Reaper

I found a TV show that I really enjoyed. Reaper--on Tuesday night. I missed the premier episode last week, but found I could still follow along without much problem.

Here's the premise:

On his 21st birthday, Sam Oliver wakes up to find that the world is going weird on him. Black hounds follow him menacingly, and he seems to have telekinetic powers: he moves a falling air-conditioner out of the way just as it is about to crush the skull of a co-worker, Andi (Missy Peregrym).

When Sam gets home, his parents give him the bad news. Before he was born, they sold his soul to the Devil. (They had their reasons.) The Devil (Ray Wise) shows up to collect and turns out to be suave, even oily, and not without a sense of humor. He informs Sam that he must work as the Devil’s bounty hunter, tracking down and capturing fugitives from hell — of which there are many, due to netherworld overcrowding. “We were underprepared for the influx,” Satan says. “I blame myself.”

Maybe the reason this appeals to me, on one level, is that I wrote a short novella with this sort of humor--Lucifer, making a deal with a vampire to keep him out of hell because, well, vampires take up so much more room than an ordinary human and hell has, after all, limited space.

The big bonus for me? Ray Wise, playing the devil. It was...priceless.



The dialogue was witty, and the premise just quirky enough to tickle my funny bone. I'll definitely be watching this show again.

(P.S. I'll be away this weekend at a writers' retreat. See you Monday!)