Are you awake or are you dreaming? This question is constantly on the mind of Police Detective Michael Britten (Jason Isaacs). The show opens with the Detective rolling down a steep embankment in an SUV along with his wife and son. It’s a nasty crash and the viewer is given no indication of what caused it ,and other than the Detective surviving it’s not clear whether the son or the wife are going to be OK.
The show takes little time launching into the alternate timelines. In one reality the Detective’s wife is alive and in the other his son is alive. When he goes to sleep in one world he wakes up in the other. The show uses a subtle change in the color of the camera lens to help to offset the two realities, and in both he is seeing a different psychiatrist who is doing their best to convince him that their reality is the real reality and the other version of reality he sees is just a dream.
When the detective isn’t at home waking up to one of his realities or at his psychiatrist office he is busy working a homicide case in both realities. In each reality he is working a completely different case and even has a different partner in each reality. To further complicate the audiences attempts at trying to distinguish which of the Detectives realities is the real one, he begins to solve the cases in each reality by using a clue he saw in the other reality.
Are you confused yet? Cause I know I am. Both realities seem so realistic and yet the clues that lead the detective to solving the cases sort of bleed through. At times I found it heard to remember which case was tied to the son or wife reality. However the writers along with the detective have a clever solution to this. In the reality in which his wife is alive the detective wears a red rubber-band and in the reality in which his son is alive he wears a green rubber-band.
Both of the psychiatrists make interesting points in trying to convince the Detective that their reality is the real one and both tell the detective that as soon as he comes to terms with who really died in the crash the alternate reality will cease to exist. The Detective makes it abundantly clear that he would rather not know whether he is awake or dreaming if it meant giving up one of the realities. Both psychiatrists also ask the Detective if he remembers what caused the crash and if he remembers that his blood alcohol level was elevated. He denies that he was intoxicated, however he cannot tell either psychiatrist what caused the wreck. I’m pretty sure that what ever caused the wreck may play an important role later on in the series.
While I’m not sure what’s really going on in the Detective’s mind or his dual realities I can definitely throw out a couple theories to my fellow viewers. Perhaps the detective is really the one that died and this is some strange version of limbo, perhaps he’s in a coma. It’s definitely to early to say which of his dual realities is really his reality or if either of them are real, and I wouldn’t want to know, at least not yet. I have a feeling this series is going to be an exciting ride that keeps viewers guessing right up till the end. I definitely can’t wait for the next episode to learn more about these alternate realities and to see next weeks cases.