Howells and "Leverage"

Modern Robin Hoods in an Urban Jungle

By GINIA BELLAFANTE

On the face of it, “Leverage,” a new drama that seems to have drawn its inspiration broadly and in disproportionate measure from “Ocean’s Eleven,” William Dean Howells and Encyclopedia Brown, comes to us this grim December with a certain prescience. The series (beginning on Sunday on TNT) devotes itself to the deflation of fat cats who have stolen, burned, bribed, defrauded: capitalist victimizers who are pierced each week by the slings and arrows of a band of independent hackers, thieves and grifters suddenly bound together to rectify the wrongs of economic disparity.