“FlashForward,” a new Thursday night primetime sci-fi drama on ABC, might just be television’s most captivating mind-bender since “Lost” first aired in fall 2004.
The show’s premise is bizarre. Everyone in the world blacks out for two minutes and 17 seconds and sees visions of their lives six months into the future. It’s up to a team of FBI agents led by Stanford Wedeck (Courtney Vance of Law & Order: Criminal Intent) and Mark Benford (the acclaimed British actor Joseph Feinnes of “Shakespeare in Love”) to figure out what happened and what the visions mean.
One of two things tends to happen to shows with absurdly fantastical set-ups like this: they either fail miserably or attain a cult-like following as “Lost” has done. Since the show has been on the air for less than two months, it might be too early to tell, but it looks like “FlashForward” is heading toward the latter.
The creators of the show have crafted it carefully to strike an immediately engaging balance between suspense and action. Unlike other shows in the genre that torment fans by taking years to reveal the underlying conspiracy, “FlashForward” provides the viewer with a constant flow of information, throwing out new pieces of the immense puzzle every week.
However, while the plot and characters are great, the show is far from perfect. Given that it’s a primetime broadcast on a major network, the visual effects should be a lot more professional than they are. Also, the show has a bad tendency to lapse into philosophical soliloquies that are hard to sit through without yawning. Many of these problems may get worked out over the next few years if the show remains popular, and I certainly hope they do. I think I might be hooked!