Let’s face it: We all ponder our eventual demise. We envision it as a serene event, with sunlight filtering into our rooms as we peacefully depart, surrounded by loved ones. However, the truth can be grimmer; often, it involves a hospital setting, connected to machines, sometimes changing so much that those who care about us might not even recognize us. In a new series, a group of friends in their seventies reflects on their own endings and seeks ways to ensure their final moments are as dignified as possible.

Opening Scene: A woman stands in a bathroom, removing a cartridge from a firearm and wrapping both in a towel. She notices a speck of blood on her face and wipes it away.

The Essence: A year before, we find this woman, Phil (played by Lindsay Duncan), driving to a small town for a funeral. An old acquaintance, Ken (portrayed by Clarke Peters), is also seen arriving for the service. Although Phil gets there late, she joins a group of long-time friends, including David (Peter Egan), Tom (Karl Johnson), and David’s wife, who is also Tom’s sister, Marion (Sue Johnston). They’re gathered to bid farewell to their friend Dennis.

At the pub after the funeral, Tom tells the group that cancer took Dennis and by the end he was unrecognizable. As they have multiple rounds, they drunkenly decide to make a pact with each other: If one of them is gravely ill, the others will help them kill themselves. The group figures Ken, with his SAS background, and Phil, who is a retired police detective, will be especially good at doing the deed and leaving no trace of what happened.

It’s evident that Ken and Phil have a history, as Phil proposes Ken join her in her room at the local inn. But they think better of it; they see each other the next day, though, when she calls Ken to vouch for her when she’s pulled over for DUI while hungover.

Eight months later, Phil is reluctantly planning on downsizing their living situation with her husband Nigel (Phil Davis) and their daughter when she gets a postcard that says “Truelove,” the code word that Tom made up, on it.

She travels to a shore town and meets Ken there. The person who called them there is Tom; he’s been given a terminal cancer diagnosis and wants has a plan for Phil and Ken to help him die on his terms. Ken is especially appalled by the request and the two of them refuse. But when Tom is hospitalized after trying to hang himself, at the very least Phil figures helping him die is a whole lot better than the alternative.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Created by Charlie Covell and Iain Weatherby, Truelove has the “group of friends keeping secrets” vibe that we’ve seen in recent shows like Bad Sisters.

Our Take: While Truelove is about this group of six friends, it seems that most of the story revolves around Phil and Ken. It could be because the two of them had a romantic fling decades ago, and their chemistry even in the present day suggests that they were each other’s ones that got away. Or it could just be that, as a former cop and SAS officer, respectively, the two of them have the most capacity to do what Tom and perhaps even David and Marion might ask them to do.

But Duncan and Peters also do a good job of showing the myriad issues a person has to deal with once they reach “that age.” While both are in their seventies and seem like they could live another 20 years, they’re both feeling their mortality in different ways. Phil laments that she and Nigel have already downshifted into a slower pace of life, one that she’s not necessarily in favor of. In addition, she thinks downsizing her living situation is the first step that will lead her to a nursing home. Ken lives alone, and he knows that he doesn’t want to live out the rest of his days that way.

The show takes the issues of aging, mortality, euthanasia, and the fact that modern medicine tends towards keeping people alive past the point where their quality of life suffers, and wraps it all into this story.

We’re not sure if the only member of the group who dies is Tom, with Phil and Ken spending the rest of the limited series dodging questions from law enforcement, or if other members of the group will request their help. What we do know, though, is that Truelove is an emotionally-charged treatise on aging, loyalty and friendship, with characters who are determined to keep living life and, when the time comes, not wither away like so many others in their age group.

Sex and Skin: None in the first episode.

Parting Shot: After Tom brings Phil and Ken out to his boat for what he calls a “dress rehearsal,” it turns out to be the real thing. The last scene shows Phil and Ken in the speedboat they took to see Tom, speeding away from Tom’s boat as it takes on water.

Sleeper Star: Phil Davis’s Nigel is a bit of a drip, but he also seems much happier with his downshifted existence than Phil is.

Most Pilot-y Line: Phil interrupts the vicar that’s giving Dennis eulogy and tells her that Dennis was never called “Den,” as the vicar called him.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Truelove is the rare show that can combine elements of a thriller with real emotional propulsion. The fact that it addresses so many issues about aging, illness and death in a way that’s more matter-of-fact than maudlin is an achievement.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.