The show for which trailers were practically invented livens up a bit, and here's our review...

After a 3 month hiatus, the show that began with a grand opening last September, and with much anticipation, returns to our screens, and for many, it may well be met with indifference. FlashForward was based on a 1999 science fiction novel by Robert J Sawyer, boasting high production values and a stand-out cast. I was especially attracted by the prospect of a rare TV outing for Joe Fiennes, Sonya Walger and Dominic Monaghan of Lost, as well as Jack Davenport of This Life and the Pirates Of The Caribbean franchise.

In other words, it was, on paper, a dream for anyone who loves Brit actors in the big US dramas that have produced the most compelling television of the decade, and the-high concept - where everyone blacks out for 2 minutes 17 seconds and has a vision of their own future six months hence - had big potential.

However, as the show got lost in a series of slow, meandering, and repetitive episodes, many of which focused on the apparently doomed relationship of Mark Benford (Fiennes) and his wife Sonya (Walger) and how traumatised everyone was by the big event, I gradually found myself caring less and less. Eventually, like many people, I stopped watching.

After an inauspicious 3 month absence, signalling a crisis of faith in the show by the network, it appeared that ABC had regrouped and was refocusing FlashForward. Tonight, it counted - and that’s why I tuned in. Out of curiosity. To see if they had pulled it off, and if it could deliver on its’ potential after a mid-season break.

Thankfully, I wasn’t disappointed. The first part of the double-episode opened with Gil Bellows, last seen in Ally McBeal and The Shawshank Redemption, here, cast as a middle aged man who cleans the windows on skyscrapers. Until the revelation that he is actually meant to be a new-aged, born-again preacher. Moments later we see him as a smartly dressed man of the cloth, transformed by his faith, preaching a unique message of hope to those confused and afraid by the FlashForward. John Locke, anyone?

This is one of the many times that the show has reminded me of Lost; later, when this character offers some hope to a young lady struggling with the visions she has seen, advising her that “It’s not free will versus faith, it’s free will AND faith”, and that she should treat her auguries as a gift... it’s clear we’re in the same weirdo supernatural, theological, and 'quantum physics' territory that viewers apparently have found so addictive over the 6 seasons of the HBO show.

"The stakes have been raised, and for a show which was formerly in danger of being used as a sedative, this one was in danger of actually going places in a hurry"

Lloyd Simcoe (Davenport) and his ambiguous, apparently villainous mate Simon Campos (Monaghan) remained in kidnapped captivity for much of this first episode, in which a nasty old fella called Flosso had them tortured while trying to ascertain how they managed to pull off the FlashForward (using some sort of gizmo to produce a million more times electricity than the large Hadron Collider, as it turns out). Campos had his finger chopped off while he was held over a barrel in the torture hi-jinks, providing a genuine cliffhanger ending to the first episode.

The big revelation of this first, opening gambit? Benfords’ disclosure under the influence of some kind of truth/memory-serum that “There’s going to be another FlashForward”. The stakes have been raised, and for a show which was formerly in danger of being used as a sedative, this one was in danger of actually going places in a hurry.

Then, one whole minute later, another episode began in which the rug was pulled from beneath our feet: it turned out that Monaghan’s character Campos, who was playing along with being kidnapped, was actually known to Flosso, and indeed, somehow in cahoots with him. Is he a baddie?

Maybe not. For the rest of the episode, we were invited into his world north of the border up in Canada, where, under the protection of avowed lesbian and FBI officer Janis Hawk (Christine Woods), we met his family. Cat-and-mouse chasing and sexual tension abounded as he repeatedly attempted to escape her clutches. This episode flashes back to Campos' time in England, outlining him as “Suspect Zero”, the murky figure at the baseball game who was apparently unaffected at the time of the FlashForward. That he had lived much of his life since the age of 13 under duress at the hands of Flosso elicited much sympathy from us.

We met his family, who seem sweet and loving in a way that only a TV show can briefly sketch over a few scenes. It turned out the fat villain has had Campos’ father killed and is having his kid sister held captive, all to get have the benefit of his prodigious intellectual gifts.

"It’s a surprising tonic, and with the end of Lost in sight, let’s hope it stays as compellingly viewable as it has (re)started."

A high point occurred when Monaghan violently suffocated the aging evil father-figure (his second murder of the show) in an act of vengeance outside his own house, and then stood up and said “I never get pushed around. And I always get even.” At this point one has to wonder if he is entirely the misunderstood nice guy you had thought he was a moment earlier.

Anyway, with characters and cliffhangers like this, these opening two episodes will bring me back for more. FlashForward is like an old friend who you weren’t entirely sure about when you last knew them, but who then returns by surprise into your life one day in a far more likeable guise.  It’s a surprising tonic, and with the end of Lost in sight, let’s hope it stays as compellingly viewable as it has (re)started.

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