Charlie Crews (Damian Lewis) spent twelve years in a maximum-security Federal prison before being exonerated of the murders for which he'd been found guilty. As part of the settlement of his case, he's not only been given an enormous amount of money, but he's also gotten his job back -- as a detective for the Los Angeles Police Department.
He's been teamed with Dani Reese (Sarah Shahi), who understands that getting Crews as a partner is a form of punishment; she's been the low woman on the LAPD totem pole since returning from drug rehab almost two years ago. That she managed to keep her job at all was only due to the intervention of her mentor and commanding officer, Lt. Karen Davis (Robin Weigert), who still isn't entirely sure she can rely on Reese to get the job done.
Crews has it even worse, though; nobody trusts him, and they certainly can't understand why he'd want to come back to the force when he has all that money. Davis is particularly determined to bring him down, and she makes it clear that Reese is to keep her eyes open for Crews's slightest infraction of LAPD policy.
On hand for comic relief is Ted Earley (Adam Arkin), Charlie's best friend and financial manager, who is himself an ex-con (insider trading) and now lives above the garage at Charlie's vast estate.
Not a bad setup, and the pilot episode does an efficient job of laying in all of this backstory while still telling a reasonably interesting crime-of-the-week story involving the murder of a young boy. There are a few too many jokes about how much the world has changed while Charlie was in prison -- he doesn't know what an IM is, or that telephones now have cameras built in -- but those will no doubt be emphasized as the series continues.
The supporting actors all do fine work here, but this is Damian Lewis's show, and he's superb. Lewis plays every scene with intense concentration on whatever he's doing -- Charlie discovered Zen in prison, and is always focused on being "in the moment" -- and a strange mix of calm affect and jittery tics; his head is often tilted to one side, like a bird. He's like a younger, less dissolute version of James Spader, with a similar offbeat rhythm to his line readings.
It's a crowded time slot (Wednesday, for whatever reason, is crammed full of high-profile new shows this year); Life is up against CSI: New York and Dirty Sexy Money (which I'm very much looking forward to seeing). I suspect that we'll wind up with a close race in the timeslot -- none of the shows breaking out as a monster hit, but all doing well enough to survive. I'm certainly interested to see where Life goes; Damian Lewis's performance is enough to elevate it above most of the cop shows on TV.
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