I watched the pilot for Jeff Goldblum’s new series, “Raines.” I’d heard it described as being about a police detective who sees dead people. This is only partially true. If that were the case, it would be a complete rip-off of “Medium.” Goldblum’s character, Raines, is indeed a Los Angeles Police Detective, and he does see the victims of the murders he investigates as if they were alive and talking to him. The twist is that they’re all in his head, completely a figment of his imagination. He works alone, and the victims manifest themselves for him so that he can try to verbally work through the crime on his own. The victims can’t tell him who committed the crime – being imaginary, they only know what he knows. I’ve never been a huge Jeff Goldblum fan. Sometimes I can tolerate him, most of the time I’m put off by his oddness. But this show is like Goldblum grown up. He’s got the same delivery you know so well, but he seems to have matured. I found the pilot to be very well directed, and they did some very cool things with visual effects as they made the victims appear and disappear. I’ve put it on my Season Pass, we’ll see how it goes. Of course, because I like it, it will probably be cancelled in another week.

The song of the day is Flesh For Lulu’s “Postcards From Paradise” off their 1987 album Long Live the New Flesh. This band is what we would have called post-modern back in the day, meaning it sounded new and different and not quite commercial enough for a bunch of teeny boppers to buy a million albums. I don’t know much about the band, but I like the sound of this song.