the past about these kinds of units (“SWAT,” “True Blue”), but they never last long because there are only so many episodes where you can show the sniper (Johnson, aka the original Pink Power Ranger and/or the original “Felicity” roommate) waiting for the green light to shoot or the bomb squad expert trying to figure out which wire to clip. The “Flashpoint” pilot is competent, but very retro (there’s an extended sequence of the team driving to a crisis point with their sirens blaring, the sort of thing that went out 15 years ago) and fairly dull.” Read more.

From John Crook at the Brantford Expositor:

• ‘Flashpoint’ chronicles the price heroic cops must pay on the job
  “As “Flashpoint” unfolds, however, it quickly becomes apparent that the show isn’t really about this lunatic with the gun, nor is it really about the procedural nuts and bolts of life-or-death situations like this one. Instead, this series, a Canadian import, examines the inner emotional lives of these officers and the harsh toll their work takes on them, as well as their loved ones” Read more.

From Daniel Fienberg at Zap2it:

• TV Review: ‘Flashpoint’
  “Given that just-above-generic procedurals are what CBS does best and given that just-above-generic procedurals are what CBS viewers have proven most likely to embrace, it’s surprising to see CBS casually dumping “Flashpoint” in the mid-summer in a Friday night slot which, under the best of circumstances, would make it a hard sell.” Read more.

From Glenn Diaz of BuddyTV:

• ‘Flashpoint’ to Premiere on CBS
  “Canadian police drama Flashpoint is set to premiere on CBS on July 11, simultaneously with its opening on its parent network CTV, Canada’s largest privately owned English language broadcast network.  It was picked up for U.S. broadcast during the writers’ strike.” Read more.

From Kevin Thompson at the Palm Beach Post:

• TV Review: ‘Flashpoint’
  “Machismo is clearly part of the job description for the dudes and dudettes on Flashpoint, a new CBS drama debuting tonight (10 p.m.) about an elite group of cops who would make fast friends with those Special Ops guys on The Unit.” Read more.