Finch recruits John Reese, a former Green Beret and CIA agent, now presumed dead – to investigate the people identified by the numbers the Machine has provided, and to act accordingly.

[4] John Reese (Jim Caviezel), a former Special Forces soldier and CIA operative, is burnt out and presumed dead, living as a vagrant in New York City.

He is approached by Harold Finch (Michael Emerson), a reclusive billionaire software genius who built a computer system for the U.S. government after September 11, 2001 which monitors all electronic communications and surveillance video feeds, in order to predict future terrorist activities.

The computer – known informally as "the Machine", and funded under the codename "Northern Lights" – also predicts other lethal crimes as well, but being irrelevant to national security these were deleted daily.

Those involved in creating Northern Lights, such as Finch's best friend and business partner Nathan Ingram, have largely been killed by the authorities to hide the project's existence.

Finch realises that knowledge of the victims deemed "irrelevant" would have saved his partner, and decides to act covertly on the non-terrorism predictions.

The project started in September 2010 when NBC ordered a put pilot for a series called Odd Jobs after winning a bidding war with ABC.

Around this time, Jonathan Nolan was also working on an undisclosed series for CBS with Bad Robot serving as executive producer.

[35] Michael Emerson was the first actor to join the series in February 2011, starring as a "mysterious billionaire who hires a special ops agent".

The site's critical consensus is, "Person of Interest is a well made and well acted espionage procedural, though its characters aren't terribly well developed and its intriguing premise yields mixed results.

[78] Of the pilot, David Wiegand of the San Francisco Chronicle said "Person of Interest separates itself from the gimmick pack, not only because of superbly nuanced characterization and writing but also because of how it engages a post-9/11 sense of paranoia in its viewers.

"[80] Mary McNamara of the Los Angeles Times stated that in regard to the pilot, "the notion of preventing crimes rather than solving them is an appealing twist...