by Rajan Khanna

Of last year's crop of new television shows, my favorite would have to be NBC's Life. I knew very little about the show before watching except that it starred Damian Lewis, someone whose work I appreciated as Major Winters in HBO's Band of Brothers. That was enough to get me watching. What I found was enough to keep me there.

Lewis plays Charlie Crews, a police officer who went to jail for 12 years (of a life sentence) for a murder that he didn't commit. DNA evidence ultimately won his release and the resulting lawsuit set him up with a massive bank account and reinstatement of his detective's badge.

Prison has had its effect on Crews, breaking him in many ways, but also giving him a unique perspective that usually is brought to bear to help solve the cases that he investigates from week to week. Aiding him is his partner, Dani Reese, played by Sara Shahi. During the first season, Reese was saddled with Crews as a punishment, and generally regarded him with suspicion. But in the course of their partnership, they have come to respect and rely on each other. By the opening of the second season, they seem to have settled into a familiar relationship.

All except for the secrets.

Because Crews has been on a quest to clear his name and uncover the conspiracy that led to his imprisonment in the first place. A conspiracy that has fingers deep in the police department itself. One of the key figures identified in the first season, a prime author of the conspiracy, was Dani's father, Jack Reese. This is a buried mine in the relationship between the partners that threatens to one day blow up.

Like many shows these days, Life deals with a crime every week while also advancing the uber-plot of Crews investigating the conspiracy. This looks like it will continue this season, though already they have taken leaps with this – the real murderer, for example, is in jail. Now, another key figure in the original crime, the young daughter of the murdered family, has been found. How she will figure into the story remains to be seen.

The shining part of the series, however, for me is Crews' quirkiness. He has a fondness for fruit, for example, and usually has a piece close at hand. We're told in the first season this is because it's something you can't get in prison. He also studies Zen and Eastern philosophy, uttering phrases about the connectedness of everything at the drop of a hat. Like the main character of “The Mentalist”, his brokenness, the fact the he seems to run on a track askew from everyone else, makes him somehow likable. It's the twin punch of having a childlike openness, and an underlying darkness. The sweet and sour of the dramatic world. It's a powerful combination.

Life is another cop show, yes, but it's a cop show that has character and charisma and I hope that it succeeds.

Life airs on NBC on Friday evenings.