Is 'FlashForward' fit to fill the 'Lost' void?

With Lost on its last legs just one season away from the end, the race is on for a replacement show to provide a similar viewing fix. Step forward the extremely impressive FlashForward, which supplies those vital non-linear thrills and interweaves a mysterious and cryptic sci-fi plot with the troubled lives of its characters. Heck, there's even a poster on one of the buildings for Oceanic airlines. All that's lacking is the polar bears, although a nice cameo from a kangaroo definitely helps to compensate.

Like Lost's opening episode, the key players are thrown into turmoil by a cataclysmic happening, with their world a very different place when they awaken to survey the wreckage around them. As with the cryptic crash of Oceanic Flight 815, the shady circumstances surrounding the 137-second blackout look sure to dominate future events.

But where Lost took several seasons before jumping back and forth in time, FlashForward's most ravishing plot hook is that nearly everyone has a vision of six months in the future - most of which seem to be very unsettling indeed. For example, Joseph Fiennes's recovering alcoholic FBI Agent Mark Benford sees himself in an office with various clues related to the cause of the blackout dotted around the room. But he is drunk and a man with a gun and a distinctive tattoo enters the fray. Intriguing stuff! Those who wake up without a vision, as is the case for Mark's FBI partner Demitri, had better stop contributing towards their pension fund.

While the premise of the show is fantastic, many great ideas have crumbled to dust with poor execution. That's why the real skill of this opening episode is the ease with which we're immersed into the personal dramas of the various characters. There's no laborious build up, as we're thrown straight into the mix. An early encounter with Mark and Demitri in a car mainly consists of Tarantino-style dialogue about the merits of the song 'Islands In The Stream', which hardly advances the plot. But that's not its purpose, as instead it serves to disarm us towards these new faces and view them as regular guys with an appealing sense of humour - and thus give a damn about their fates.

A similar effect is achieved simply through images, as the suicidal young doctor is about to blow his brains into the ocean. With such a desperate yet compassionate expression, we're instantly driven to wonder what has led him to such a state. However, not everyone's introduction fares so well, as the predicaments of the two canoodling teens and Mark's doctor wife Olivia (played by Sonya Walger - Lost's Penny Widmore) fail to generate much of an empathetic response amid the carnage. It's still early days, though.

The devastation caused by the blackout is impressively conveyed, with the Los Angeles cityscape a smouldering shadow of its former self. Frequent flashes of news reports from around the world also help to emphasise the global scale of the events. Cleverly, this doom and gloom is lightened by rare but effective flashes of humour, such as FBI chief Stan's whereabouts in six months' time - reading a paper on the lav! Amusingly, he claims he's in a meeting.

The predominantly British cast all acquit themselves well in their roles, with performances that suggest depth and interesting backgrounds to their characters. Finally, the all-important cliffhanger whets the appetite for the next episode, as a shady figure is seen roaming around a baseball stadium during the blackout. What are the odds that it's Charles Widmore from Lost? It's only a matter of time before the mandatory Alan Dale appearance…

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