Synopsis:
A 200-year-old man works in the New York City Morgue trying to find a key to unlock the curse of his immortality.
Warner Archives DVD Review:
After being cancelled after only a single season, Forever, starring Ioan Gruffudd as the immortal Henry Morgan, Warner Archives has released the entire series as a DVD-on-demand collection, and since I missed the show while it was airing, this was a great way to catch up with it in its entirety. Morgan, a blessed (or cursed, depending on how he/you looks at it) man who simply cannot die, finds out hundreds of years ago after being shot in the heart and dumped into the ocean, that he comes back to life after breathing his last. Over time (decades, centuries), he gets killed all the time, and he even kills himself day after day after day, but always returning to study death. In present day New York, Henry is living a comfortable life as a medical examiner, and he’s so good at what he does that he’s like Sherlock Holmes in that he ends up solving all the murder cases that come through his lab. He can tell in a glance someone’s entire history, their problems, their struggles, and his lab assistant Lucas (Joel David Moore) can hardly keep up with his genius.
Henry gains an ally in the form of a widowed tough lady cop named Jo Martinez (Alana De La Garza), who is perpetually perplexed by his uncanny sense of detecting foul play when there doesn’t seem to be any, and Henry’s adopted son Abe (Judd Hirsch) already looks older than him by at least 30 or 40 years. Henry’s tale of woe is underlined by a nagging mystery of what happened to his wife some 30 years ago, and somehow Henry’s whole life and story connects to a mysterious man named Adam (Burn Gorman), who has lived since the time of the Roman Empire and teases his way into Henry’s world by becoming his nemesis.
If you’re a fan of the Highlander franchise, then Forever is kinda the next best thing. It’s an unabashed rip-off of that series, and it knows it and acknowledges that with several in-joke references to it. Forever is Highlander meets Sherlock Holmes. It’s very well produced, entertaining all the time, has cool guest stars (hello, Cuba Gooding Jr.!), and for fans of action, it’s got plenty of that too. Gruffudd is an appealing actor who was so great in the Horatio Hornblower movie series, and Forever is easily the second best body of work he’s been afforded to star in. It’s a shame the series was cancelled, but thankfully it concludes on a wrapped up note.
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