Awake is an American television police procedural fantasy drama that originally aired on the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) for one season from March 1 to May 24, 2012. The pilot episode had an early release on Hulu on February 16, 2012, two weeks before the series' premiere on television. The show's central character is Michael Britten (Jason Isaacs), a detective who works for the Los Angeles Police Department. Kyle Killen, the series' creator, was primarily responsible for the conception of the program. He served as a writer, and avouched that writing the episode's scripts was a difficult process. Killen also served as an executive producer along with David Slade for the pilot episode. Jeffrey Reiner and Howard Gordon then continued with Killen under Gordon's Teakwood Lane Productions label.
Michael begins to live in two separate realities after a car accident. In one reality, in which he wears a red wristband, his wife Hannah Britten (Laura Allen) survives the accident, and in the other reality, in which he wears a green wristband, his son Rex Britten (Dylan Minnette) survives. Michael does not know which reality is real, and uses the wristbands to differentiate the two. He sees two separate therapists: Dr. Jonathan Lee (BD Wong) in the "red reality", and Dr. Judith Evans (Cherry Jones) in the "green reality". At work, Michael's seemingly erratic behavior often causes him to clash with his team; they do not know about Michael's uncanny ability to solve crimes using details from both realities.
Awake averaged 4.8 million viewers per episode and ranked 125th in viewership for the 2011–12 season. A critical success, Awake's cast members were praised by critics, particularly Isaacs' performance as Michael. Commentators claimed that "Say Hello to My Little Friend" was the best episode of the series since "Pilot". On May 11, after eleven of the thirteen produced episodes were aired, the show was canceled due to low ratings, although NBC still finished airing the remaining episodes in the series' original time slot. Despite the series' relatively short life span, it has had a large fanbase who teamed up to create the "Save Awake" campaign to try to convince networks to revive the show. Awake has been nominated for one award.