Richard Lawler

Senior News Editor

One of the interesting wrinkles of internet TV has been the way it upends traditional TV release schedules. Suddenly diving into an entire TV series at once instead of being drip fed over several months has had an impact on both creators and viewers.



Sure, I binge watched with DVDs and Blu-rays too, but with a subscription app the level of investment is different, and it affects the shows I choose. Unfortunately, my latest binge Life Sentence found a spot where the lines blurred -- after I watched every episode of the show on Netflix, I found out CW had decided to cancel it months earlier.

Life Sentence upends a Lifetime Network-ish story by starting after the point where one would typically end: a young woman given a terminal cancer diagnosis marries the love of her life, prepares to say goodbye to her friends and family and then... is cured. While the medical explanations for this turn of events seem a bit loose -- and in some ways dangerously optimistic about the potential of untested drug trials -- the drama initially comes from the people around the main character, Stella, and the secrets they've been keeping while she was sick.