Forever

Forever debuted on September 22, 2014 and it ended on May 5, 2015 after one season and 22 episodes. Starring Ioan Gruffudd as Henry Morgan, Judd Hirsch as Abe, Alana De La Garza as Jo Martinez, Joel David Moore as Lucas Wahl, and Donnie Keshawarz as Mike Hanson. Forever was about a New York medical examiner who uses his knowledge to solve crimes while also trying to figure out how to end his mortality. The series originally aired on ABC in the U.S., CTV in Canada, and Sky1 in the UK and Ireland. It is currently available on DVD manufacture on demand and streaming on CW Seed, Apple TV, Amazon Prime, Vudu, and Google Play.

Forever was a show so square it gave you an A in geometry. It was so corny my husband’s great-great-grand-parents would’ve called it maize. It was trite, serious, and would have made a brilliant cross-over with Murder She Wrote. And even though it was listed as a “fantasy crime drama,” I loved it. I loved it because of Ioan Gruffudd, because of beautiful antiques, because of a bone-deep entanglement with the past, because of mordant flashes of humor, Jane Seymour, BDSM, and clues in Latin. Other people loved it too: viewers in France, Germany, and Spain made the show a success in Europe.

The network didn’t love it. Despite a social media campaign, Forever was canceled after one season. Why it was canceled makes no sense to me, after shows such as According to Jim lasted for eight seasons, 24 had to last until Jack Bauer’s five love interests had been killed off, and Castle tried to limp along after the sexual tension between the two main characters was resolved. An entry into the television genre of whodunits, Forever can be lined up in the category of forensic dramas using a medical examiner as the main sleuth. The twist here is that Our Sleuth is solving the crimes with two hundred years of practical knowledge. Yes, handsome Henry Morgan is immortal, and has turned his gift/curse into one of those extracurricular benefits we’re always asked to cite on employment applications, but never do. He dies, and dies again, sometimes through accident, sometimes through murder, and sometimes on purpose trying to ascertain a murderer’s method. After he dies (charmingly, he keeps a journal detailing means of death, complete with drawings and pain scale), he resurrects perfectly naked in the nearest body of water. What’s not to like? To give a bit of a through-line to the episodes of solving the crime of the week, we’re told that Henry became interested in the arts medical in order to find a way to end his dilemma. As if that quest weren’t enough, in the very first episode he’s assigned a stalker. In classic stalker fashion, there are a lot of mysterious telephone calls and unsettling notes in hand-delivered envelopes; Henry is yanked between fear that this individual will expose him and hope that he will at last find out the answers for his two centuries of yo-yoing back and forth between life and death. Standard prop characters surround him, such as his adopted son Abe, widowed detective Jo, and comic relief lab assistant Lucas. These and other characters highlight Henry’s exceptional qualities as well as providing pat little aphorisms meant to rein in the immortal ME from being Too Much. The plots and subplots are standard, following television convention: the formula generally toes the narrative line of Here is a murder, Henry Morgan shows off his smarts, Detective Jo is mystified by said smarts but comes around to his thinking; either Jo’s partner or her boss voice opposition, Henry shows them all, the criminal is identified, if not either killed or apprehended; and Henry and Abe wrap up with either a cheesy bon mot or an observation of life that wishes it were pithy. Winding throughout these well-trodden paths are Henry’s moments of angst at his two hundred years of seemingly pointless existence and flashbacks of time and love lost. Perhaps not terribly gripping? However, Henry Morgan is played by Ioan Gruffudd, a charismatic Welsh actor who should be more famous than he is. Historical drama geeks will remember him from the A&E adaptions of C. S. Forester’s Hornblower series. In the late 90s, Gruffudd was possibly the next Hot Young UK Thing, all tousled curls and soulful brown eyes. Sadly, his agent got him roles in a Disney movie and then in Fantastic 4—and his career took a dive. It seems to be slowly on the rise again, thanks to a couple of excruciatingly suspenseful dramas from Australia and the UK, but he’s deserved better than what his agent has snagged for him. As an immortal medical examiner, Gruffudd is miserably gleeful in his Sherlockian deductions and delivers many of his lines with self-awareness just this side of arch. His fussy weirdness and occasional curveball dialogue elevate the interactions with the rest of the cast. Judd Hirsch plays Henry’s adopted son Abe, and serves as the resident oracle of Grizzled Life Wisdom—this is supposed to be clever, given that Henry is roughly 20 decades old to Abe’s mere 7. He did provide an excuse for us to see the always-appreciated Jane Seymour, who plays his twice ex-wife in one episode. This subplot crashed my suspension of disbelief, as she shows up in a tight red minidress to attempt rekindle their relationship in a trip to Europe—and he turns her down! True, at first he agrees to go, but then the very guy who’s always preaching the virtues of carpe diem gets all noble and turns her down. Buddy, you’re 70 years old and you have a chance to do the Grand Tour with a smoking hot age-appropriate minx? I enjoy Hirsch, but Gandalf he’s not; he’s not even Uncle Iroh. Other cast members include the severely underused Lorraine Toussaint as the precinct boss, and Joel David Moore as the sporadically amusing lab assistant. The precinct boss is there to do exactly what you’d assume, and the lab assistant serves to remind us what a closed-off weirdo Henry Morgan is. Detective Jo Martinez is played by Alana de la Garza, who looks like an interesting combination of Barbie Benton and Pat

