By JOHN DOYLE

Friday, September 3, 2004 - Page R2

Airing this weekend: Fine Living, some froth, a returning Canadian crime drama and one very fine Canadian TV movie.

The movie is The Life (Sunday, CTV, 9 p.m.) and it is grounded in the grim reality of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. But it's not really grim. In fact it's about documenting the darkness and, by doing so, transcending it. Nobody is going to call it cheerfully uplifting, but it sure is life-affirming.

It was inspired by the documentary Through a Blue Lens, a remarkable NFB film about a group of Vancouver policemen who began video-documenting the lives of people on their beat to create an educational tool for use in preventing drug use among young people.

Here, Arnie (Bruce Greenwood) and Tony (Brian Markinson) are two beat cops who know every ravaged face on Skid Row. They know the addicts and the dealers and they've seen all their demons. As the drama opens, another young woman seems to be lost to the world of drugs and prostitution. A teenage runaway, she methodically tears down the posters her parents put up to appeal for help in finding her. Her story is the spine of The Life. It's a matter of wondering if she disappears into the sea of lost souls, or is brought out of it before she sinks.

As Arnie and Tony move through the streets, alleys and bars, it is Arnie who decides that what he sees should be documented and not merely held inside his police-officer's brain. He begins recording people as they tell him how they succumbed to drugs, and became thieves and prostitutes. Some of Arnie's superiors don't like him documenting his beat. Some colleagues are suspicious. But the tactic works. School kids are stunned to hear the stories of people whose lives have been devastated by drugs.

In all of this, one story stands out. That's the story of Crystal, a hooker who clings to her so-called boyfriend and sells herself to buy drugs. It's a stunning performance from Alisen Down. In what is generally a low-key drama, she's obliged to articulate a life in hell, without overdoing it and unbalancing the story. A scene in which she talks to high-school students is simply devastating.

Directed by Lynne Stopkewich (Kissed) and written by Chris Haddock and Alan Di Fiore (Da Vinci's Inquest), The Life often feels like a variation on an episode of Da Vinci's Inquest. Many of the Da Vinci cast turn up. It doesn't have the quiet, elliptical quality of a Da Vinci episode but, like that show, it is about compassion.

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