BBC America Examines the Afterlife

The conflicted relationship between a psychic medium and a skeptical psychology professor provides the backdrop to a tense new thriller in which everyday people are forced to confront the existence of life after death. Afterlife premieres Thursday, November 30, 2006 9 p.m. ET/10 p.m. PT.



Robert Bridge (Andrew Lincoln, Love Actually, UK version of Teachers) is a psychology lecturer, grieving the loss of his young son Josh, who was killed in a car accident three years earlier. A specialist in the study of psychic mediums, Robert is invited to an evening of clairvoyance where he meets Alison Mundy (Lesley Sharp, Vera Drake, The Full Monty). Reluctant and cautious, she is nothing like the fraudulent psychics that Robert is accustomed to. Alison is different, ever since she was a child she has seen spirits and after a near death experience they have taken over her life – when she passes people in the street she isn’t sure if they are dead or alive, when she lies in bed at night she can’t escape the voices that cry out to her.



Driven by a compulsion to help those around her, Alison seeks to resolve relationships torn apart by death. When her readings provoke an adverse reaction in one of Robert’s own pupils, he begins to study her with the intention of writing about her work and the people she helps. But their association is thrown into crisis when Alison reveals she is in touch with Robert’s dead son.



Their complex and sometimes confrontational relationship develops in six compelling stand-alone stories. In each episode Robert and Alison challenge each other’s ideas about death and the spirit world as they seek to help people whose lives have been torn apart as they’re forced to confront the existence of life after death.