Every so often, a new TV show comes along that's so eye-filling, so visually startling and so emotionally gripping that it feels like a tectonic shift may be about to occur in the popular culture.
ABC saved the best for last, unveiling its pilot episode of the secretive, big-budget futuristic thriller FlashForward, based on the novel by Canadian Robert J. Sawyer.
In an age when broadcast TV faces across-the-board cost-cutting and scaled-down ambitions, FlashForward represents a throwback to an earlier age. Not since the pilot episode of Lost has a single hour of network TV looked -- or felt -- more like a feature film.
FlashForward, about a two-minute, 17-second blackout that affects every person on Earth, is full of suspense and unanswered questions. Based on its initial screening, though, it's also full of genuine, human emotion.
FlashForward is more than just a futuristic What If' tale. In a notably buzz-free fall season, it's a reminder of just how powerful the medium of TV can be, how it can move a mass audience to tears, laughter and excitement by turns.
FlashForward is, quite simply, the most eye-filling, heart-wrenching pilot episode of a new network drama series since Lost -- and it gives us all hope that this may not be such a bad fall TV season after all.
Source: National Post
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