Life: A new favourite

There's a new series out this season called Life. I just finished watching the premier which I'd PVR'd last week. Have to say, from the looks of it, this is going to become one of my new favourite shows.

Life is a cop show. I don't normally follow cop shows much. They're usually too formulaic and filled with cookie-cutter characters. But like another new favourite, Saving Grace, Life features a main character that is quirky, flawed and completely likable, and supporting characters that have their own appeal. Life's Charlie Crews is a character who catches the attention like a shiny pebble in a beach full of dull, pitted sand.

Crews is a cop who's been in prison serving a life sentence for the past 12 years (hence the series title). During his time in prison, between seemingly constant beatings and harassment from both inmates and guards, Crews read a book on Zen over and over and over.

After twelve years, Charlie is proven innocent of the charges and released. As part of his settlement for being unjustly imprisoned, which also includes a great deal of money, Crews gets to go back to work for the police department as a homicide detective (because that's the rank he would have achieved had he not been in prison for so long). When released back into a world that has changed quite a bit during his 12-year absence, he uses the Zen he learned to keep him balanced, on track and "in the moment." It doesn't occur to him that people will find his behavior odd, so he goes about saying things like "be in the moment," and hugging people, and everyone just looks at him funny and goes about their business.

At work, he's been partnered with Detective Dani Reese, a stunningly beautiful and capable detective. Crews is curious why Reese got stuck with him as a partner...she must have done something to deserve it. She avoids the question, but a little later on we find out it's because Reese is a former drug addict (thanks to an undercover assignment) and is at the mercy of higher-ups who could fire her at any moment for the slightest excuse.

Crews and Reese are assigned to investigate the murder of a young boy. The only evidence they have is a finger bitten off by the boy's dog during the murder. Following the evidence and the clues they get from interrogations, they discover the murderer and though they know he did it, they can't prove it. So they exact his punishment in a very Zen-like way: they get him sent to prison for one year on a minor charge and put him in the same prison as the father of the boy he murdered. Voila: instant confession.

But (as with Saving Grace) the show is not so much about the cases Crews and Reese chase down as it is about the people involved in them, and especially the people who surround the lives of the main characters. For now, Crews is surrounded by people who he either works with, or who helped him during and after his time in prison. His lawyer, another very beautiful, capable woman, appears to be in love with him. It's unclear whether Crews is aware of her feelings or not. He seems fond of her, but there is an unresolved sexual tension there which will make for interesting situations in upcoming episodes. There is a much more brother-sister type of relationship between Crews and his partner Reese, and already by the end of the first episode, they are forming a bond which will no-doubt be tested and proven in upcoming episodes.

An amusing and touching buddy relationship is provided by Crews' new financial manager Ted Earley, also an ex-con, having become friends with Crews in prison while serving a sentence for embezzling a pension fund (only someone with Zen in their soul would hire an embezzler as his financial manager!). Ted is flat broke now, and living in a room over Charlie's garage.

One other character to watch is Lt. Karen Davis, played by the amazing Robin Weigert of Deadwood fame (one of my top three shows of all time). While Davis isn't a bad person, she does have an attitude that is threatening to both Crews and Reese, and it'll be interesting to see how that conflict plays out in future.

Daniel Lewis and his character Charlie Crews are much like Hugh Laurie and his character Dr. Gregory House. They look a little alike, they're both playing American roles convincingly even though they have foreign accents (British and Australian) and their characters are both living in worlds where their respective philosophies of life do not quite jive with the world around them (even though they both have devoted, if frustrated, friends trying to keep them from getting themselves murdered).

The best moment in the premiere episode, for me, was when Crews helped a crack addict die. The addict had been shooting at Crews, and got a bullet in his chest for his trouble. Crews went to the man, who was obviously traumatized, crying out about how he didn't kill the kid, and "I'm going now, I'm going", helped him lie back on a bed and said, in a gentle voice, "It was just a bad dream, go back to sleep."

It was one of the most tender, loving moments I've ever seen on television and it had me fighting back tears.

In other scenes, Charlie is driving around the city, practically orgasming over the experience of driving his fancy new car, and repeating over and over "I am not attached to this car, I am not attached to this car." Makes you wonder how completely he has managed to buy into this Zen thing after all. Maybe he's just a little bit crazy from spending 12 years in prison with people who all want to kill him.

In another scene, Reese casually, not casually, asks Charlie why he wanted to be a cop again after getting out of prison. When he says it's what he does, Reese expresses doubt and says she thinks it might be because it would give him the opportunity to find out who framed him for the murders he went to prison for. Charlie denies it.

But later we discover that he is indeed trying to find out who framed him. He's using his access to police department files to create a kind of connect-the-dots whiteboard in a small room in his house where "everything is connected,"...a credo he has repeated over and over. On this wall we see photos of several familiar faces, including Lt. Davis and Crews' ex-partner. Looks like this private investigation will make for a running storyline through the series.

Is Crews really trying to follow the Zen way or is it just a cover-up, or a symptom of psychological damage sustained in prison. His oddness obviously allows him to investigate and solve cases in an unconventional, yet effective way, but is it genuine?

From tender to twirpy, this show struck all the right chords with me. In the final scene, Ted gets to drive Charlie's new tractor and accidentally runs over Charlie's precious car. Charlie just smiles quietly, and you wonder...does he really not care that his car has been crushed? A car is just an inanimate object of course. A possession...it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of Zen things. Or is he feeling smug because he has enough money to buy as many fancy cars as he wants?

Oh, I just love a mystery.