Awake

My wife had wanted to catch this new show, and I was half-paying attention until about ten minutes in. tv is completely under my radar these days, except for an occasional movie or soccer match. In the wasteland of bad premises, poor writing, and weak acting I was surprised to find yet another cop show (with a few veteran cop show actors) that in its first episode offered up a very intriguing premise, very good writing, and what seems to be a fine cast.

It will be interesting to see how the writers deal with a man who is living, it seems, two lives, at least one of which may be in a dream world. It seems that in one “life” his son has died, and in the other his wife. One of those seems to be a dream world. Every time Britten goes to sleep he wakes up with whomever had died in the life where he last went to sleep.

I like the chats with the two different analysts, but my only quibble is with the frequency of these meetings. The character is solving two crimes over a period of just a few days (so far as I can tell). He almost seems to be meeting daily with the counselors. That seems a little much, unless the writers have something up their sleeve.

I’m not sure this would count as a science fiction premise. It’s really fantasy. It takes one experience that’s (so far) unexplained by science. Regardless, I like a good fantasy, so I give it a thumbs up so far. Hopefully the muckety mucks at network will keep their paws and swizzle sticks out of the mix and let the show run a natural course.