BLUE MAG

My second pilot review is NBC’s “Life.” It was bold to start this series with Life solving such an oogy crime as the murder of a 12-year old boy (Note: For the purpose of this review, I’m going to call the main character “Life.”). But I think it ups the ante a bit and helps create an interesting balance of serious procedural crime and light quirkyness for this high-concept show. The concept: Life was framed for an as-yet-unspecified crime, and spent 12 years in jail. He is now out, exonerated, and he has millions due to a settlement, but his wife has left him. Also he read up about Zen while in the pokey and that makes him quirky. (I hope you’re enjoying my calling him Life as much as I am.)

I really enjoyed this pilot, and then the next day I read Oscar Dahl’s review on BuddyTV and that gave me pause. He’s probably right that the premise is a bit shaky. Why the Zen thing? Isn’t it just lending quirkyness for quirkyness’ sake? It’s like Dr. House M.D., Homicide Detective.

However, I stand behind my brain’s initial liking of this show. (You and me, brain, to the end!!) I love Damian Lewis from “Band of Brothers,” and he brings the same detachment and world-weariness to this role. I think a few more seconds of background on his jail time would have helped smooth that over. We are treated to a few shots of Life being beaten severely by inmates, and then reading a Zen book. A little bit more about how that approach helped him through jail and how it’s going to help him solve the mystery of how he ended up there — and help him solve other crimes to boot — and you got yourself a premise.

The show is shot in L.A. which gets you about 20% of the way there in my book. I think this was a well written pilot, with a great cast (Adam Arkin is on board as Life’s financial advisor who lives with him in his garage; also Brooke Langton, which I hope doesn’t mean she won’t be appearing as Riggins’ older neighbor on “Friday Night Lights”), and Sarah Shahi as Life’s partner (not his life partner) who has a drug problem and freaks out during crimefighting when drugs accidentally get spilled in her face, which was a really interesting moment. She has the funniest line of the pilot, responding to Life’s koan “You don’t have to get here to be here” with “That is what I do not understand,” sort of channeling Stanley from The Office.

This pilot has set up an interesting show. Don sez check it out for yourself.