I will like to take a moment to talk to you about Life. No not life in general. An amazing television series which aired on NBC for only two seasons. It is my second favorite show. It was also one of my daughter’s favorites which impressed me as she was 10 when it first aired. Let me give you some background.
This is the story of Charlie Crews. Mr. Crews is played by Damian Lewis who is an actor I admire and look for in films or shows. I will give anything a chance if he is in it. Moving on. Mr. Crews was a policeman who was convicted of murdering his best friend. After 12 grueling years in general population in prison, Charlie’s conviction is over turned and he is proven to be innocent thanks to the tenacious help of his attorney Constance Griffiths (Brooke Langton). Mrs. Griffiths then help Charlie win a 55 million or so settlement with the state for wrongful imprisonment. The main condition of the settlement? Charlie Crews must be reinstated as a police office.
Strange you say? Not to Charlie. His full intention is to be a cop and to track down who set him up to go to prison as well as discover who murdered his best friend. Crews enlists the assistance of a former fellow inmate who was a financial wizard before going to prison Ted Earley. Masterfully portrayed by the amazing Adam Arkin. Ironically enough he has Ted handle his money for him. Charlie then gets back to work and is assigned to work with the stunning Dani Reese (Sarah Shahi). She is not happy about the assignment and doesn’t trust him. It also annoys her that since Charlie has been released from prison his has an insatiable urge to eat fruit. Any fruit. The more exotic the better. It makes for some very amusing scenes.
The most interesting part of the series for me is prison has never really left Charlie Crews. To cope with prison Charlie started studying Buddhism but more specifically Zen. To be at peace with himself. He can be found driving around listening to tapes on the Zen mentality. It works mostly. But not all the time. There are times of stress where Charlie cannot control his emotions and the prison side comes out. Whether he takes out a knife and brandishes it as he would a shiv in the yard or flat out violence due to the amount of times he was jumped in prison. Crews is a conflicted character and so very interesting.
The relationship with his partner is so much fun to watch. Much like Bones the conversations are fluid and amusing. More so in Life because there is so much anger in Reese and she is so short tempered. Every episode has an interesting case and always advances the subplot of Crews’ search for justice.
This show should never have been cancelled. They never gave it a fair shake or even tried it in multiple time slots. They gave up early and such is our loss.
As for me, after all this talk, I’m going home to watch season one again.
