First Review: Life

This review is published prior to the American premiere due September 26 2007.

Cop shows are always looking for new ways to deliver a fresh voice to a well-worn genre. There are police shows with psychics, mathematicians, anthropologists and dogs. We’ve even had musical cop shows and alien cops who partner with earthlings. Yet, it’s hard to recall even one where the cop was once a criminal, but that’s the premise in NBC’s new drama, Life.

Damian Lewis (Band of Brothers) plays a cop who was unjustly imprisoned for twelve long years. Upon being cleared of a crime he didn’t commit he receives a hefty compensation (think millions) and his badge restored. But now, after years being treated as a criminal, he thinks like one. It gives him an edge in crime-solving unlike any other.

Pivotal to this deft idea is the casting, and ginger-haired Lewis is impressive as the offbeat, unconventional Charlie Crews. He has a “zen-like” eye for crime scene evidence that evades his peers. His methodology in talking to witnesses is anything but by the book. He can’t get his head around technology that has advanced while he has been locked away (he laughs off a colleague attempting to take his photo –with a phone). And his values are aptly left-of-centre. Crews is also given to poetic moments of philosophy at the most inopportune moments.

All of which elevates the character to an intriguing mix, shooting for the individuality of Dr Gregory House or Monk.

His crime-solving buddy is the no-fuss Dani Reese, played by The L Word’s Sarah Shahi. She works to departmental protocol, with a Scully-like need for procedure and evidence. I note that Exec Producer Dan Sackheim also directed and produced The X Files, nevertheless it fits here, as does the already-obvious unresolved sexual tension between the two leads.

Also thrown in the mix is Crews’ carefree approach to materialism.

He has more money than he knows what to do with: fast cars, big empty houses, a glitzy lifestyle (don’t miss the comic closing scene in the credits).

But at heart he remains a cop, and one with an agenda. Finding out who framed him will comprise an on-going series’ arc, oddly competing with Prison Break in the same timeslot, a genre which it parallels. As with other network programming it will debut here only a week after its US premiere.

Stylistically, the series is also punctuated by doco-style interviews profiling the history of Crews’ wrongful imprisonment.

Created by Rand Ravich (The Astronaut’s Wife, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind) and supported by actors Adam Arkin, Robin Weigart and Brooke Langton, Life seeps off the screen with a confidence that suggests it is here to stay. Doubled with House by TEN in a highly-competitive timeslot, it’s more than worth a look if you like cop shows that are smart, stylish, and proffer some fresh new faces.

Get high on Life.

Life premieres 9:30pm Wednesday October 4 on TEN.