Dead Like Me

Dir: Scott Winant, 2003, 6 hrs (9.0*)

This hilarious cable comedy poses the ages-old question: "what happens to us in the afterlife?" Well, using "on earth as it is in heaven", the first thing the dead find out is that they still have to get a job and work! As if that isn't enough, the group in this series are called Reapers, whose job is to grab souls from bodies just before a violent or unexpected death, to save the person additional misery. The Reapers "walk among us", but they have different bodies than when alive, so no one will recognize them. Mandy Patinkin leads this group, gets his daily orders from "Him" in a manila envelope slipped under his door, then the Reapers must show up to each location on time to grab the soul. The main character, Ellen Muth, is known as "toilet girl" because she was killed when part of the space station fell to earth, the toilet didn't disintegrate and hit her when she was outside on her lunch break! Now that is funny and inventive writing... They only filmed 2 seasons, 14 episodes each.