To Love and Die (2008) Online

To Love And Die is apparently a series made in 2007 but delayed. The short movie length pilot was actually quite good. Funny, insightful and odd and with great characters and interaction. It is about a young woman who never knew her dad and doesn't seem to fit in normal society. When she finds her dad, it turns out he runs a hit agency that only kills bad guys - which she joins. Like I said, odd. I have no idea where they can take the stories from there.

I don't know if USA plans to show the whole 12 episodes, but if they do, I will watch them. If not, I intend to keep the pilot with my movies to watch again. 01/02/2008 SciFiOne

It will be a great shame if this pilot is not picked up for a full series. I'm pretty picky about my TV shows, but this was a very positive surprise. It's basically an action comedy about a girl - Hildy - with a slightly messy emotional life. She's nothing like her mother, so on the advice of her shrink she seeks out the father she's never known, to see if confronting him can help her get her act together. He's an assassin. And lo and behold, now everything comes together for Hildy. She has all the skills and inclinations necessary to become an assassin herself - even if some parts of her life stay messed up.

Sounds silly? It is. And heaps of fun. Recently I was reading Robert Heinlein's novel The Cat Who Walks Through Walls. It's also a light-hearted story about protagonists with a tendency to casually kill people, but Heinlein doesn't manage to get the tone of it quite right. It feels a bit uncomfortable to have these people just callously off somebody and not caring about what they've done. This TV show, however, gets it right! It successfully pulls off being a comedy about assassins, making sure that you see it primarily in a humorous light. That's quite an achievement.

And then of course one has to mention Shiri. Cute, adorable, brown-eyed Shiri. She has never looked better than she does here, nor has she ever acted better. Her character has an ebullience and warmth and vitality that I only hope for Ms. Appleby and everyone around her that she also has in real life. She is to die for. This is a show I will follow religiously if it becomes a full-fledged series.

Lastly, I will compare this to another favorite TV show of mine starring Ivan Sergei: the Canadian "Once A Thief". It has an extremely similar tone; a very similar sense of humor. "To Love And Die", however, is more professionally produced, and has a more eye-catching star! :-) Very entertaining. REALLY hope this gets a chance to continue...

8 out of 10. Hm, maybe even 9... Yeah, 9. Eye-candy of the highest order.

I only caught the last hour of the pilot movie on late night Sleuth Channel. I was immediately absorbed in the movie and truly enjoyed it to the end! I only wish I could have seen it from the beginning. It had humor and drama and an excellent cast! Tim Mattheson and Shiri Appleby showed an excellent connection as dad and daughter. The supporting cast helped me to feel as though I had been watching them all together in a continuing series forever! I don't know how or where to get the entire movie or the first in the series that was never picked up. I think USA really dropped the ball when they didn't continue on with this show. They have some incredible series on their channel and this would have made an excellent addition to their line-up.

This came on TV posing as a film... it wasn't until it ended with so many questions left unanswered that I realised it must have been either (badly) setting itself up for a sequel or it was a TV pilot. Impressed by it, I discovered that it was indeed intended as a pilot, though the fact that there hasn't been an announcement yet of a bona fide series only goes to show how stupid TV executives are - we can get crap like SHIELD and a million cop/hospital/lawyer clones, but something original and genuinely entertaining is shunned.

Bickering aside, the plot follows the incredibly cute Hildie, who, due to daddy problems arising from never having known him, cannot commit to a relationship. This easily could have gone into the awful Sex and the City territory, but instead we're given the impression that she's kind of a prude, which is refreshing and further adds to her character's charm.

Seeking out her father to try to get over her "ailment", Hildie discovers that he's the head of a small team of assassins who only kill bad people and, with each having a very distinct personality, they all become very likable as Hildie attempts to impress her dad in order to stay in his life.

This sets up more problems for her already damaged psyche, giving the programme the option to go deeper/darker if it ever chose to, providing more longevity to a series whose flippant tone may begin to lose a viewer's attention after a couple of series.

Filled with interesting supporting characters such as her over-bearing mother (herself a former killer?), a sister/best friend who drags Hildie's romance concerns to the surface whilst constantly complaining of being married to an apparently perfect man and a secret shrink whose face is never revealed, the "film" comes to a close just as you're waiting for it to *really* get going, which, given that it was so much fun, is so damn frustrating that it failed to continue.

Really fun, light hearted, and with a teeny tiny crossbow.