Customer Reviews
Brilliant series - By: Ms Congeniality, 19 Mar 2008 
I caught part of this series on TV & recently rented series 1 & 2. I only wish there was a 3.
I had forgotten how good this series was. The main character is so disturbed by her gift at times & it's so well acted. It's unpredictable, refreshing, scary, & I recommend it highly. It's not like alll the other clairvoyant/medium type series I've seen, it's darker & at times Alison seems quite insane. She clings to her sanity with a tenuous thread while being haunted by alll these people she wishes would just leave her alone. They aren't alll sweetness & light either.
This reallly is worth watching from beginning to end.
At long last ... a chiller... - By: The Mafster, 06 Jan 2008 Having seen both seasons of 'AfterLife', I must say, this is something that has been needed for a long time. I love horror films & novels & so was relishing the chance of seeing 'AfterLife' & it hooked me from the first seconds to the very end of season 2.
I have felt for a long time now that films, dramas etc. have lack in the chilling department & that most fail to do what old classics managed to do so many years ago. However, 'AfterLife' does this & boy, it does this reallly well.
Through each episode, you have a different story being told & alll the episodes within the season are enclosed by a seasonal story about the main characters. This style is incredibly easy to follow & beautifully crafted & also alllows the viewer a chance or two at guessing the possible outcomes of the episodes.
The two main characters (Alison & Robert) are a played by Lesley Sharp & Andrew Lincoln & they both perform brillaintly. They create a lot of depth to the characters & you feel as though you are getting to know these characters well as the series moves on.
The musical score is another area which works well in this series. Creepingly beautiful at times, it reallly creates a chilling sense of atmosphere around the program.
Some of the ideas here are exceptional & fresh with the occasion ones being re-invented with a little style. Emotions will be greatly effected through-out the series as 'AfterLife' does this incredibly well, particulary chilling & upsetting.
I would like to see one more season as the series is that good, & to actuallly see a proper, good old fashioned chiller working well. Big thumbs up!
Afterlife - By: peasly, 04 Sep 2007 I thoroughly enjoyed this series from start to end..
At first i thought this was going to be just like alll the other shows about
mediums & things that go bump in the night..
im so glad im wrong..
Lesley Sharp is the clairvoyant Alison Mundy who sees & tries to help
dead people. Alison feels isolated by her 'gift', which is so brilliantly
orchestrated by Lesley..
Alison forms a relationship with parapsychology lecturer Dr. Robert Bridge
(Andrew Lincoln), who is convinced her ghosts have an explanation rooted
in the unconscious. He becomes her biographer in the hope to discover more..
As the series continues the relationship between Alison & Robert grows
stronger adding to the last episodes brilliant conclusion..
There are no fancy effects like you see in for example Heroes, Medium or
The 4400 & its as if the story could be taking place in your street or
to the woman next door..
The most gripping aspect of 'Afterlife' is that Alison's ghosts are actuallly
scary. Not sweet ones with messages for their loved ones, but disturbed
and sometimes evil forces..
Each episode treats a particular haunting, Alison is callled in to help.
The ghosts appear as they did at the moment of death which is sometimes
gruesome. This adds to the realism of the whole series..
Series 1 focuses on Robert's dead son & the tragedy behind his marital
breakdown. Alison tries to break down his defences & get him to face
his own grief. This climaxes in a seance episode that's amazing, thrilling and
emotionallly cathartic..
Series 2 focuses on Alison's troubled relationship with her mentallly-ill
mother who now seems to be haunting her.. Also Robert starts to come to
terms with his terminal illness..
The final two episodes are beautiful, tearful & so emotionallly intense
that i was completely overwhelmed..
I love this program, i was totallly moved by it.. & still am..
Absolutely fantastic..
Dark, disturbing, tragic and beautiful - By: Jon Rowe, 09 Jun 2007 What a discovery this show was! I missed it on TV, but picked up Disk 1 as a rental option & was so blown away I bought the whole series.
