Year: 2014

In the US: Sundays, 9/8c, ABC

Ah, what a shame. After such a promising start, Resurrection has failed to live up to expectations.

Alternately moving and mystifying, the first episode gave us a small-town American child waking up in China, only for immigrations official Omar Epps to discover once he gets the child back to his home that he died 30 years earlier.

Qu’est-ce qui se passe? Well, this isn’t Les Revenants, so stop asking questions in French, but three episodes in, we’re still not sure.

In fact, we’re pretty much in exactly the same place we were in by the end of the first episode, with the producers essentially extending the mystery by bringing back a new dead person at the end of every episode. The only explanation for events that we have so far – it’s all linked to the town’s river somehow – has proved to be a clunker already.

To a certain extent, this isn’t really a show about plot, though. This is a show about loss, what it would mean emotionally to people to have a loved one restored and how everyone would react if they did. So far each returning dead person has been intended at showing a different facet of these experiences.

But ultimately it’s been empty, since it’s not really explored the issues in much depth and often times, despite its unique set-up, it simply states the blindingly obvious or something that didn’t need the supernatural to be explored. So, for example, the local churchgoers are suspicious that it’s the work of the Devil, but no one ponders on what it means for Jesus if he’s not uniquely resurrected – or if he’s now bringing people back. Older parents do find it harder to raise energetic young children: this is as true for normal kids as it is for formerly dead ones. And so on.

So we have something that falls between two stools: it’s not proper science-fiction or fantasy, since it’s singularly failing to explore both the mechanisms and implications of resurrection; it’s not proper drama since it lacks true depth and what emotion there was largely got left behind in the first episode. And it clearly should have been half its length, judging by how far the plot has been strung out already.

Everyone’s doing their level best, but this is an idea apparently best left to the French.

Rob’s rating: 3
Rob’s prediction: Will last for a season but no more

In the US: Sundays, 9/8c, NBC
In the UK: Thursdays, 9pm, Watch. Starts March 27th

Three episodes into the latest JJ Abrams drama to emerge from NBC and suddenly we realise that of all the shows Abrams could have emulated, he chose to go with Touch. You could just about spot it if you looked hard enough, even though the first episode was largely by-the-book Abrams formula number one, with secret organisations squabbling over a MacGuffin – in this case a kid with nebulous special powers – that our hero has to defend. True, it was a bit quirkier than normal, with a baddie worried about getting home in time for her mother’s birthday, but there was nothing hugely innovative about it.

Episode two was something of a reboot, with the writers deciding quirky was bad and essentially rewriting the motivations for the goodies and the baddies. Apart from the addition of Trieste Kelly Dunn from Banshee to the cast, perhaps the biggest surprise was how quickly the writers were willing to dish the dirt on all the mysteries the show had served up in the pilot, leaving us with just few to puzzle over, most of them involving butterflies and how our hero figures in the set-up.

Episode three continued in the same vein, answering more questions and giving us flashbacks to how it all started. But now we have the same kind of ‘everyone is interconnected’ silliness of Touch, with our hero and little girl sidekick meeting someone new each episode and fixing their problems with a bit of special power fun. And they’re being told to do it by the butterflies.

It’s still not without charms. Each episode has an obligatory heartwarming moment in which something lovely happens thanks to our less than dynamic duo. They also try to solve problems without a gun, which is novel these days.

But the central mysteries were as unexciting and derivative as I was expecting and the characters vary from insipid to irritating, without much variance. I can’t quite recommend it but if you fancy something like The Littlest Hobo but without as many dogs or a show like Touch where the kid actually gets to talk, this might be the show for you.

Rob’s rating: 4
Rob’s prediction: Cancelled by the end of the season