Benatar. She’s a softer Kate Beckett from Castle, one who wears sensible shoes and knows what a hair elastic is for, but we never really see her be much more than a somber love interest for Henry. These two main characters are allowed more than one love interest, thankfully. Jo dates, albeit reluctantly. And in what I deemed a brilliant move, Henry gets involved with a dominatrix. I can’t say I’ve ever seen BDSM on television that wasn’t handled with mock pearl-clutching and a certain amount of smirking (See Castle). Forever rejects that viewpoint and presents BDSM as a valid modality of interaction—perhaps even therapy for Henry. The dominatrix was portrayed as being intelligent and compassionate. She and Henry were a match that made sense (and in some alternate universe where this show continues, she’s won out over the plot expediency of the detective as girlfriend). So finally we get to why I’m peeved that Forever was canceled: so much of this show exuded promise. Sure, some of the writing was worn a little smooth in spots, but a first season should be all about finding the rhythm, the sparks, the character beats—what to throw away and what to develop. Nobody threw Jessica Fletcher away, even though Murder, She Wrote went on for twelve flipping seasons. So why not Forever? My parents and my parents-in-law got to have their cozy faux-atmospheric murder mysteries every week. Solid, predictable, occasionally amusing. Something where you could nod knowingly to your partner as you drank your evening beverage of choice or ate a piece of pie and say “I knew it was the student the whole time.” Was Forever not edgy enough? Not dark enough? I think it was dark enough: Henry Morgan and his associates are steeped in death—Detective Jo mourns her husband, dead a year; Abe faces his own impending death by retaining an Epicurean grip on life (Jane Seymour not withstanding). And Henry dies gruesomely at least once an episode. The show’s palette is dominated by drear grey and browns that contrast with Henry’s places of retreat—Henry’s lab and the cozy antique shop that Abe owns. The harsh sterility of the present vies with the munificent nostalgia of the past just as the violence and drive of his unhappy quest clashes with his literally sepia-tinted memories. I think for a first season that’s pretty good. Perhaps the network didn’t think Gen Xers and millennials wanted nostalgia. Maybe they thought that all we wanted was angst, cutting wit, sex, and a gruesome body count. That stuff’s fine, yet who wants a diet of nothing but? A friend of mine in a recent conversation expressed a desire for “the kind of low-stakes pastoral gentle things my brain needs right now. I don’t think many folks are craving brutal action…” Even younger people want television they can put their slippers on with. Speculative fiction is a wide umbrella, and there should be enough room on the small screen to give shows like Forever a chance.