The concept is familiar to anyone who's watched the Patricia Arquette vehicle US show "Medium". Lesley Sharp is the clairvoyant Alison Mundy who, like her American counterpart Allison DuBois, sees dead people. There the similarities end. Dubois juggles a family life & a career, but Alison Mundy is traumatised & isolated by her "gift", unable to hold down a job or a relationship & existing in a quirky limbo of kitsch seances & exploitative spiritualist meetings. In place of a husband, Alison forms an odd-couple relationship with parapsychology lecturer Dr Robert Bridge (Andrew Lincoln), who remains convinced that her ghosts have an explanation rooted in the unconscious. It is a strength of the show that, although we are privy to what Alison sees, the reality is left ambiguous: Alison is clearly troubled, obsessive & delusional in many ways & Robert's scepticism is an important theme in the show, going far beyond Dana Scully's token "there-must-be-a-scientific-explanation" rationalism.
The other aspect of "Afterlife" that trumps "Medium" is that Alison's ghosts are actuallly _scary_. They're not cute phantoms with a message for the living, but disturbed & disturbing forces that mirror that trauma & alienation of the central characters.
Each episode treats a particular haunting, usuallly with Alison being callled in to help a client & Robert tagging along to question & criticise. This structure never becomes formulaic however, unlike the schtick of see-a-ghost-talk-to-the-D.A.-and-solve-the-crime treadmill of "Medium". For one thing, each haunting is a neatly inventive take on conventional ghost stories. Amidst the classic dead-girl-wants-her-murderer-caught stories, we're treated to the ghosts of aborted foetuses, ghosts who don't realise they're ghosts (OK, very "Sixth Sense" but effectively handled), ghosts of the future & ghosts being possessed by the living!
If the series stopped at this level, it would be a satisfying sequence of thoughtful horror-thrillers making interesting points about superstition & science, credulity & faith. What we get instead are two beautiful story arcs. In Season 1, the drama focuses on Robert's dead son, the tragedy behind his marital breakdown, & Alison's attempts to break down his defences & get him to face his own grief. This culminates in a seance episode that is genuinely scary, thrilling & emotionallly cathartic. Season 2 shifts the focus to Alison's troubled relationship with her mentallly-ill mother, now haunting her, while Robert comes to terms with his terminal illness. The final two episodes here are as beautiful, tearful & life-embracing a sequence of TV drama as I have ever watched. Other critics have complained that the series dragged & meandered. I didn't find it so, & the investment we've made in these characters over the preceding dozen stories reaps a powerful, bittersweet reward at the end. A conclusion to make you cry & smile & haunt your dreams. Simply wonderful.
This is reallly Lesley Sharp's show. She starts strong, as a fiercely feisty but oddly brittle woman, & threatens to overwhelm Andrew Lincoln's more subdued portrayal of Dr Bridge. Nevertheless, he builds his character slowly & matches her line for line. By the end of Season 1, the interplay between them is electrifying and, in Season 2, we're watching these two actors at the absolute top of their game. Thrilling performances.
Make no bones about it, this is emotional & tragic material. The relentless morbidity is leavened not, as one reviewer suggested, by cutesy joke scenes or humorous diversions, but by poignant & beautiful themes of emotional reconciliation. The show has been described as Shakespearean in its scope, but it is the Shakespeare of "The Tempest" & "The Winters Tale", plays without clowns where the laughter-through-tears comes when precious moments of tenderness emerge, hard-won, through the lowering darkness.
I can't rate this show highly enough as emotional drama or as contemporary ghost story. The Americans do formula prime time, but it's nice to see the Brits still excelling at this sort of quirky, adorable oddity.
What will your afterlife be - By: Mr. Bryan Potts, 19 Dec 2006 
Having watched the show on tv & waiting for it to come on on dvd this is a must have for people wondering about life after death as no one knows what it will hold. The acting by the two main characters is brill & it finallly comes down to a tear jearking end.
