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This television series (from Showtime) is a humorous look at “life after life.” George Lass (Ellen Muth) is a young adult woman drifting through those “what am I going to do with my life” years and, on her first day of working at a temp agency, she gets killed when a toilet from a Russian space station hurtles from space and lands right on her. Discovering that she’s dead, she finds herself recruited into the job of “collecting the souls” of others as they die – grim reaping, as it were. Some of the deaths are gruesome, but the juxtaposition of humor keeps it light-hearted. The main characters work really well with each other. Mandy Patinkin plays the reaping crew’s supervisor (Rube) with lots of charm and personality. He makes their new “jobs” seem as organized and purposeful as the ordinary tasks each of them attended to in their earthly life. The topic of God and religion are mostly avoided, but the subject of life after death and the questions of “Why am I here?” and “what happens when I die?” are given much attention. One of George’s comments explaining her new line of work went like this: “I was born again, but not in a creepy, religious sort of way.” In another scene a dying man requests, “Don’t I get to send a message to my loved ones?” To which Rube replies, “I don’t see Della Reese sittin’ at this table.”


The extras are all loaded on disc 1 (out of 4), with deleted scenes from the entire series (wait ‘til you’re done with the season before watching). The audio commentary of the pilot episode is done with the main characters, which is funny. It’s slightly disparaging that the dialog audio levels are almost completed muted, however, and there are no subtitles mixed to help follow along, but that’s okay. The overall season, albeit a short 14 episodes, is very fun. Be forewarned, however. Like most of its contemporaries on premium networks (The Sopranos, Band of Brothers, etc) each episode is packed with profanity and not much regard for modesty in the sometimes lewd subject matter. [MGM / Doug Van Pelt]


358 : Obscenities
5 : Nudity/Sexuality
100% : Spiritual Relevancy


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