Living as close as I do to the Canadian border, I would get a lot of Canadian television, but traveling to Toronto or Hamilton was always a treat because for sure I would see an episode of Twice in a Lifetime.
Our neighbors north of the border do some quality television and this was a favorite of mine. People die and they're brought before Judge Othniel of the Heavenly Tribunal and are given a second chance at living their lives again. If they take the deal, and they always do, they're brought back to a point in their lives where they can influence their younger selves on where they went wrong. And Judge Othniel sends an assistant, at first Gordie Brown and second Paul Popowich, to help out.
In season two, Popowich replaced Brown, and I did like him and those episodes better. Popowich was a club kid in real life and in death he's making his afterlife count for more than his actual life did.
But the series abruptly stopped with the death of Al Waxman from open heart surgery. Americans will remember him better from Cagney and Lacey as Lieutenant Samuels. Maybe they could have brought in an another angel, but I guess changing helpers and angels was too much.
Yet the show apparently has great popularity in syndication, six years after the last episode was done. How do you explain the death of an angel though?
My favorite episode is when Popowich is put into the body of a woman to aid a prospective heavenly admittee. That was very funny indeed.
A sad loss this series ended abruptly as it did.
