Dead Like Me: The Complete First Season

The Show

Dead Like Me is one of a batch of recent US TV shows which have captured a niche market and gained a swell of fans. Inspired by afterlife literature such as 'On a Pale Horse' by Piers Anthony, the show revolves around the lives of a group of 'Grim Reapers' whose role in the afterlife is to help the soul leave the bodies of those about to die, and then shepherd it to the post-death bright light. In particular, the focus is on the newest of the Reapers, Georgia Lass (played by Ellen Muth).

Georgia, who prefers to be called George, is only 18 years old and a recent college drop-out that's returned home. While out for lunch from a dead-end job (gettit?) a flaming toilet seat from the decommissioned Mir space station hurtles out of the sky and incinerates her. She quickly learns that she is to become undead and work in the afterlife as a Reaper. Helping George out is her supervisor Rube (Mandy Patinkin - The Princess Bride, Chicago Hope) and a team of 3 other Reapers from the External Issues Division (dealing with murder, suicide, accidents, etc). Her new undead colleagues include: Roxy (Jasmine Guy - A Different World), who works as a meter maid for a day job and who has the associated abrupt and abrasive manner; Mason (Callum Blue - As If), a Brit who has a love of drugs and money; and Betty (Rebecca Gayheart - Urban Legend), a quirky loner. Pretty, yet liable to lying and sluttiness, Daisy Adair (Laura Harris - 24, The Faculty) joins the team partway through the series when she moves in with George. The Reapers have to have normal day-to-day jobs in order to pay for food, lodging, etc. and the parallel between mundane and otherworldly is where much of the humour of the series stems from.



And comedy plays a major role in the success of Dead Like Me. The dialogue (and, for that matter, George's trademark voiceover) is wry, witty and sardonic and it manages to be just stylish and different enough without becoming annoying. It's oddball in the same way as Joan of Arcadia and Wonderfalls and yet it has its own unique style. And speaking of these other two shows, it also brings a young female lead character to a quirky TV show. Like Jaye in Wonderfalls, George is disaffected and a drop-out; like Joan, she is having to come to terms with realising there are other forces out there affecting everyone's lives. One of the things I did like about the series, given that the lead is young and female, is that the writers haven't looked to romance as a given storyline. Sure, it's not a banned idea, but George's life revolves around work, friends, and coming to terms with her own death and her new role – there isn't yet room for boyfriends, and she's capable of being single.

In fact, a lot of the first series shows George having to cope with 'normal' things like living on her own, getting her first job, making friends away from an educational establishment – exactly what any other 18 year-old might have to do, except in George's case she's undead and living as a Reaper, a novel twist on the 'left home for the first time' storyline. There's also plotlines about George's slightly dysfunctional family. Her mother Joy Lass (gettit!) (played by Cynthia Stevenson - The Player), a stay-at-home mum, a little bitter, a little sad, coming to terms with her older daughter's death while also dealing with her partner's distance and her other daughter's strange behaviour. Reggie (Britt McKillip) is George's younger sister, desperately trying to make sense of a world where the sister she idolised is now dead. And the final member of the family is Clancy Lass (Greg Kean), who strays from home and his wife and seems to have his own way of dealing with George's death. It's a nice addition that we follow George's family as well as George herself. Not only does it add to the arsenal of characters, but it allows the writers to look at the consequences of death for all concerned. And talking of family, George's co-workers - both the Reapers and the staff at Happy Time, the temp agency where she ends up doing mind-numbing clerical work to pay the bills - become something of a surrogate afterlife family for George. Where Rube is her father figure, her mother figure ends up being her Happy Time boss, the extremely bizarre Dolores Herbig (Christine Willes, who manages to be excessively chirpy but also critical).



I wasn't really sure what to expect when I sat down to watch Dead Like Me, but I was pleasantly surprised to find a mature, witty show with an excellent cast and high production standards. The humour is dark and funny and the vast majority of the 14 episodes included in the first season are really strong. Unfortunately one episode is a flashback one comprised mostly of clips from previous episodes, unnecessary in such a short series... and I have to admit my heart sunk a little when I saw it was going to be this way. Thankfully it's just the one episode, however, and things pick up in time for a good, yet unspectacular, finale. And even that makes for a nice change: a finale without a massive cliffhanger or twist, just the same high standards as the rest of the season. For the record, my favourite episodes were the pilot, 'Reaping Havoc', 'A Cook' and 'Vacation'... I suppose either for moments of humour or character development. It's actually quite hard to pick between the non-flashback episodes (for the record, 'Nighthawks' is the one with all the clips, and even it has a really good death in it). The deaths are universally good, unexpected and funny throughout and I bet it was a blast to come up with strange ways for the gravelings to engineer death and destruction.

The first series of Dead Like Me establishes it as a highly enjoyable, witty show with an interesting concept that is allowed to play out in all sorts of ways, many of them unpredictable. Blessed with a great cast and good, tight writing, it's just the sort of show you can warm to as you watch it, even if the initial showing doesn't necessarily grab you. Characterisation is a definite benefit and it never feels like it's getting into a rut, even if the episodes do begin to follow some sort of formula (meet at Der Waffle Haus, exchange small talk, handle reapings, engage in day job, check in on George's family, etc. etc.). I really enjoyed it and look forward to the second series.



Episode Guide

1: 'Pilot'
Georgia (George) Lass has a pretty bad start to her day, and the day just doesn't get any better when she is killed by a toilet from the decommissioned Mir space station as it breaks up on re-entry. She learns that she's now in the afterlife and that she has been given a job as a 'Grim Reaper'. It's a lot to handle!

