Afterlife
This has been marked as a draft since Halloween, lol, and I need more stuff in my TV section so I’m just gonna polish it as best I can and publish 
I recorded the first 3 weeks of this series never getting round to watching but once I did, I couldn’t wait for the remaining episodes. This has been an incredible series, my only real complaint being that it’s been too short!
It has a classic set-up in its main characters – Alison, a woman blessed (or cursed) against her will with the ability to see spirits, and Robert, a skeptical pyschology lecturer haunted by the memory of his son who died in a car accident. The Exorcist (Merrin and Karras), The X-Files (Mulder and Scully) and Carl Sagan’s Contact (Ellie and Palmer) have all used this set-up to great effect in similar situations of paranormal conflict. Faith and science is one of the great ongoing debates and “Afterlife” is no exception in demanding its viewer to open its mind, if only just a little bit. The end of the last episode indicates a post-story (or, please, second series) that could take this battle even further.
It’s not without bias – we see the spirits as clearly as Alison most of the time, and the show frequently breaks rules one kind of assumes must be in place. Sometimes, the “guest” characters can see the spirits too (Episode 3); sometimes, the spirits take matters into their own hands; sometimes, in the very first episode in fact, Alison reads the situation very wrong indeed. It’s a little hokey sometimes – episode 2 (“Lower Than Bones”, a very emotional story about a little girl drowned trying to find and punish her killer) takes a particularly easy way out, kind of breaking one of the rules I would’ve thought to be sort of implicit in a show like this (the girl takes direct action herself in the end to solve her problem after speaking through Sharp fails – and “Angels” at the end of a funeral …. aaarrrrrgh ! vomit).
As Alison, Lesley Sharp turns in one of the best television performances I’ve seen in years. She should could convince the most narrow-minded skeptic to at least have an inkling of doubt about their beliefs.
I just read that series 2 has been confirmed and will run for 8 episodes instead of this series’ 6. Awesome 