Life: Season One

Introduction

Damian Lewis has been making a bit of a name for himself since appearing as paratrooper Dick Winters in the HBO series Band of Brothers. Despite flops like Stephen King's Dreamcatcher, Lewis is still gaining fans via the medium of TV and now he headlines his own US TV series, proudly following Hugh Laurie with his own rather bizarre character.

Charlie Crews is a policeman who has just been released from prison after 12 years. Wrongly convicted of the murder of a married couple (who were his friends), Crews has been given a massive payoff as compensation but decides that as well as his new big house and more money than you can imagine, he wants his badge back. The reason for this is simple; Crews wants to find out who framed him and why.

It turns out that his framing for murder is linked to the $18 million robbery of an LA bank and there are numerous suspects who could have been involved and made some of the money disappear - all of whom are on the police payroll.



Partnered with Dani Rees (Sarah Shahi), Crews infuriates those around him with his presence and his Zen quotations, the latter a result of his treatment in prison (along with an overriding love of all kinds of fruit due it never being available as prison food). Rees is pressured to provide justification to get Crews kicked off the force but has problems of her own, she is a recovering alcoholic that isn't quite ready to go on the wagon.

Extras

Audio Commentaries - There are a few, all the final episodes had them but I gave them a miss after sampling the first third of episode one, which frankly sounded a mess. Maybe they got better, I don't know…

Deleted Scenes - nothing that wasn't missed

Life Begins - loosely translated as Making Of

Blooper Reel

Multi Angle Deleted Scene - not true Multi Angle, just a combination of edited and unedited footage with shots of the crew. The deleted scene was actually used but in a different location, so hardly deleted…



Life's Questions Answered - answer me this, which bloody idiot decided that this would be a good idea to put on disc 2 of 3? Avoid unless you've watched the whole series as there are major spoilers…

Still Life - three slideshows, wow.

Overall

This is a rather good little series, another one that rolls in at 12 episodes; presumably due to the writer's strike that decimated or cut short so many series. It's a bit of a gem really and it's also nice to see Lewis have a leading role in a series again as I am a massive fan of Band of Brothers.

The plots regarding the murder of the week are a bit of a distraction as the real meat of this series is Crews trying to work out which of his fellow cops is the one who murdered his friends and set him up. That's not to say that they are in any way banal or underdone, some such as the exploding cooker that cuts a man in half are quite imaginative and some of the accompanying plotlines are quite amusing. Another great touch are the reality TV type shots of someone who appears to making a documentary on Crews and interviewing all the main characters.



The key to this series though is the cast and Lewis as lead. Lewis plays his role straight but you just can't help laughing at him. He is struggling with balancing his quest for Zen against an overriding urge for revenge, but he has some great moments on the way; females falling over themselves to bed him (bar Rees), a penchant for fruit that includes buying his own Orange grove and a struggle to recognise that his wife has moved on but continually stopping her new husband and giving him tickets.

The rest of the cast are prefect. Rees plays the flawed partner to perfection and Brent Sexton plays his old partner as a bit of a guilty man, although we're not quite sure to start with why he's feeling this way or what he may be guilty about. The best character for me behind Crews, though, is Adam Arkin as Ted Earley, an ex-CEO in prison for fraud, saved by Crews and living in his garage and bizarrely in charge of Crews funds - Earley provides great comic relief and provides one of the memorable scenes of the series when he gets a chance to drive a tractor and promptly reverses over Crews sparkly new car.

Excellent little series, I really hope it's given time to breathe.