Over the course of 8 episodes, Chaser tells the story of Eddi Sebastian (Russ Russo).

Eddi is a film editor, someone who spends almost all of time looking over different takes of different scenes and trying to arrange them into the perfect story.  Eddi is also shy, awkward, and so broke that he’s about to get kicked out of his home.  He has a hopeless crush on B-actress Annabel Ruysch (Gia Bay) and he regularly finds himself being bullied by Annabel’s arrogant (and married) boyfriend, Gar Madden (Daniel de Weldon).

When Eddi’s laptop stops working, his replacement comes with a special bonus.  Eddi can now use the laptop to not only edit the movies but also to edit real life.  As he learns via the mysterious Hal, he can edit anything that happens as long as he does so within a 24-hour period.  Anything that he changes becomes his new reality but the editing must be done with a 24-hour period and the laptop must be connected to the internet.

Considering that he is lonely and broke, it is not surprising that, at first, Eddi uses the laptop to his advantage.  Soon, he is waking up next to Annabel and heading off with her to Ohio in hopes of helping her shoot a film that will get into South by Southwest.  Also in Ohio is Fran Rosemarin (Haley Noel Bedocs), a former actress who beat Annabel out for a role and then, after the film was made, abandoned Hollywood and returned to the anonymity of middle America.  While Eddi continually tries to edit his life and Annabel obsesses on what could have been, Fran seems content to plan her wedding, which is also going to be combined with a football watch party.

However, when Gar shows up in Ohio, Eddi is forced to confront the fact that editing life is not as easy (or as harmless) as he assumed.

Directed by Daniel Roemer, Chaser is an intriguingly ambitious series.  Starting out as a comedy about a nerdy editor who uses his powers to change a bad date into a good one, the series branches out to consider questions of free will, morality, destiny, and even the struggle of Middle America to survive in a changing world.  For all of Eddi’s problems, they’re nothing compared to the old man who is seen standing on the side of the road and holding a sign asking for money.  The more that Eddi edits existence, the more complicated things become.

It’s an interesting question, really.  Would you edit your life if you could?  One of the things that sets movies and television apart from real life is that, while filming, you get multiple takes.  The performers get more than one chance to deliver their lines correctly and, if someone says the wrong thing, the director can yell “cut” and call for another take.  Ideally, the editor uses the best takes.  Sometimes, the editor even combines several different takes, mixing them into something that appears to have been shot all at once as opposed to multiple times.  One could argue that the editor becomes almost God-like in their power to decide what will be seen and what will be left on the cutting room floor.  In the movies, everyone always knows the right thing to say and they always react in the most cinematic way possible.  Every failure can be edited out. That’s one reason why, especially in troubled times, people turn to the movies.  But some would argue that it’s the unexpected and the spontaneous events, the ones that we can’t control, that make life worth living.  In Chaser, Eddi gets to live the dream of every movie lover.  He gets to treat his real life as a film but, as quickly becomes apparent, there’s a difference between editing events and actually living with the end results.

As I said, it’s an intriguing story and it’s one that plays out at a brisk place over 8 episodes.  The visuals are often wonderfully surreal and the cast does a good job of bringing the multi-layered story to life.  One thing I really liked about this show is that no one was mere caricature.  The character of Fran could have easily been one-dimensional but instead, as played by Haley Noel Bedocs, she became one of the most interesting characters on the show.

Chaser is available on Amazon Prime so be sure to check it out.