Shades Posits the Afterlife
Is there life after death? According to the 1999 six-part British television series Shades, there is, and it isn’t all that different from life before death (the “beforedeath”?). There are important lessons to be had from this drama about two people who meet after death; for example, always wear comfortable shoes because you’ll be wearing the shoes you’ve got on when you die forever. Since you’ll be doing a lot of walking in the afterlife, it’s probably a good idea to wear shoes all the time in the beforedeath so you won’t be stuck walking around the city barefoot.
Maeve (Dervla Kirwan) is the victim of a hit-and-run driver who, much like the Maitlands (Beetlejuice), doesn’t at first realize that she is dead. Mark (Stephen Tompkinson) is a very happily married man whose wife is expecting their second child. Mark goes into the hospital for a routine hernia operation, and dies on the table while his wife goes into labor and delivers the son he so badly wanted. Mark has the foresight when leaving the hospital to steal a nice suit of clothes, or else he’d be wandering around the city in a hospital gown.
Maeve and Mark discover that if they touch the living, they will get a terrible shock, and that they can be seen and heard by those who didn’t know them in the beforedeath, but not by those they knew. The people who do see and hear them will forget the encounter after they leave. The two shades meet up on the streets of London and reluctantly form a friendship. In the afterlife there is no hunger or thirst, and no need for sleep, bathing, shaving, working, or changing clothes.
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