Galileo

I've started to watch a new show on accident. It's called Galileo and it was one of the hottest shows in Japan last year. It seems to be heavily inspired by our criminal dramas on CBS (the premise really screams Numbers while the main actor really screams Japanese David Caruso), but in truth it's based on a Japanese novel of the same name that recently won a prestigious book award.

So why do I like Galileo? And why do I think it's worth your time to be reading this? PARTICULAR SHOUT-OUT TO JAY that he needs to watch this because I think it is frighteningly right up his alley.

There are two main characters in this criminal drama. One is the titular "Galileo" (Prof. Yuukawa), a physics professor at a local university who displays a remarkably Holmesian outlook on life. "There are no supernatural occurences; only phenomena whose natural answers remain to be found out" kind of a guy. The other is a female rookie detective who fills the shoes of the Dr. Watson character. Here's a rundown of the first three episodes to give Jay (and you, perhaps) an idea of why this show is right up his/your alley:

Episode 1: a boy spontaneously combusts in front of his punk friends. Most people don't know what to make of it; some are willing to believe he really did just catch on fire out of nowhere; but "Galileo" sets out to prove both the identity of the culprit and the method with which he seared this boy's brain.

Episode 2: a man accused of murder claims that he was sleeping in his red car across the river at the time of the incident. He has no alibi save for one little boy who claims he had an out-of-body experience and saw the red car as he flew up over the buildings near his condo. Investigation of the crime scene reveals that there is no way for anyone to have seen the car unless they really were floating up high in the sky. Galileo remarks that he doesn't believe that the boy had an out-of-body experience or flew over rooftops, but he does believe the boy saw the car from his bedroom window.

Episode 3: An old woman has a heart attack and one of her friends goes missing. Investigation of the home reveals that the old woman's nephew is now living there with his wife and another married couple. But they leave the house every night at 8pm and don't return until 9pm. The detective from the police squad discovers that the house is literally plastered with Japanese spell tags ... and she is scared out of her wits when the house begins to violently shake even though none of the other houses nearby are. "It's a poltergeist!" she declares. While Galileo believes her that the house shook, he doesn't believe that it was caused by a ghost of either the deceased old lady or her missing friend.

In all three episodes, people insist to Galileo that he's narrow-minded for not being willing to believe in the paranormal or supernatural, but he always proves them wrong with his cool-headed approach to science and criminal investigations. This is precisely why I think Jay would like this show so much: it really champions a lot of Jay's own personal ideals and tries to educate people out of believing in superstitions or miracles. The other reason I think he would like it is that it will give him ideas for his own scripts some day, since (a) Galileo was ridiculously popular during its run last fall and (b) it deals with subject material I think he would be interested in writing about.

Info: http://wiki.d-addicts.com/Galileo