You Could Do Worse Than Get "Life": A TV Show Review

Those of us who were enthralled with HBO's "Band of Brothers" know how powerful an actor Damian Lewis can be. In that series he portrayed the alcohol-free Lieutenant Winters and he did so so completely that you could not help but imagine that he actually was Winters and lived everything you saw. Since then, he has popped up from time to time in various movies,some good and some bad. He made a critical splash a few years back as the psychologically disturbed man in a movie called "Keane."

Lewis is now the latest English actor to perfect his American accent and portray powerful, memorable, and interesting characters on television. Hugh Laurie is a doctor. Kevin McKidd is doing it in "Journeyman." Now comes Charlie Crews in "Life."

Lewis plays Crews, the cop who was wrongly and unjustly accused of a brutal murder and sentenced to life in prison. While in there he was routinely beaten, and had nearly every bone in his body broken. He also developed a new sense of the universe and his place in it, developing some kind of internal peace through some strange combination of zen and, well, just being a little weird.

After twelve years in prison, new evidence arrives that shows he was innocent. He is sprung and a lawsuit against the state, the city and just about everyone else has landed him a huge amount of money. Crews hires a character portrayed by Adam Arkin, a former business genius turned prisoner, to manage his money. He drives fast cars and lives in a huge mansion with no furniture in it and he has returned to the police force that helped put him into prison.