Dead Like Me - The Complete First Season
by David Grossman, David Straiton, Helen Shaver, James Marshall, James Whitmore Jr.
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Actor: Callum Blue, Cynthia Stevenson, Ellen Muth, Jasmine Guy, Mandy PatinkinDirector: David Grossman, David Straiton, Helen Shaver, James Marshall, James Whitmore Jr.
Brand: Sony
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; Spanish (Published)
Format: Anamorphic, Box set, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 627 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-06-15
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
DVD Reviews of Dead Like Me - The Complete First Season
DVD Review: One of the truly great series of recent years - no kidding!
Summary: 5 Stars
July 2007 Update!!!!!! There is going to be a movie! Shooting has either wrapped up or is close to wrapping up. Star Ellen Muth goes so far as to hint that that a renewal of the series might be possible. Details are still forthcoming and apart from the movie (and I'm sorry, I don't know if this is a TV, a direct-to-DVD, or theatrical release) nothing definite is known about the chances of the series being revived, but this is definitely good news. There is some recasting. Mandy Patinkin, unfortunately, will not be back as Rube nor will Laura Harris as Daisy. It appears Rube's character is being replaced by a new head reaper, while a new actress will be playing Daisy. Otherwise all the other actors will be back. The rest of my review now appears as it was first written back in February 2004.
I would place DEAD LIKE ME on the shortest of short lists of the truly great television shows of the past decade and a half (that date referring to the debut of TWIN PEAKS and a more artistically serious form of television). Most television shows are unambitious affairs, either because of constraints from the networks or lack of creative talent at the top, but DEAD LIKE ME stands head and shoulders above the competition. It is not nearly as well as it deserves, primarily because it was a series that appeared on Showtime, which limited its exposure.
The television show begins--we learn later--with a toilet seat from the MIR space station rushing to fulfill its destiny on planet earth, namely to ignite into a ball of fire and strike eighteen-year-old Georgia "George" Lass, who is taking her lunch break on the first day of her temp assignment with the Happy Times Employment Agency. George looks up at the descending ball, inaudibly utters the word "sh#t" and immediately enters the next stage of her existence, if not her life. Much to her astonishment, she finds herself standing a few feet away from her body, able to see the living, but herself unseen by all except for a few Grim Reapers, whose job it is to see her into her afterlife. Usually this involves aiding them to the place where they will spend eternity, but in George's case, she is recruited very much against her will to become a Grim Reaper. The rest of the first season deals with George's deep resistance to accepting her new vocation, as well as coming to terms with her death, the loss of her family and the discovery of what they unexpectedly meant to her, her need to find a living (it turns out being a Reaper is an unpaid position), her yearning for friends and companionship, and her growing awareness of what it means to be a human being.
The show succeeds on virtually every level. The scripts are consistently superb, many of them by series creator and STAR TREK: VOYAGER alum Bryan Fuller. The production values are far beyond the normal television series. The special effects (and there are more than one would expect on a show of this kind) are always striking. The photography is simply unmatched in television. I might be inclined to defend the statement that this is the show has the best photography in the history of television. The camerawork is difficult to praise too highly, with innovative camera angles, zooms, wide angle lenses, and especially filters to make this an incredibly beautiful show to look at. It was filmed in Vancouver, but it was supposed to be Seattle, but instead of the rain that one anticipates from the climate, there is constant and brilliant sunshine. Green dominates the screen (the color of growing things?) in every exterior shot. It is exhilarating to view a series that is made this well.
