Eternal Law is a short-lived TV show about angels who help humans by becoming lawyers. Unfortunately, fallen angels can also become lawyers and take the opposing side. The show was created by Life on Mars‘ Ashley Pharoah and Matthew Graham. It stars Samuel West, Ukweli Roach, Orla Brady, Hattie Morahan, and Tobias Menzies. It ran one season before getting cancelled. At the moment, it seems only available on region 2/PAL DVD, so you’ll have to get out your region-free DVD player again. There are some nice behind-the-scenes features on the DVD though, so it’s worth it.
God is a bastard named Mr. Mountjoy who’s annoyed that so many angels have given up their wings to become human in effort to remain with the humans they’ve accidentally fallen in love with. He’s so annoyed, in fact, that he sends a couple of the angels posing as lawyers a nuclear bomb as a threat: If one more angel falls (in love), Mr. Mountjoy will blow up the planet.
Yes, that is the premise of a real TV show.
Don’t knock it, it works. Everybody said the premise for Graham and Pharoah’s previous TV show, Life on Mars, was crazy, too (a cop show that begins with the protagonist getting hit by a car in 2005 and waking up in 1972). It might take you to the end of episode 4 (out of 6) to realize how much you like it, as it did me, but you’ll get there.
So, there’s this plucky choir angel named Tom; and his superior angel called Zak, who’s been in the field so long, he drinks whisky and says curse words and all that really naughty stuff; and there’s their Irish caretaker Ms. Sheringham; and Hannah, Zak’s ex-girlfriend, who Zak is trying really hard not to be in love with because he doesn’t want the world to end, but darn his angelic hormones! Oh, and also a demon/fallen angel called Richard, who is naturally rooting for Zak and Hannah to get back together so they can get on with this blasted apocalypse already.
Unfortunately, after the 6-episode season, Eternal Law was cancelled, so we’ll never know if the world really blows up, but it’s one hell of an epic 6th episode and well-worth a watch. With a world governed by a petty SOB, morality is so complicated that I have no idea who to root for!
Jaime Pond is the editor of Anglonerd. She lives and works in NYC. Follow her on Twitter.
Originally published Feb. 24, 2014
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[…] into next season. Let’s hope it gets picked up. When Pharoah’s previous show Eternal Law did not get picked up after one hell of a cliffhanger, it was devastating to leave those […]
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