Michael Britten (Jason Isaacs) is an ordinary kind of cop – decent, brave, intuitive, occasionally short-tempered, perhaps, yet otherwise unremarkable.

A good detective and a good man, but at first glance, nothing unusual or special. He’s grieving, following the death of his son in a car crash he and his wife Hannah (The 4400‘s Laura Allen) survived, but the two of them are trying to come to terms with their loss as best they can. She’s repainting the house, switching jobs, talking about having another child – moving on, in other words – but he is less willing to let go or to change.

This is hardly surprising, really, because every night, he goes to bed and wakes up in an alternate reality that’s parallel, similar, but with one massive difference: his son Rex (Dylan Minnette) is still alive. It’s Hannah who was killed in the accident.

Michael Britten is an ordinary man living two ordinary lives simultaneously – and that’s what makes him extraordinary. Whilst continuing to work as a cop on both sides of this incredible divide, wearing a red wristband in the reality in which his wife survives and a green one in the other (this, along with some helpful alternate aesthetic changes to the colour tone of the visuals and some more subtle distinctions in the emotional tenor of things, is the principal clue to direct viewers towards which half of his metaphysical double-life Britten is presently inhabiting), the detective struggles to work out which reality is real, or if they both are, whilst concurrently trying to remember the events leading up to the fatal crash which has split his life in such an astonishing way.

The comparison that immediately leaps to mind is Life on Mars – road accident leads to bizarre and baffling things, with weekly adventures in conventional policing balanced by the principal character’s attempts to work out whether what is happening to him is real or dreamlike – but Awake has none of the nostalgic return to the past or larger-than-life, loutish likeability of a Gene Hunt to counterbalance Sam Tyler’s convention.

Instead, Jason Isaacs (who is coming to look more like the missing link between John Thaw and Daniel Craig with each passing day) has to carry the cumbersome weight of the show’s premise entirely on his own. That he mostly succeeds in making the humourless and hurting Britten enjoyable and engrossing is testament to his quality as an actor and innate congeniality – and unlike in last year’s tolerable but lightweight BBC series Case Histories, the former is as prevalent as the latter.

The character’s pain is understated, but it’s as visible as if it’s etched in his skin; the scene in which he wakes up, wristband-less and confused as to which reality he’s in is a superb portrayal of disorientation and grief, and one genuinely feels sympathy for his plight. We might not know yet what has left Britten in this segregated state, but we’re certainly rooting for him to find a happy resolution.

It’s also to be hoped that his detective work becomes a little more interesting than the two (necessarily) bog-standard cases he and his partners – weary, long-term cohort Isaiah ‘Bird’ Freeman, played by Steve Harris, in the green wristband reality and eager to learn rookie Efran Vega (Wilmer Valderrama) in the red – are faced with in the pilot: a kidnapped girl and a gunman killing cabbies. It’s clear that Britten will be using his knowledge of one reality to help him in the other, but here it’s little more than a spark to illuminate two unexceptional crimes.

In forthcoming episodes, free from the constraints of having to fit the subplots around the explanation of Britten’s two lives, the cases will no doubt be taking centre stage – and if they’re only as interesting as what’s on display here, Awake runs the risk of becoming Half-Asleep.

Airs at 10pm on Friday 4th May 2012 on Sky Atlantic.

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