'Dead Like Me' To Premiere Friday

Tired of the endless summer repeats and reality shows? Then tune in tomorrow when Showtime premieres Dead Like Me, the new SF series by former Star Trek: Voyager writer Bryan Fuller.

Dead Like Me is a dramedy that tells the story of college dropout Georgia "George" Lass, played by Ellen Muth. In the pilot episode, she dies in a freak accident when she's hit by a piece of plummeting debris from outer space - the toilet seat of the former space station MIR. But instead of moving on to the netherworld, she finds herself undead and with a new job: that of grim reaper, assigned to collect the souls of those who have just died and send them on to wherever souls go to.

The show was created by former Star Trek: Voyager writer Bryan Fuller. "My original thought in creating this," he told Zap2It, "was to do a very tongue-in-cheek show about grim reapers and what it was like to someone who was avoiding life to suddenly be put in the position where she's taking it."

Series lead Ellen Muth is joined in the show by Mandy Patinkin, who plays Rube, the head of the grim reaper team. Other cast members include Callum Blea, Rebecca Gayheart and Jasmine Guy. A further Star Trek: Voyager connection comes in the form of Robert Duncan McNeill (Tom Paris), who directed one installment of the series (story).

Friday's 75-minute pilot is the first of a series of 13 episodes, but the show is already getting good reviews. According to UGO, Dead Like Me "is showing an awful lot of promise [and] is full of interesting ideas about the afterlife." Cinescape called the show "imaginative and broad," but warned that some of the supporting cast's performances were not that strong, and the internal logic of the series sometimes left a lot to be desired. Finally, the Fort Wayne News Sentinel predicted that fans of Six Feet Under would also like this show.

Further information on Dead Like Me can be found on the show's official web site - unfortunately, it is only available to visitors from the United States.

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