Dead Like Me is an American television comedy-drama starring Ellen Muth and Mandy Patinkin as grim reapers who "live" and work in Seattle, Washington. Filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, the show was created by Bryan Fuller for the Showtime network, where it ran for two seasons in 2003 and 2004 before cancellation. Fuller left the show five episodes into the first season due to creative differences; creative direction of Dead Like Me was then taken over by executive producers John Masius and Stephen Godchaux. A direct-to-DVD movie entitled Dead Like Me: Life After Death was released on February 17, 2009, with an option to restart the series.

Eighteen-year-old Georgia "George" Lass (played by Muth) is the show's protagonist and narrator. George dies early in the pilot episode. She becomes one of the "undead," a grim reaper. George soon learns that a Reaper's job is to remove the souls of people, preferably right before they die, and escort them until they move on into their afterlife. George's death leaves her mother (Cynthia Stevenson) and the rest of her family behind at a point when her relationships with them were on shaky ground.

The show explores the "lives" and experiences of a small team of such Reapers, as well as the post-mortem changes in George and her family as they deal with George's death.

Synopsis

Georgia Lass is aloof and emotionally distant from her family and shies away from her life. After dropping out of college, she takes a temp job through Happy Time Temporary Services. On her lunch break of her first day, she is hit and killed by a toilet seat from the de-orbiting of the Mir space station. She is informed shortly after her death that, rather than moving on to the "great beyond," she will become "a grim reaper" in the "External Influence" division, responsible for reaping souls of people who die in accidents (many of which are of a Rube Goldberg-style in their complexity), suicides and homicides.

Through the first season, George has trouble adjusting to her circumstances: collecting souls, while holding a day job at Happy Time. By the second season, she has mostly adjusted to her new role, though still has unresolved issues with her life and her afterlife.

George's family is struggling to deal with her death. Her mother, Joy, is depressed, and visibly repressing it, while Clancy, her father, is cheating on Joy. George's sister, Reggie, acts out — stealing toilet seats from neighbors and school, and hanging them on a tree — before being sent to therapy by Joy. She clings to the belief that George visits her, but is starting to lie to cover this up. At the start of the second season, the family begins to break apart as Joy and Clancy divorce.

Nearly all of the main characters have some form of depression, but they cope with it in different ways: Mason resorts to alcohol and drugs; Daisy puts on a veneer of perkiness; and Roxy is physically and verbally aggressive. Rube and George are more straightforward about their sadness.

Cast and characters

Reapers

[Cast.jpg|thumb|Dead Like Me cast photo showing [[death (personification)|reapers] George, Rube, Daisy, Roxy, and Mason.]]

• Georgia "George" Lass (Ellen Muth): (1985–2003) The show's protagonist, an 18 year old college dropout. In addition to being a grim reaper she has a day job at Happy Time Temporary Services, under the assumed name "Millie Hagen". She was killed on June 27, 2003 when a toilet seat from the de-orbiting Mir space station fell on her.

• Rube Sofer (Mandy Patinkin): (1876–1926) The head of the group of Reapers. He is responsible for passing out reaping assignments, nearly always on yellow post-it notes. He becomes a father figure for George (whom he calls "Peanut") in her grim-reaping afterlife, and had a daughter named Rose ("Rosie"). The manner of his death has yet to be revealed, but in one episode his name and picture are seen on an old "Wanted" poster declaring that he was a bank robber.

• Mason (Callum Blue): (1939–1966) A British drug addict, alcoholic and thief, but a likable person. He acts as an "older brother" figure to George, and is attracted to Daisy. He is originally from London, UK, and he died in 1966 by drilling a hole in his head to achieve the permanent high.

• Roxy Harvey (Jasmine Guy): (before 1960 – 1982) A strong-willed, sassy, independent woman. Her day job is initially as a meter maid, but she later becomes a police officer. While physically the second oldest Reaper in the group, Roxy is the second newest to the afterlife. She was strangled to death in 1982 by a jealous roommate with leg warmers, which Roxy had invented.

• Betty Rohmer (Rebecca Gayheart): (1899–1926) A confident, well-adjusted Reaper in the first five episodes. She keeps Polaroids of each of the souls she reaped in department store shopping bags, organized by personality type. George begins to bond with her early in the first season, but she "hitches a ride" into the afterlife with one of the souls George had reaped and is never seen again. She died in 1926 while cliff-diving with her fiancé. In a similar fashion to the reaping of George, though Rube did not personally reap Betty, he did collect her soul, as shown in the season 1 episode "Reaping Havoc".

• Daisy Adair (Laura Harris): (before 1915 – 1938) A spoiled actress who often tells stories about her (alleged) sexual escapades with classic film stars. She died on December 13, 1938 of asphyxiation/smoke inhalation in Marietta, Georgia, though she originally claimed this occurred on the set of Gone with the Wind. Her last thought before she died was, "Why has no one ever loved me?". Daisy is sent from New York City to Seattle in episode six as a replacement when Betty leaves.

George's Family

• Reggie Lass (Britt McKillip): George's younger sister. Though George ignored her while she was alive, Reggie is very much affected by the death of her sister. She believes that George's ghost still roams about the city and visits their home from time to time – technically, she is right. Due to her eccentric, borderline-pathological way of grieving her sister's death, Reggie is placed in therapy.
• Joy Lass (Cynthia Stevenson): George's mother. She is a virgo who has a pathological fear of balloons and who hates the word moist because she thinks "it sounds pornographic". She likes to have order, rules, and control in her life. Other characters in the show, such as Joy's own mother, believe that her obsession with control is how she copes with denial of her own out-of-control life: her daughter George's death; her younger daughter's rather unconventional style of grieving George's death; and her divorce from her husband.
• Clancy Lass (Greg Kean): George's father. He is an English Professor at the University of Washington. His relationship with Joy begins to seriously deteriorate after George's death. He has an affair with one of his Shakespeare class students, which becomes the final death knell to the marriage.

Happy Time Temporary Services

• Delores Herbig (Christine Willes): George's boss. Delores disliked George, but becomes friends with "Millie", for whom she becomes something of a maternal figure, offering advice and support, and on one occasion bailing "Millie" out of jail. Delores is optimistic, dynamic, and motivated; she has an active Internet presence through various social and dating sites, and runs a website (her home life on webcam) called 'Getting Things Done With Delores'. Occasionally Delores will try to empathise with George by revealing startling facts about her past – including a cocaine habit, tattoos, and "all those restraining orders".

• Crystal Smith (Crystal Dahl): Happy Time's mysterious receptionist whose Happy Time record indicates that she speaks several languages and previously served as a special forces operative in Southeast Asia. Crystal once helped the Reapers organize into computer files a collection of souls' last thoughts. She also dressed as a grim reaper for Halloween. She is also seen to steal great amounts of posted notes (like the ones reapers use to write down their assignments) from Happy Time. The evidence suggests that Crystal is not a Reaper (the most obvious fact is that Crystal "sees" George as her un-George Millie incarnation, whereas a fellow Reaper would see her still as George), however her behavior around George and the other Reapers (such as helping them file Last Thoughts) suggests that she is aware of their other-worldly activities.

Miscellaneous characters

• Kiffany (Patricia Idlette): The Reapers' usual server at "Der [1] Waffel Haus". She is a quiet observer of the Reaper group. The characters talk openly about reaping in front of her, suggesting she may know what they are and what they do. Some of the characters believe her to be psychic.

Episodes

Each episode lasts approximately 45 minutes and usually follows the events of a single day.

DVD releases

Season	Release dates	Includes

Season 1