Damian Lewis Brings Good Things to ‘Life’
And So Do the Rest of His Fellow Cast Members
NBC’s Life is the kind of personality-driven television show whose success or failure depends almost entirely upon how much you do or do not like the main characters. I happen to be a complete sucker for TV shows that incorporate strong character development—if I bond with a series’ characters well enough, I’ll often stick with the show through thick and thin, good and bad, and exciting and boring, too, no matter what the ratings. Such is my relationship with Life.
My first impression of the series was nonexistent simply because the network did and has continued to do an atrocious job of promoting the show. Or maybe I should spin that assessment around and instead say the Peacock has done a fantastic job of thoroughly ignoring one of the best shows from its rookie slate.
Based on the poorly composed description available to the public before the fall season officially began (the tagline is the nebulous “Life was his sentence. Life is what he got back.”), one could understandably assume that the series was yet another newcomer with a sci-fi slant, as I and others very well did. That assessment couldn’t be more incorrect.
The “Zen” crime drama is more psychologically contemplative than unearthly and oddball than weird, which is what helps it stand apart from both other freshmen series and other crime procedurals around the tube. Think Law & Order: Criminal Intent and Monk intertwined, with a lighter-hearted, more optimistic, and less obsessed lead.
LAPD Detective Charlie Crews (Britain’s Damian Lewis of Band of Brothers and The Forsyte Saga) is a wronged man. During his early career with the Los Angeles Police department, he was convicted for a triple murder he didn’t commit and subsequently spent twelve years in prison, before DNA evidence exonerated him. Freed, he and his lawyer Constance Griffiths (Brooke Langton) successfully sue Los Angeles and the LAPD for an undisclosed amount of money that’s rumored to total millions, as well as his old job back.
Crews immediately acquires a high-class lifestyle to go with his windfall, yet he’s still intent on reestablishing the career that disappeared along with his wife while he was incarcerated. When he’s not on the job, he’s usually busy spending piles of money on unlikely nature-based investments (an orange grove and a solar farm thus far), hanging out with his many lady friends, or studying his Wall of Conspiracy (a map of photos on a wall with connections drawn between various people) to figure out who framed him and almost destroyed his life.
At work, Crews is partnered with no-nonsense Dani Reese (former Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader Sarah Shahi of The L Word and Alias), a recovering drug addict from her days working undercover as a narcotics agent. On lesser, shallower shows, Reese would be written transparently as a domineering hottie, reliant on the gun she carries and her obvious beauty.
Life, however, paints her as a reluctantly tolerant ying to Crews’ joyfully carefree yang and a deeply troubled human being who’s dedication to her job is probably the one thing keeping her in fairly good kilter. It sounds sort of stereotypically tragic. But, with the cool yet not always composed Shahi in the role, Reese comes across as a character you can put your faith in to not go down the already beaten path of self-destructive, unfulfilled babes with real power who can’t keep a man or their sanity.
Shahi also expertly plays off of Lewis’ somewhat eccentric, fruit-loving Crews, Life‘s fully capable and deserving main attraction. Whoever cast the show did a much better job than the person who wrote the description, that’s for sure. One thing the partners have in common, if little else, is their devotion to fighting crime, and with each episode, their partnership and the series substantially strengthens.
The weakest element of Life initially was the largely routine and predictable cases (the show has started introducing increasingly layered and original cases, though), which brings me back to my original observation and the importance of how much a viewer values characters with well-defined personalities. Life works for me because I’m loving Lewis and Crews more and more as the season progresses. Crews is strange, he’s suave, and he means business, despite the timidity that his laidback attitude might indicate. Don’t be fooled.
The rest of the competent cast is rounded out by Adam Arkin (Chicago Hope, Northern Exposure) as white-collar convict Ted Earley, Crews’ former prison cellmate and current housemate and accountant (Who hires a convicted embezzler to manage their boatloads of money? Crews does.); Robin Weigert (Deadwood, Cold Case) as LAPD Lieutenant Karen Davis, Reese’s mentor and Crews’ boss who was at first highly suspicious of him when he returned to work; and the aforementioned Langton (Friday Night Lights, Melrose Place) as attorney Constance Griffiths, a married woman who truly believes in Crews’ innocence and has developed mutual romantic feelings for him over the course of their lengthy professional engagement.
If Life somehow succeeds (which seems unlikely at the moment given the awful ratings), Crews’ distinctive head of red hair has the potential to do for Lewis what the striking trait did for natural blonde Gillian Anderson on The X-Files—make him an instantly recognizable star wherever he goes. I’m not kidding or committing hyperbole when I say that Life is the best new show on TV that nobody’s watching. Please, do it and yourself a big favor: tune in at least once and just give Life a chance. You’ll laugh a lot and come away entertained.
The Verdict: B+
Life currently airs Wednesdays on NBC at 10pm EST
Damian Lewis/Life photo courtesy of NBC
