Milo Ventimiglia moved us to tears this is usmade us fall in love Gilmore Girls and took us on an adventure heroesand now the famous TV star plays a suave but sensitive thief on ABC’s The company you keep (Premiers Sunday, February 19 at 7:00 p.m. ET/PT on CTV, CTV.ca and the CTV app in Canada).
Ventimiglia is not only the star of this new show, alongside Catherine Haena Kim, William Fichtner, Polly Draper and Sarah Wayne Callies, but he is also executive producer of the series.
Based on the Korean Broadcasting System series my fellow citizens, The new show combines family drama and forbidden love with a Robin Hood heist story.
What is The Company You Keep about?
In The company you keep Most people think that Charlie Nicoletti (Ventimiglia) and his family run a bar, but they are actually crooks who steal from wealthy criminals. In this family operation, Charlie’s personal life seems to complicate things.
The series begins with the Nicoletti family, Charlie, his sister Birdie (Callies) and their parents Leo (Fichtner) and Fran (Draper) working to pull off a big “job”, but it ends in disaster and heartbreak.
At the same time, Emma (Kim) pretends to be a data analyst for a logistics company, but is actually a CIA agent. Just as she’s trying to figure out a drug trafficking cartel, Emma gets her own dose of cheating in her love life.
Emma and Charlie meet in a hotel bar, both reeling from the loss of love, and a passionate relationship develops in the end.
The big “uh oh” moment on the show is that Emma is stalking the same criminals who fell for the Nicoletti family’s latest heist and is out for revenge, but Emma and Charlie are unaware of this connection. As their relationship evolves beyond their first steamy encounter, Emma and Charlie must both keep their professional lives a secret.
Is “The Company You Keep” worth seeing?
Playing Ventimiglia, the stoic yet sensitive guy, isn’t an entirely new construct (think Jess Mariano as the rough edge, but rather a smart and well-read love interest for Rory in Gilmore Girls). But he’s great at it. There’s an undeniable charisma to his past performances, and that certainly extends to The company you keep.
Watching the first two episodes of the series, it’s clear that this show falls into that category of easy viewing, with enough suspense to keep you interested and a love story to tug at those hearts.
The biggest question for The company you keep is whether the series can effectively handle all the moving parts of its story. There’s the crime, the love story, the family drama, and the personal drama to deal with, so we’ll see how it plays out.
This alluring crime of the week series could turn out to be your great escape, especially if you’re not exactly looking for something to make you cry every week this is us.
Ventimiglia is an undeniably fantastic lead man and so far The company you keep seems like a great vehicle for him to shine.