2: 'Dead Girl Walking'
George finds out she gets no real benefits from her new afterlife job and that she still needs to find a wage to pay for food, lodging, etc. So she heads to the Happy Time Temp Agency where she's given a position.

3: 'Curious George'
George can't keep away from her family home, hoping to pick up some mementos. Mason remembers his death, while Betty's flashback shows her digging up her body to retrieve a ring.

4: 'Reapercussions'
George discovers a loophole in the 'reaper rules' – if the soul is late for their death appointment, it gets canceled. She decides to test it out on her next 'client' and Rube isn't too happy with her for doing so.

5: 'Reaping Havoc'
Betty takes George under her wing a little, and the pair get to bond a little better. But it seems Betty has other things on her mind… Meanwhile, George joins the Happy Time scrapbook circle.



6: 'My Room'
Daisy Adair, transferred from New York, arrives to take Betty's place, and moves in with George too. She's quite a handful! To escape it all, George ends up on the Happy Time bowling team.

7: 'Reaper Madness'
A schizophrenic sees the gravelings, and also works out that George can see them too. It leads to George's first kiss with one of the living…

8: 'A Cook'
Rube takes a job as chef at Der Waffle Haus and we get to see a different side to him. George adopts the dog of one of her 'clients', knowing she probably can't keep it.

9: 'Sunday Mornings'
George is remembering her early good relationship with her father, and she's given a job at his workplace (the local university). Mason tags along in the hope of picking up girls or scoring drugs, but things get complicated when he prevents a rape and George gets to make friends with the girl involved.

10: 'Business Unfinished'
Daisy recruits George and Mason when she comes up with a get-rich-quick scheme which involves one of her 'clients'.



11: 'The Bicycle Thief'
George accepts a better job, one that would have her leave Happy Time, and a massive farewell party is planned and executed. And all because George wants a bicycle.

12: 'Nighthawks'
While the other reapers are sitting tests at Der Waffle Haus, Rube takes George to an assignment with him, mostly because she finds out it's to take place on her family's driveway. The other reapers seem to have most problems with the 'Why am I here?' question.

13: 'Vacation'
The gravelings have taken a day off, so there are no deaths. While George's family take their annual vacation to the country, George and the reapers are left with piles of paperwork to catch up on, compiling lists of people's last thoughts.

14: 'Rest in Peace'
George tries to get her old job back at Happy Time, but Delores is having none of it. Until her cat, Murray, gets sick and George stands by her friend.



Picture

The presentation is in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen and it's really impressive. OK, so this is a very recent show, but it's still reassuring to see such an excellent transfer. There's only traces of grain in backgrounds and softness is also not an issue. Colours are nice and vivid, rich where needed and able to show variations of darkness and brightness between the indoor and outdoor scenes. Skin tones are always natural looking, too. There's a touch of ringing around the opening credit text but I didn't notice any other obvious sharpening. It's a really solid transfer all round.

Sound

The audio track is, as you might expect, Dolby Digital 5.1 surround and uses it frequently, with lots of subtle touches (mostly sound effects and background music) passed to the rear soundstage. The musical score is fun and fitting for the show and doesn't get in the way of any dialogue, which is always crisp and clear. There's also just enough bass to give the sound a real sense of body. There are no subtitle options though, which is a disappointment.



Menus/Extras

The menus on these discs are fairly basic but not unappealing (for example, the one above is subtly-animated and includes a looping clip of the theme tune). I have a few quibbles with some of the actual navigation chioces, but it's nothing serious... just selections made inconvenient by being buried a further menu level down than they need to be.

There's not a huge number of special features, but there's a satisfactory amount. And they're all found on the first disc of the set. The first of these is a cast commentary on the pilot episode. Ellen Muth, Mandy Patinkin, Jasmine Guy, Callum Blue and Cynthia Stephenson all take part and definitely enjoyed getting back together to record it. It's entertaining and interesting, with a lot of anecdotes in amongst the happy chit-chat.

The biggest extra is the 33 deleted scenes; they're each fairly short, but together make up about 30 minutes of additional watching. The picture quality is a bit more varied here (as these clips of course never made it all the way through post-production), and there's also some audio issues, but there's still some very interesting scenes here. But to save yourself a headache, go to the end of the fourth screen (!) of deleted scenes and select 'play all' to watch them without having to select each individually. (And yes, the 'play all' option is not available at the start of the long list, so I ended up having to go through the scenes one by one. An example of the 'badly-designed navigation' built into these disc menus.). There's some scene extensions, some trimmed sub-plots and some with alternate voice-overs, but all of them add something and I'm glad so many of them were included.



There's a 6 minute behind-the-scenes featurette, which is the standard 'making of' fluff. And then another featurette on the Music of Dead Like Me which runs for 4 minutes and features an interview with producer John Masius and composer Stewart Copeland. A Dead Like Us Weekly extra is organised like a tabloid magazine and gives biographies for those that die during the series, and amusing mini-articles including a list of Top Ten Deaths. There's also a photo gallery which is a standard series of pictures from the production. Additionally there's a promo for season 2, which doesn't actually include any new material or spoilers/hints of what's to happen in the next series, and there are trailers for two other MGM titles.

Overall

If you like your comedy slapstick and farce, then this may not be the show for you (though some of the deaths have a definite farcical side to them). If, however, you enjoy a more wry, dark humour, then I'd definitely recommend checking out Dead Like Me. The writing is strong, and the cast all-round come across as impressive. This DVD set shows off the series really well, with an excellent picture transfer and an interesting, entertaining set of features.