Review: "Life" Gets Weird For An Ex-Con Cop

In "Life," debuting tonight on NBC, yet another British actor gets a lead in an American series, playing an American. Hopefully they're all sending checks to Hugh Laurie.

First, though, I just gotta say, whatta crappy title. I mean, way to tell us ZERO about the show. Sigh. Which is too bad, because this copper is kind of interesting. In fact, he's such a twitch I'm not sure yet if I want to see him for an hour every week.

Damian Lewis, best known for "Band of Brothers," stars as Charlie Crews, a big-city detective who is making up for lost time. More than a decade ago, he was convicted of a triple murder he didn't commit, and now, after years of very hard time, he's been exonerated and sprung, complete with a gazillion-dollar legal settlement from the city. He's also got his badge back, although not everyone on the force is happy to see him again.

Mostly, though, what Charlie's got is a seriously weird attitude.

He carries a big knife, has a fresh fruit fetish, and talks a lot of Zen, as in, "Is it the universe that makes fun of us all?" Not surprisingly, even the cops who like him tend to roll their eyes. He's not exactly a stickler for procedure, either; in the pilot, investigating the case of a missing kid, he suggests that the distraught dad flush his weed pronto, before the cavalry arrives with a search warrant.

Of course, this being TV, he's a prescient crime-solver. But that's not enough to earn the love of his colleagues. A lot of them, struggling by on big-city cop pay, resent his as-yet-unfurnished mansion and his superhot car. Some of them may also be in on the conspiracy that landed him in prison and will form this show's ongoing "mythology." Charlie's allies include his business manager/former cellmate, played by Adam Arkin, his lawyer (Brooke Langton), and just maybe his new partner (Sarah Shahi), although she has some departmental problems of her own.

Every week Charlie will be solving a case in the foreground and trying to get his life together in the background, as well as figure out who framed him. It's a big load of exposition, but it seems to whoosh along pretty well in the pilot. More problematic is whether Lewis can carry us along despite Charlie's rather large  number of tics and idiosyncracies. Hopefully these will fade as the weeks go by.

Is it too late to change the title?

Comments

[Aaron]

What would you have called it? "Ex-Con Cop?"