The series that wouldn't die

No cable means I miss a whole bunch of quality tv.

Flukishly, however, I caught a bit of that quality storytelling in flipping 'round the proverbial dial in the pilot episode of Dead Like Me, a cancelled show from Showtime a few years ago and apparently begin rerun on My64 here in the Cincinnati area.

The set-up's pretty simple...

...our lead character is George (short for Georgia) who dies about ten or so minutes into the opening episode. She's assisted to her death by Mandy Patainkin, Rebecca Gayheart, Jasmine Guy, and a few other grim reapers. They pull the souls out of dead folks just before the suffering starts, and George is destined to be one of them.

The show's main thrusts are two-fold as George comes to grips with being an agent of death, assigned to her appointments by yellow post-it's given out at the Der Waffle Haus by Patainkin and George watches her family - mother and father on the verge of divorce and younger sister struggling in lots of ways - deal with her passing.

For a show about death, it's impressively full of life as the characters impart to George their various bits of wisdom gleaned from years of dealing with the about to not be living. George gives an outstanding performance, and Patainkin does a masterful job of showing the joy he has in being around life (if not technically living, himself) while being rather pissed off at George for her reluctance to take a number of lives early in the series (early because that's all I've seen so far).

Sadly, the clips on YouTube aren't at all school-appropriate (it is a Showtime series, after all), so I can't share the joy with you, but feel free to find them yourselves.

I'm really thrilled to have found this li'l gem of a series is wonderfully well done and should be viewed - especially with a straight-to-DVD movie after the two seasons on cable.

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And in a totally unrelated bit of news, this might be the least surprising story ever.