KEY POINTS:
A funny thing happens when British actors go to Hollywood and pretend to be American. The normally posh-voiced Hugh Laurie does a weird hybrid mangle in House and he gets away with it, laughing all the way to the bank, clutching awards by the dozen.
What an inspiration
to his fellow thespians who may also be thinking about opportunities across the Atlantic. Damian Lewis, compelling as Soames in The Forsyte Saga, was also pretty good as the American Major Winters in Band of Brothers. Come to think of it, a man of few words. But now Lewis' accent has caught a touch of the House-bug if last night's debut of Life was any example.
Lewis plays Charlie Crews, a cop who's been cleared of triple murder after 12 years in Pelican Bay Penitentiary where, according to an artificial series of flashback "interviews" with former colleagues, he was beaten relentlessly by the inmates because he was a cop. Now he is out, addicted to fruit. Why he wants to go back to being a cop is, so far, anyone's guess. He doesn't need the money - his pretty lawyer has won him a handsome settlement and he lives in a rambling, empty apartment. His financial adviser, Ted (played by the admirable Adam Arkin), lives above the garage. Ted is an ex-con.
Aside from having trouble interpreting Lewis' mumbling, it is also very quiet mumbling because while in jail, Crews studied Zen. He whispers things like, "I wasn't in the moment" and "the universe makes fun of us all", which really irritate his partner Dani, a recovering addict.
It's not just the Zen sayings. It's as if Lewis has studied the Vincent D'Onofrio school of intense-stare coppery, all tics, twitches and cocked head. Last night, Crews and Dani's first case together was the murder of a little boy on the banks of a river, the boy's golden lab nearby refusing to move. "Did you talk to the dog?" Crews asked the team. Can you believe it? They hadn't talked to the dog. He moved over and discovered the dog had been shot (bullet on the rebound) and beneath him: a severed finger. A clue.
When Crews and Dani visited the kid's stepdad, Crews' nose twitched again and he leaned into the father, detecting a whiff of pot. Because Crews is a decade out of touch he still calls dope pot, plus he doesn't know how to use a cellphone. He told the stepdad to flush the pot down the loo, a clear infringement of rules.
With a flare of nostrils and a pursing of mouth, Crews was flying on Zen-intuition, aided by pears, mangoes and oranges. He simply knew the boy's death must have had something to do with his real dad, in jail for dealing, allegedly a frameup. He visited the dad, a charming man with a spiderweb tattoo climbing up his neck. Back to the mum's, and more mutterings about the "moment".
Somehow, I don't know how exactly, Crews and Dani were in a shootout in a crack den downtown, where a gunshot through a wall sprayed Dani's head with white powder. Very bad for a recovering addict. Before the crackhead died, he gave them the name of the killer, who ended up in the very same penitentiary as the boy's dad.
As the first episode of Life came to its last ebb, Crews was back home, staring at a flowchart which we must presume laid out the clues for the triple murder for which he was framed. Outside, Ted reversed a tractor into Crews' car. Crews merely smiled, He didn't say a word. He was in the moment. But Zen again, I wasn't.
* Life, TV3 8.30pm.
