Life, Season One (2007)

Rating: 3 out of 5

Rated: TV14

Reviewer: Rissi C.

Having intended to try this ever since seeing the promo spots for it on NBC, I finally braved up enough to risk yet another show without any trustworthy reviews available, holding my breath that my family’s unbroken string of good TV choices would last once more…

One would assume that with a life sentence hanging over him, there’d be no hope of ever leaving prison. Yet after twelve years of wrongful imprisonment, Charlie Crews (Damian Lewis) finds himself liberated after a high-priced attorney, Constance Griffiths (Brooke Langton), takes up his cause and not only gets him exonerated but also a healthy settlement. Living in a fancy unfurnished house, buying a car he loves (but really isn’t attached to) and employing a former friend from prison, Ted (Adam Arkin), Charlie returns to the police force as a detective. Paired with the quiet but competent Detective Dani Reese (Sarah Shahi), Charlie has a tough road ahead if he plans to make something of this second chance he’s been handed.

His first case back on the job is not only difficult because it has a victim -- a child -- no cop wants to encounter, but because almost everyone offers snide comments about his return... plus his superior doesn’t even like Charlie. Knowing full-well his former murder case is nearly airtight – the victims being former business partners and friends --  Charlie sets out to prove to everyone that he truly is innocent and in the process uncovers serious gaps in his case… Using anything less than the term "unique" for this show would likely be seen as an insult because in my opinion this is one of the better shows past or present. By my knowledge of television shows, it stands out as simply being “different.” Some shows can get away with just about anything and aren’t praised enough, while others can incorporate things that maybe should bother viewers but don’t. Life has the unusual ability to combine three different plots without making us feel that things are “too busy” so that viewers lose interest in following the stories; instead quite the opposite occurs as it makes us all the more interested. Apart from individual murders solved in each episode, both leading characters have ongoing subplots. Charlie’s is obvious: he is attempting to find out the why/who behind his frame, while Dani’s is more subtle and less apparent. Her story is done in such a way that requires creators to simply intertwine a scene here and there in order to build it up… but that “elusive” scene is never properly explained. Normally this is a determent to productions (that scenario causes too much curiosity), but that doesn’t wind up being so here. Other aspects of the thirteen episode season serve as “distractions” so we don’t wonder at the reasons behind what a seemingly self-explanatory scene was doing that really had nothing to do with anything; eventually the dots start to connect.

One minor downfall in an otherwise decently conceived series is the filming. Periodically it takes on a more documentary-like turn while an “interviewer” discusses facts of the case with the people who helped or hindered Charlie’s case, asking these people’s thoughts now that Charlie is out and back at the force. It really takes some getting used to and can be a tad distracting but after the premiere it seems to connect and flow better. The first half tends to move slowly for a crime drama where a glance or expressive moment can mean more than a litany of dialogue but the show more than makes up for it having created characters that are deeper than one would think. Charlie is sort of an eccentric who constantly babbles things that make no sense before it’s realized they mean more than just personality oddities (his knowledge of fruit and ignorance of technologic gadgets is hilarious); he has a way of connecting and obtaining information from suspects or witnesses that no one else could. Dani and Charlie are alike -– both are outcasts of sort. She really comes to see Charlie’s merit and when it counts, stands up for him. To wrap up the more significant characters, there’s an annoying senior officer, a comical financial advisor and an is-he-or-isn’t-he-good ex-partner; add in an ex-wife and this supporting band of characters may not be the “deepest” group but they are definitely interesting.

Content stays within the realm of most other cop shows. Guns are pulled but rarely fired; one suspect pulls a knife (the cop pulled one too), neither is used. Perhaps the most disturbing police raids involve a drug addict being shot and killed (Dani panics when a drug substance is splattered on her; she frantically removes her top in order to get into a shower); a sniper takes out another. Crime scenes are filmed with some decorum in that even though we are shown the aftermath or body, it is rarely graphic (shots are filmed through tall grass or shows a naked body already appropriately covered) and we are never taken into the flashback of the actual crime being committed. Victims die any number of ways; a woman is thrown against a wall the morning after her wedding (her bloody body is seen covered) another falls from a tall building (she lands on the roof of a car); elsewhere a child, woman and men are shot; a girl’s throat is slit. One episode, “What they Saw,” deals with a homosexual couple (non-graphic) and another man accused of being gay (he claims anytime he turns down sex from his wife, she assumes he’s gay). A year-old rape case is re-opened. “The Fallen Woman” is a type of prostitution ring and perhaps the most bothersome criminal in the bunch (depicted as a satan in human form). But the most “disturbing” episode in the bunch is “Dig a Hole.” Not only because of the murder (buried alive) but the detectives enter a party that shows drugs freely being used, two women closely touching for a video, and a same-sex liplock. Flashbacks show Charlie being beaten up. Passing remarks inform that a lead character once had a problem with drugs/alcohol; people drink. Profanity is infrequent but does include a he** or da** here and there. Charlie is always picking up women; more than one episode opens with her running around in only his shirt; another finds a woman climbing out of someone’s bed, her bare back is seen as she dresses (it’s said she doesn’t even know his name). Vaguely, it’s implied an older women carries out an affair with a twenty-something. Despite being married, a woman wants to be intimate with someone she has come to like. For those Christians, you may be bothered by the large part “Zen” plays; Charlie “studies” it and once a buda-like statue is “worshiped.”

With a title such as it has, one probably wouldn’t expect much of this show, passing it off as just another cop drama. I can’t say as I blame you -- that is how this projects itself -- in reality it more than lives up to its name. There are such moments of profundity (ironically the final moments of “The Fallen Woman” are quite touching) that sometimes stun you but yet it comes off as being so subtle the audience might not notice. Life is a puzzle and most of us haven’t been forced to endure what the hero did, but it serves to remind us, no matter how small, that life is precious and even if an event doesn’t take the life we’ve been given, our life can be drastically different in the blink of an eye.