BWW Preview: Do You Want to Live FOREVER?

Greetings! I am thrilled to join you here at BWW to recap the new series FOREVER. The premise of the show is that Dr. Henry Morgan, an N.Y.P.D. coroner, has a small secret: He's about 200 years old and cannot die.

Shows about immortality have always intrigued me, mostly because they have rarely been very successful. That's odd to me. Everyone has a fantasy of immortality, at least at times when one is not rebalancing one's retirement account. It seems immortality shows should exercise a lure to viewers. That does not appear to be the case.

(Let me put a caveat here. I am not including shows about vampires, like TRUE BLOOD, THE VAMPIRE DIARIES, ANGEL, and the like. Those are not so much about the immortality as whether or not the vampire will embrace his or her nature, or try to be "good." Also, I'm not talking about zombie shows, like THE WALKING DEAD. Those are mostly about humans trying to make the immortal as mortal, and past tense, as possible.)

So, in preparation for FOREVER, here is a brief retrospective on shows dealing with immortality:

THE IMMORTAL aired for 15 episodes in 1970-1971. The main character, played by Christopher George, had a blood type that made him immune to all disease, so virtually immortal. However, the show was not really interested in the mystery of immortality or the philosophical implications of the condition. Rather, it was a chase show in the model of THE FUGITIVE or THE INCREDIBLE HULK, with the hero running away from a rich guy who wants to make him into a personal blood bank. Really.

HIGHLANDER was likely the most successful show about immortality. It came on the heels of a movie franchise, and ran for six seasons in the mid-1990s, ending in 1998. I didn't watch the show, so my impression may be quite a bit off, but, in it, Duncan MacLeod, a 400 year old Highlander, ran about the Pacific Northwest, attempting to keep his head against an onslaught of sword wielding Immortals attempting to behead each other. I suspect the attraction was, again, less about the mysteries of the ages, and more about, oh, an onslaught of sword wielding Immortals attempting to behead each other.

My personal favorite immortal is Captain Jack Harkness of DOCTOR WHO and TORCHWOOD. He started out as a space con-man who is rendered immortal by being exposed to the immensity of time, courtesy of The Doctor's TARDIS, just after being dealt a killing wound by a Dalek (if you don't know the history of DOCTOR WHO, my references are gibberish and I extend my apologies, but this is not the forum to explain 50 years of wild imagination cast into a "children's " sci-fi show). He would come back, now unkillable, for his own series, TORHWOOD. It ran three seasons and then came back for a special set of episodes, which ended open enough to allow more specials, if the fates decree.

Finally, in 2008, the FOX network ran NEW AMSTERDAM, starring Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, everyone's favorite one-handed, incestuous, regicide. In this show, Coster-Waldau was John Amsterdam, a New York detective, who had been living in the Big Apple since it was, you got it, New Amsterdam in the 1600's. He was rendered immortal by saving a native girl, who in turn saved him by enchanting him to live, unchanged, until he met his true love. While a pretty good show, it moved a bit slowly and only aired 8 episodes.

Which brings us to FOREVER, a show that seems to have echoes of NEW AMSTERDAM. It'll be interesting to see if it has a similar fate or comes closer to the fortunes of HIGHLANDER.

FOREVER starts on ABC channels at 10 p.m., Tuesdays on September 23. Join me? If you still aren't sure, check out the series trailer below:

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