TV Review: AWAKE - Pilot 1.1

I watched Awake when it first aired a couple of weeks back, and yes, I was intrigued. I do like the premise but thought maybe I already watch enough TV. I have had to reconsider, I really should be making room in my schedule for a well thought out TV show which was initially named REM and was billed as a Inception-esqe TV thriller, if you caught my review of the movie Inception then you will already know just how impressed I was with that, as well as that very good reason to keep watching and start reviewing Awake is the fact that my only loyal commenter Ruben also likes the show which means my reviews will get comments (hopefully), there is a lot of stuff I write about which does not get comments, follow your audience that’s what they say.

Awake is the new TV show brought to us by Kyle Killen on NBC, a network which I hear is in need of a successful TV show right now. Awake follows Michael Britten (Jason Issacs) a police detective who gets into a car accident with his family. From there on Michael lives in two separate realities, one where his wife Hannah (Laura Allen) survived the crash and his son Rex (Dylan Minette) died and the other where his son survived and wife died. Britten switches between the realities by simply going to sleep, in each reality he is still a detective but has different partners, he also has a shrink in each reality, which one is real? If any, that's where the guessing games start for us.

I really loved the "Pilot", I have actually watched it twice as I found it quite difficult to keep tabs on first time round, the realities are separated for the viewer by a tint which comes over the screen, those are red and green, red being the reality his wife survived and green where his son survived. The two realities cross over really well for Britten as one usually helps him solve cases in the other, it also gives us two different stories to concentrate on away from the main Sci-Fi plot.

Those two stories are actually interesting enough even if you do take away the main plot, in the "Pilot" Britten was working on two cases, in one reality it was the case of a missing girl and the other he was working on a murder and I really enjoyed seeing each of the stories and for me Awake leaves you in a bit of a predicament. Which reality do you like better? I have seen all three episodes now and I found that I like different things from each reality, take the two shrinks for instance I like them both but for me Dr Judith Evans (Cherry Jones) is all that more convincing that her reality is the real one , this would be the one where his wife survived. Dr John Lee (B.D. Wong) is also very good but hasn't come out with anything convincing for me as yet. Having said that I enjoy that reality more, I'll go into more detail with further reviews but the stories, especially in the third episode have been better for me.

So, is Britten actually shifting between two realities? I'm really not sure, I think that's the same for all of us, could it be? Or do you think that Michael Britten will turn out to be like Gene Hunt, dead all along, maybe he is in a coma and dreaming the realities, meaning that neither of them are real. There are a lot of possibility's for this show and I'm really looking forward to seeing how the story goes. How about you? What are your thoughts on Awake?