"Life:" "Can you remember being happy?"

Any other season, "Life" would not be on anyone's schedule - it had pretty low ratings last year, though it did actually improve, a smidgen, as the season wore on. As it is, I wouldn't get my hopes up too much for it, since after a couple of Monday airings, NBC's consigning it to the Siberia known as Friday night.

What kept the show hanging in there is Damian Lewis' wry, understated performances as Charlie Crews as a fruit-munching L.A. detective who returns to the job after being wrongly imprisoned. Lewis plays Charlie as a guy who enjoys being smarter than anyone else in the room, but without any hauteur. They've added a new reason to tune in - Donal Logue's amusing turn as Charlie's new boss, Captain Tidwell, who's a bit of a jerk and could use a filter of some sort between his brain and his mouth.

Tonight's episode begins as many cop shows do - with a scantily clad dead woman. She's found in a trunk; beneath her body, the number 1 has been stenciled into the base. Trunks 2 and 3 turn up quickly, with more corpses; the victims all suffocated inside the trunks (they didn't seem to try to kick their way out). A luggage shop owner tells Charlie he sold 10 trunks to a mysterious guy. How many trunks can they keep from being filled?

Next Monday's episode offers an inventive murder: A scientist at a lab engaging in animal testing is found frozen after inhaling from a tank of liquid nitrogen - seems someone switched out his oxygen tank. Charlie picks at him, and the guy shatters into pieces. Suspects include members of an animal-rights group.

The mysteries are serviceable (tonight's is predictable), but in both episodes, out of sort of nowhere characters kind of snap in that melodramatic way where they confess to the crime and then rail against society in general. "Life" is fair; sometimes, "Life" can be good. But as the crooks will tell you - loudly, histrionically - "Life" isn't great.

- "Life:" 10 p.m. tonight and Oct. 6; also, 10 p.m. Fridays, NBC (Channel 4).