"On March 21st 1963, Alcatraz officially closed," the grisly narrator tells us in the opening moments, "due to rising costs and decrepit facilities. All the prisoners were transferred off the island. Only that's not what happened. Not all."
Alcatraz is about the mysterious disappearance of 300 odd prisoners and guards off Alcatraz and how they have suddenly come back without having aged a day. Remember when the whole world blacked out and saw a flash of the future in Flash Forward? Remember how little you cared about the premise of that lifeless show? Prepare yourself to care even less.
Alcatraz takes a potentially intriguing premise and forces it into a flat and formulaic mold. From the laughable tough and clever police officer and heroine Rebecca Madsen (Sarah Jones) to the quirky Alcatraz expert and comic book writer Dr Diego Soto (Jorge Garcia, better known for playing Hurley in Lost) and the sinister government agent Emmerson Hauser (Sam Neill), Alcatraz almost immediately falls into a pattern where Madsen investigates, Soto connects the dots and Hauser looks sinister. Jokingly referred to by TV critics as Lost in reverse, this time around people are walking around in a city, having flashbacks about being on an island.
Amazingly, JJ Abrams, the producer of such marvels as Alias and Lost, is also responsible for this heavy humourless flop. Perhaps too preoccupied with all his current motion picture successes, we are sure that even Mr Abrams himself was not too surprised when this lame duck was cancelled after one season.
Get retro fashion tips from the time lost Alcatraz inmates on M-Net on Tuesdays at 20h30