The cast is exquisite. Ellen Muth plays George, and I'm not sure they could have gotten anyone more perfect to play the role. She is a perfect blend of sullen, grumpy, vulnerable, and lost, and she manages perfectly to communicate her awakening to life by having died. She is also one of the more interesting actresses to have appeared in sometime, giving the appearance of being average in appearance while in fact being a striking beauty. Her undead supervisor Rube is played by the great Mandy Patinkin, and he turns in his usual exquisite performance. Rebecca Gayheart (who was the original Inara on FIREFLY, but left before the pilot was shot) was superb in the first few episodes as Betty, who was replaced in the team by Laura Harris (of "24") as deceased Hollywood bit player and promiscuous party girl Daisy Adair (who continually regales the group with tales of her sexual conquests of movie stars). Perhaps my favorite moment of the season occurs when the Reapers are forced to catalog and record all the last thoughts of those whose souls they have reaped, and we inadvertently learn Daisy's last thought. She immediately moves from being an unsympathetic character to one that we love more than a little. The hard-as-nails Roxy, who works as a meter maid, is played convincingly by Jasmine Guy (of A DIFFERENT WORLD, and the team is rounded out by Callum Blue as the hapless British thief and druggie Mason. Cynthia Stevenson is great as George's mom. Special mention has to be made of the supporting character who provides perhaps more hysterical moments during the season than any other, Christine Willes, who plays the unforgettable Dolores Herbig "Brown Eyes," George's supervisor at Happy Times, sometimes friend, and host of her own website called "Getting Things Done," on which she is seen whenever she is home "getting things done."
After loving the first season of the show, I was tremendously excited about two things: 1) the DVD set coming out and 2) the second season. I was ecstatic when the show was renewed for a second season. Despite its quality, Showtime has not worked at developing original series as has its rival HBO. But last fall they announced the show had been renewed for 2004. The new episodes should begin appearing in May 2004. I heartily urge anyone who loves great TV like BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, SIX FEET UNDER, and FIREFLY to give this remarkable series a shot. You won't be disappointed.
Description of Dead Like Me - The Complete First Season
DEAD LIKE ME:COMPLETE FIRST SEASON - DVD MoviePay cable's "other"show about life and death, Dead Like Me takes a darkly comic look at mortality through the eyes of someone stuck between this life and the afterlife. "Bail bondsmen for the disembodied" is how Rube (Mandy Patinkin), the often exasperated Reaper foreman, explains it to disaffected 18-year-old George (Ellen Muth) after she?s vaporized by a falling toilet seat from the Mir space station and drafted into the ranks of the Reapers. It's now her job to take the souls of the doomed, preferably before their mortal coil is damaged beyond recognition by the devilish machinations of the gremlin-like gravelings.
You wouldn?t mistake George's fellow Reapers for the do-gooders of Touched by an Angel, but they are anything but grim. Charming British shyster Mason (Callum Blue) always has some scam brewing, high-living, fun-loving former flapper Betty (Rebecca Gayheart) treats death as a cabaret ("Reaping Havoc"), and one-time starlet and wannabe actress Daisy (Laura Harris) still nurses her dreams of stardom. Even hard-bitten meter maid Roxy (Jasmine Guy) manages to find a way to let loose.
Dead Like Me puts a light touch on black comedy, but it has a sneaky way of using humor to explore loss, loneliness, and regret, as well as kindness, and courage, and responsibility. George gets a hard lesson when she tries to wriggle out of her assignments like some overgrown kid, only to see the damage of her (in)action in "Reapercussions." And as George's angry, tightly-wound mother (Cynthia Stevenson) and withdrawn little sister Reggie cope with death, she breaks the rules to watch over them: their own pouty, glum guardian angel. There's nothing like your own death to put your life into perspective.
The four-disc set features all 14 episodes of the debut season of Showtime's witty black comedy. The feature-length pilot includes optional commentary by cast members Ellen Muth, Mandy Patinkin, Jasmine Guy, Cynthia Stevenson, and Callum Blue. Other supplements include the nominal documentary featurettes Dead Like Me: Behind-the-scenes and The Music of Dead Like Me (with theme song composer Stewart Copeland), 32 deleted scenes, and a still gallery. --Sean Axmaker
Stills from Dead Like Me - The Complete First Season (Click for larger image)
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