Wasted Life

NBC Photo: Justin Lubin

In today’s reviews, we’re taking on the big trends of fall 2007 one by one. Shows about people with superpowers: check. Shows about rich people: check. (Shows about nerds: already did that.) And now we come to NBC’s Life and the last, and most disturbing, trend of the fall: Shows with interesting premises that, probably because some executive decided viewers were too stupid to care about said premise alone, got turned into crime procedurals.

Pushing Daisies (man has the power to give and take life with a touch) looks good enough to survive its configuration as a magic private-eye show. K-Ville, on the other hand, could have been a fascinating story about what Hurricane Katrina did to New Orleans but turned into a subpar cop show.

Life, starring Damien Lewis, is exactly in between the two. Take Charlie Crews, a cop wrongly accused of a murder, send him off to the joint where he becomes the daily punching bag of convicts, and see what that does to his psyche: interesting stuff. Spring him from prison, turn him into a Buddhist-philosophy-quoting detective (with a $50 million lawsuit settlement) who uses his prison insights and eccentricity to solve the crime of the week: not terrible, just not necessary.

Essentially, this perfectly competent crime show is a police version of House. Which may sound like ratings gold, but part of the reason House works so well–besides its scripts and Hugh Laurie–is that it takes the formula and style of dozens of cop mysteries and applies them to a hospital drama. Life simply takes that formula back and applies it to yet another freaking cop mystery (Eccentric Detective With Skeptical Partner Subgenre).

I could analyze the show in depth–Lewis’ engaging if mannered portrayal of Charlie’s brittle sanity and humor, a wry supporting turn for Adam Arkin as Charlie’s lawyer/manservant–but what’s the point, really? If you’re a fan of cop procedurals, you could add Life to the list of approximately three dozen or so you could choose from any particular week. You probably won’t be disappointed if you do. But do you need to? With the vast choice of more ambitious, original, surprising shows on TV, life’s just too short for Life.

TV Tonight: The Loving Story

For Richard and Mildred Loving, their marriage was a pretty simple matter. They grew up in a small Virginia town where everyone pretty much knew everyone, fell in love (not without some obstacles; she found him “arrogant” at first) and got hitched.

For the enforcers of Virginia’s anti-miscegenation laws, their marriage was also a simple matter: Richard was white and Mildred was black.

Chaddogg

I’m really tempted to give this one a shot, based solely on Damian Lewis, who was REALLY fantastic in Band of Brothers. And I agree (based on clips) that this looks like a cop-version of House, although replace House’s acerbity with Lewis’s Zen beliefs (which fits, because House’s meanness is in contrast to the “bedside manner” we expect from doctors, while Lewis’s Zen-like calmness would be contrary to the tough cop routine we all expect).

I’ll check it out tonight based on Lewis’s strong acting abilities….I guess I can swallow crime procedurals if there’s something to the characters (hence why I follow Bones and CSI, but not the L&O franchise, which is far too case-of-the-week driven), and I’m hoping Life works in that sense.
Chaddogg

This raises a whole other point, by the way James….

If not a cop drama, a legal drama or a hospital drama (or, now, a story about superheroes/people with powers) – what do you do for drama? (Or, alternatively, where do you set your drama?)

High school/teen dramas can work (Friday Night Lights), but the “growing up” thing means cast turnover.

What I’d REALLY like to see is a journalism drama – something about investigative journalists for a paper. Think “The Paper” (highly underrated Ron Howard film) but into a weekly series. Combines cop-show mysteries, legal show cases/coverage, and pretty much anything else (sports, entertainment, business, etc.). You have the stress of deadlines, the personalities of different types of reporters, competition amongst journalists….pretty much perfect for a show. Why have there has been few (if any) excellent dramas about journalism? (And don’t say because your life as a journalist is boring – trust me, all lawyers will tell you their life is nothing like LA Law or Boston Legal, but it doesn’t stop those shows from being entertaining. If journalism is not an exciting profession, that doesn’t mean you can’t fictionalize it into something interesting.)
Karma

Accounting Drama, Chaddog. It would be epic.
James Poniewozik

@chaddogg: For me, it’s less about setting than execution. I don’t mind more police shows; I do mind more slight variations on police procedurals.

I think people in the biz (and TV critics) make too big a deal about what settings “work” and which don’t. A drama about advertising would be really boring, right? Who likes advertising? Or a drama set in the White House? You could never do that on a big network.

As for journalism, we’ll get a taste of that in the next season of The Wire. If there’s one person I’d want to see do a journalism series, it’s be David Simon. Or Perez Hilton.
keith

@Karma,

Andy Barker! Well, it was a comedy…and he actually ended up doing more PI work than CPA. Those of us who thought it would be epic were overruled. Sigh.
http://www.theblogshow.com Yadgyu

I would like to see a new TV show about a blogger who uses his blog to expose corrupt and and menacing corporations that plot to do evil to people.
Keith

Bloggerman. Night Blogger. I Blog. Superblogger. The Blogger. Smokey and the Blogger. This show will be in development for some time since just coming up with a title is difficult.
Keith

Is it just me or does Lewis bear a resemblance to Steve McQueen? I’ve always thought that since the first time I saw him. Something in the facial shape, mouth, eyes and mannerisms.