LIFETIME’S new dramedy, “Drop Dead Diva,” is a sur prisingly charming, strictly-female show about a skinny model who dies suddenly and ends up inhabiting the body of a dead plus-size attorney who gets shocked back to life. Got it? Good.
While it sounds pedantic, downright corny, and done to death, “Drop Dead Diva” is actually fun, funny and sometimes and in some ways even touching.
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The show begins with two deaths. Gorgeous Deb (Brooke D’Orsay) buys it while driving, applying lip gloss and talking on the phone on the way to a “Price Is Right” model audition — at the same time that Jane the attorney (Brooke Elliot) is facing a crazed gunman in her office.
When Deb finds herself on the escalator to the Great Beyond, she’s initially confused and then angry. After all, she was supposed to be at an audition. The Gatekeeper (Ben Feldman) looks her up on the computer and finds that she was neither a good person or a bad one — a big zero. Refusing to miss her shot at “The Price Is Right,” she hits a key on his heavenly keyboard, and shoots herself (or her soul, at any rate) straight into the body of the dying and very plump attorney.
Waking up as a plus-size brainiac is nearly as bad as, well, acne or even, God forbid, wrinkles! But she’s got no choice.
Meantime, Deb has left behind a gorgeous attorney fiance (Jackson Hurst), and you can figure out where that’s going.
The show, while seemingly as shallow as Deb’s character, actually attacks (and it’s a hit-over-the-head-with-a-sledgehammer kind of attack) women’s body images and how self-esteem can be determined by something as minor as weight.
Minor? Right. One word of caution: You aren’t going to suddenly wish to be a plus-size nor will one series make you suddenly decide to roar your delight at not being able to shed a pound. But at least its heart is in the right place.
If Elliot looks vaguely familiar, it’s not because she appeared in Rosie O’Donnell’s very sort-lived Broadway musical, “Taboo,” which everyone hated but me, but because she looks more than vaguely like Rosie (who appears in an upcoming episode) herself.
Other guest stars in future episodes include Liza Minnelli, Delta Burke, Elliott Gould, Sharon Lawrence, Tim Gunn, and yes, even Paula Abdul who plays appropriately enough, a judge — of the legal sort, not the singing sort.
“Drop Dead Diva” Sunday night at 9 on Lifetime