First Impressions: Life

There are a few shows that I don’t watch: ones with doctors, lawyers, cops or anything on Fox. Granted there have been a few exceptions like The Joband I will occasionally catch whichever Law and Order Ice-T is on. Life looked different from the thousands of cops show because of the usual case of the week episodes, the show looked like it had an overarching mystery and Sarah Shahi (Teachers) is what I like to refer to as moderately attractive. So since it was free and commercial free though many different outlets I gave it a try.

The show follows Charlie Crews (Damien Lewis, Band of Brothers) as he rejoins the police force as a detective after being cleared on murder characters that landed him eleven years in jail. Why come back to work after being awarded millions of dollars settlement for wrongful incarceration? Where that is where the overarching mystery as Crews is using his connection on the job to try find out who set him up in the first place.

Being the black sheep of the precinct, he is teamed up with someone very low on the totem pole in the form a Shahi, someone battling her own demons (which leads to the best part of the pilot, but in a unintentionally funny way). The cast is then rounded out my Adam Arkin (Chicago Hope) as Crews’ financial advisor and white collar criminal he met while in the joint. Then there is Brooke Langton (Swingers) as Crews’ lawyer yet there seems to be more to that relationship than we see so far on screen.

An interesting take on your bland procedural shows but the big problem is Crews is written as a complex person with many eccentricities than an actor like Lewis just can handle (some of which is the writers fault). Most of his lines and actions come off as forced in the hands of Lewis and you just can’t help to think how much better the show could be will a better skilled actor in this role like what people have me to believe as a Hugh Laurie type actor (I really can’t vouch for him because House breaks two of my previously mentioned rules).

Another problem with the show is that they make Shahi look a good decade older than what she is and fairly unattractive (as seen in the picture above. One can take from it that they are doing so because it will eventually turn out that she will figure the conspiracy further down the road and if she played someone her age she would have been in high school when the crimes occurred. And if that is the reason, it is just another case of bad casting and really Langdon and Shahi really should have switch characters. But on the bright show they did manage to get Shahi out of her clothes.

Verdict: In a word: pass. Life airs Wednesdays at 10:00 on NBC. You can also download the episodes after they air through Amazon Unbox (see below). You can also steam the episodes after they debut on NBC.com.