Life is an American cop show with a difference. Or rather, it WAS a cop show with a difference, because like many of the best shows, it got cancelled after 2 seasons and is currently dying a second slow death in the UK on ITV3.

What was different about Life?

It wasn’t the use of a British actor as the American lead: although ladies’ favourite ginger Damian Lewis does an admirable accent, Dominic West’s Jimmy McNulty clearly got there first in The Wire.

It also wasn’t the overarching conspiracy arc which accompanied each of the episodes’ separate stories, a ploy which has been used in pretty much every American TV show for over a decade now, from Babylon 5 to Homicide: Life On The Street and Lost.

Life is different because it is cool, in that seemlingly effortless way which must actually take a huge amount of work to achieve. The soundtrack is great, the photography is pretty, the script is funny, the main character spends most of the first season driving around in the coolest car ever, the actors can act AND look hot at the same time, and it features a scene in an orgy.

PLUS:

Plus! It briefly, nay gratuitously, features Christina Hendricks, that hot girl off Firefly (above) and Mad Men. Sadly, with clothes on. Bah!