Ryan Phillippe will be CBS’s Frankenstein crime solver

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

With his series Shooter having run its course on USA Network, Ryan Phillippe is now taking the lead role on a new show: the CBS project that was originally announced with the title Frankenstein but is now being called Alive. As in, "It's alive!"

"A modern interpretation of the classic Frankenstein tale in a cop procedural setting", Alive is written by Jason Tracey and will star Phillippe as 

Mark Escher, a San Francisco homicide detective who’s mysteriously brought back to life after being killed in the line of duty. But as he resumes his old life and he and his wife Elizabeth realize he isn’t the same person he used to be, they zero in on the strange man behind his resurrection: Dr. Victor Frankenstein.

As previously reported, Saidah Arrika Ekulona will be playing Escher's boss Captain Mills. New additions to the cast Katrina Law and Aaron Staton will be taking on the roles of Elizabeth and Dr. Frankenstein, respectively.

Deadline offers a bit more information on the characters: 

Phillippe's Escher, a San Francisco police investigator, was presumed dead after an attack and destructive fire at his home. Six months later, he shockingly reappears and is reunited with his wife, Elizabeth. But something has changed. A shadow has fallen across his sunny disposition, and he’s haunted by visions of the case he was working on when he died. He and Elizabeth will seek answers about who shot and abducted him, and what was done to him.

Law's Elizabeth Lavenza, a pathologist/medical examiner, is stunned when her husband returns from the dead, and though she’s thrilled to have him back, she knows there’s a secret behind his disappearance, his reappearance and his new personality – and she thinks she knows exactly who’s responsible.

Staton's Victor Frankenstein is a brilliant, slightly odd and driven – perhaps obsessed – scientist who is working on a secret, cutting-edge project. On the run from an ethics board in China, Victor is back in the U.S., where he works in a lab and is very involved in whatever it is that’s going on with Escher. He’s also Escher’s wife’s ex.

Tracey is executive producing Alive with pilot director Uta Briesewitz and Elementary creator Rob Doherty.

I am very uncertain about this show, but I will be interested in hearing reactions to it if it goes to series.