Brimstone

Brimstone is an American television series that aired only one partial season on Fox, during the 1998–99 American television season. It features a dead police detective whose mission, as assigned by the Devil, is to return to Hell 113 souls who have escaped to Earth. Plot In 1983, Ezekiel "Zeke" Stone (Peter Horton) was a New York City Police detective whose wife, Rosalyn, was raped. He tracked down and arrested the offender, Gilbert Jax, who was cleared of the charges. Furious, Stone then murdered Jax. Two months later, Stone was killed in an unrelated incident and went to Hell for murdering Jax. Later in the show it was revealed that it was not the killing itself that condemned Stone to Hell, but the fact he took pleasure in it. Stone died the most decorated cop in east NYC history. Fifteen years later, a breakout from Hell occurs, led by a 4000-year-old Canaanite priestess named Ashur Badaktu. The Devil explains that, over the centuries, a few souls have escaped (and presumably been returned to) Hell, but nothing of this magnitude, which includes 113 souls. Because the Devil is largely powerless on Earth, he makes a deal with Stone: Stone will be returned to Earth to track down these 113 escapees, and if he can return all of them to Hell (before one of them kills him), he will earn a second chance at life on Earth (and thus, possibly, Heaven). The Devil seems to hinder Stone's work almost as much as he helps it, however, divulging some information but withholding crucial facts or giving only cryptic clues to where Stone will find an escapee, apparently delighting in watching him become more irritable with his interference. It was suggested by an angel (in the episode "It's a Helluva Life", played by John Glover in a dual role) that Stone served God's purpose as well as the Devil's in his former life when he killed his wife's rapist.