Perhaps the only drawback of having a hard drive recorder is that I often watch shows far too late to be able to make useful recommendations (see Wallander review in the week after the series finished on the BBC).
Even so, in these days of DVD box sets, Torrents and iTunes there is some value in promoting an unusual and highly watchable cop show. Life first aired in autumn 2007 on NBC and was picked up by the network for a full series after decent ratings and critical acclaim. The first series was truncated to 11 episodes by the writers' strike but a second series was commissioned and shown in 2008.
In the UK Life aired in late 2008 on what, for me at least, was the uncharted backwater of ITV3 and I might never have found it if it were not for the fact that Damian Lewis was cast in the lead role of Detective Charlie Crews which ensured that the review pages here picked it up a little. I pushed the little green "series link" button on Sky Plus and a few weeks later was very pleased I did.
Life tells the story of Detective Crews, who has returned to the LAPD following a long stint in prison for a pair of murders he did not commit and has been absolved of following the introduction of DNA evidence. Unsurprisingly, the former cop was brutalised in prison and has come out a changed man having found his "Zen". He has also come out extremely wealthy following a wrongful imprisonment settlement that includes his detective's shield as well as a large, but unspecified, sum of cash.
Crews is not especially welcome back in the LAPD, but eventually settles into an uneasy relationshiop with his partner Dani Reese, who herself has overcome problems of drug addiction following a stint undercover in narcotics.
Life is both series and serial, with a separate and distinct murder for Crews and Reese to solve each episode running alongside Crews' own search for the plot and plotters who framed him.
While the latter carries the series and gives it its narrative power, the former are always entertaining and somewhat unusual (the half-corpse IRS agent/spy story was particularly inventive) and it seems that the writers were given licence to have some fun with them.
The back story of Crews' own life and investigation is excellent television with suggestions of institutional corruption and personal treachery giving it weight. The way the story is told with on-screen "interviews" about Crews' crime with his ex-wife (who left him, not believing his professions of innocence), his ex-partner (who did not back him up in the investigation), his lawyer is a clever device for exploring the plot.
Crews' own eccentricities are also entertaining. His penchant for fruit, for fortune cookie expressions of philosophy, unusual cars and for spending his money in strange ways (an orange farm and a solar power installation) give Life a different point of differentiation from cop shows where the leads are mean, moody and world weary. (The Zen was overdone somewhat in early episodes but bear with it, it improves dramatically by episode three).
For all this to work, Crews has to be just about perfect. Anything less and the whole thing could descend quickly into hokey slapstick. Fortunately for NBC, it has a man in the lead who has emerged as one of the finest television actors of his generation.
Damian Lewis, a ginger old Etonian, may not have been the obvious choice for a Californian homicide detective, but the producers had clearly seen his superb portrayal of Major Richard Winters in the truly excellent Band of Brothers and known they were backing a winner.
Lewis has everything it takes to pull off Crews. His timing and delivery is terrific and he is a fantastically physical actor, in this case from the neck up, allowing his face to tell Crews story without speaking. He has an understated screen presence and authority that works just right in Life, as it did with Winters.
The supporting cast works well too. Sarah Shahi plays his partner Reese with just the mix of exasperation and amusement, while Adam Arkin is particularly watchable as Ted Earley, a white collar criminal Crews saved in jail (a story not told in the first series) and who becomes his financial advisor and housemate on the outside.
Life is not Wired or NYPD Blue. It is not a warts and all exploration of society and criminal justice and nor does it belong in the very top tier of television police dramas. But it is refreshingly different, highly entertaining, beautifully written and well acted. I look forward to the second series.