Desert Island Discs with TBkWrm

Music evokes emotions and memories in all of us.  It can stir up the urge to flee a room if the piece of music evokes bad memories. It can get us bouncing up and down as we enjoy ourselves or it can relax us. Following on from Damian and Damianista, it’s my turn to do Desert Island Discs.

Song 1 – ‘It’s my life’ by Bon Jovi

This song is Charlie Crews. It is loud and outspoken as he is. It demands your attention. Charlie Crews loses 12 years of his life through wrongful imprisonment for the triple homicide of his best friend, his (best friend’s) wife and one of the couple’s children.  Constance Griffiths eventually arrived on the scene several years into his sentence to take up his case. She manages to have his conviction quashed and Charlie once again walks the streets of LA as a free man…and a Detective of the LAPD. Charlie is determined, despite the terms of his release, it should be mentioned, on catching those who actually killed his best friend and family. He leaves everything financial in his life to his right hand former cell mate and accountant, Ted. Charlie faces all of the problems that come with the fact that the outside world had moved on, whilst his daily life for 12 years consisted of having the crap beat out of him and not really going anywhere or developing as a person. Laterally, Ted and Constance’s presence in Charlie’s life as he approached the end of his prison hell will have helped him, but Charlie shows the mark prison left on him as he has no problem ruffling the feathers of anyone who gets in his way on the outside. The sort of people that most people would be terrified of defying or facing up to. Charlie quite likes going against what is seen as the natural order.  In fact, the more feathers he ruffles the happier Charlie seems. Though admittedly all those women might help too…

Source: /images.tvrage.com
Source: /images.tvrage.com

“Like Frankie said, I did it my way.” Continue reading “Desert Island Discs with TBkWrm”

Desert Island Discs with Damianista

source: dailybeast.com
source: dailybeast.com

I identify a lot of things in my life with music. Almost every piece of music I love reminds me of some sweet moment, and sometimes a bittersweet one from a particular time in my life. I associate my memories with music so much so that I, in fact, believe we all should have a life soundtrack 🙂

Thus, it has been pretty easy for me to identify the pieces of music that reminds me of Damian Lewis or some characters that he brings to life. The only challenge has been to limit the list to eight. I have tried my best to choose the eight that I feel most strongly about. Continue reading “Desert Island Discs with Damianista”

Crossing Paths

In our first blog the Misfit mentioned making “alternative paths” for your favourite characters. You could have them deviate from the canon of the show because you are unhappy with it or just because you want to play around with different viewpoints. This brings us to this month’s blog which is crossing paths i.e. take characters from at least two different universes…say for example Life & Homeland and weave their stories together. Imagine Charlie Crews and Nicholas Brody meeting. They are two characters with similar tortured backgrounds, but who dealt with the aftermath of imprisonment very differently. Charlie was not for being anybody’s puppet and took full control of his life once he had escaped his imprisoned hell whereas, physically Brody may have escaped his cell, but mentally he never did. What would Charlie think of Brody? We also wondered, with the show Billions being picked up, how Damian’s characters on Showtime would interact if their paths crossed. Would Brody and Bobby respect each other or tear the other down? Continue reading “Crossing Paths”

Life with Charlie Crews


I want to be the unwobbling pivot at the center of an ever-revolving universe. I want to be still  – Charlie Crews

Continuing the theme of Damian Lewis playing Americans, we come to Life, a series which lasted for two seasons on network TV.

Like Nicholas Brody, Charlie Crews in Life is unfairly imprisoned and, because he’s a cop, is brutalized while in prison. The series begins just as he’s released and tries to integrate back into a life he hasn’t known for 12 years. He finds that everyone he loved believed he was guilty and is lost to him: his father kept his mother from visiting until she died and his wife got remarried. While in isolation for his own protection in prison, Crews had started to question his own innocence and there are a few moments, as the series progresses, when the audience is led to question his innocence too. Also like Brody, Crews finds peace and escape from the injustices around him in a book. For Brody, it was the Quran, for Crews, it is A Path to Zen.

zen
source: NBC

Continue reading “Life with Charlie Crews”