Dead Like Me - First Season Reviews

Made me feel dead like her

I only managed half an hours of this rubbish. The plot is so ridiculous, one minute she's a ghost and watching her funeral and the next she's 'undead' and people can see her blah blah blah. I just couldn't be bothered to invest any more time on it.

Love it to death

This is an absolutely fantastic series and an original idea. A surly 18 year old girl called George from a pretty disfunctional family is killed on her first day at work by falling space station shrapnel - ie a toilet seat. Added to this is that she cannot pass on as she was the last client of the reaper who took her soul, so now she has to take his place.

The series follows her reluctance in her job, what happens when a reaper tries to change fate, abuses their power, falls for the living, and many other situations from hilarious to tear jerking. Also what happens to our new reapers family, how they cope (or don't) and what happens when George tries to make contact with them. A true work of genius and highly enjoyable!

Is there work after Death?

Gordon Brown would love this series, it shows people being gainfully employed even after their demise. Yes, the series is so black that it's blue, and delightfully sour at that- no hugging, very little learning, and for once, a heroine who isn't sweet enough to give you cavities. It sets up the premise that some of us (the selection criteria is unclear but hey, that's life..)die but they don't quite pass on. Instead they inhabit an uneasy space alongside the living, as Grim Reapers. Reapers collect a yellow post-it note, distributed in a waffle house by the toweringly excellent boss Rube(Mandy Patinkin). This note carries details of their 'Reap', and they have to be there to take the soul of the soon-to-be-deceased, and to witness a variety of often convoluted exits from life. The deaths have ranged from slapstick to poignant, and no punches are pulled theologically speaking. The Dead Like Me cast are uniformly tremendous, with Ellen Muth starring as the youngest reaper, George. George popped out for a sandwich, and was swiftly annihilated by a toilet seat from the returning Mir Space station. Her family is disentegrating almost as quickly, and her fellow reapers all have stories too. This is the most enthralling yarn to come from the afterlife genre since Beetlejuice - hire all the discs and immerse yourself, dying has never been so full of possibilities!

[Highly rated reviewer]

Dead Like Me: S1

A great idea, but the execution is only so-so. A show about an 18 year old girl who is killed in a freak accident and then becomes a grim reaper just sounded like something I had to see, and in most respects I'm glad I did. It's a fantastic concept and it pays off; the show is very funny and beautifully acted and seeing the reapers, some of whom have been dead many years, interacting with the 21st century world throws up some great material. However the show lacks confidence. The second episode and one of the later ones are both construced mostly of flashbacks which try to clarify the situation and the characters. I understand that you want to be able to bring viewers who haven't seen the whole series in but surrendering episodes so early in a 14 part series to clips is NOT the way to do it.

However the actors pull you through, in particular an acerbic Mandy Patinkin and a wonderfully shallow Laura Harris. Season 2 ought to be better.

Another good show cancelled

Fantastic, funny and interesting. I couldn't fault it, considering what shows are getting multiple season deals at the moment, makes you wonder why this only got 2.