By Amelia Blevins
After the entire world blacks out for 2 minutes and 17 seconds, chaos reigns as people waken to disaster and death. Patients die when their surgeons cannot complete surgery, swimmers drown in the ocean, pilots crash their planes, unconscious drivers cause mass pile-ups. In Los Angeles, FBI agent Mark Benford (Joseph Fiennes) wakes from his blackout, with memories of a time that has not happened, a time when he is investigating the very event that just occurred.
Based off of Robert J. Sawyer’s 1999 novel of the same name and co-created, produced and written by The Dark Knight writer David Goyer, ABC’s new series FlashForward features an ensemble cast whose lives are seen to entwine as the premiere’s catastrophic events unfolds. As the FBI begins investigating the event and questioning each other, they realize that their glimpses all showed the same time on the same day: April 29, 2010 at 10 p.m.
With hopes to discover what the future holds, Benford and his fellow agents must discover what each person saw in their flashforward, no small feat with the world’s population of 6.784 billion people. Beyond filling in the blanks, they must also discover who or what caused such a colossal and disturbing event and what’s to stop it from happening again?
Beyond Joseph Fiennes, FlashForward’s large cast includes John Cho of Harold & Kumar fame as well as ABC’s Lost regulars Sonya Walger, as Benford’s wife Olivia and Dominic Monaghan as the mysterious and currently unknown Simon. Similar to Lost’s intricate plot and character driven story, FlashForward should capture the attention of conspiracy lovers, as well as anyone interested in a race against the clock as the mosaic of peoples’ lives become pivotal to uncovering the mystery of the flashforwards. Catch ABC’s new thriller on Thursdays at 8 p.m.