Tuesday, 13 October 2009

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FlashForward: it's the future

Five's new sci-fi drama FlashForward asks big questions and has some laughs about it along the way

Now he's met Grace Jones nothing will scare Joseph Fiennes in future

Sci-fi doesn't normally bother itself with deep questions but there's a big one posed by FlashForward.

Is the future set in stone or can we change it?

Three episodes into Five's new series and we're beginning to wonder whether FBI man Mark Benfield (Joseph Fiennes) is driving events as he seeks to find out why nearly everyone in the world passed out for 2 minutes 17 seconds one day in what seems like a sinister conspiracy.

Nearly everyone had a vision of life six months on. Mark's was that he was in his office piecing together clues about the blackout and being hunted by a gunman.

A recovering alcoholic, he'd also started drinking again.

But will everyone's visions really come true, or is Mark making them come true by hunting down the clues that he 'saw'?

And what does this mean for his partner, Demetri Noh (John Cho), who's had an anonymous phone call saying he's going to be murdered.

If Demetri thwarts the investigation will he be able to change his fate?

Mark's determination to find out the truth has already got a Nazi war criminal released from jail in return for news of his vision which appeared meaningless.

But was the old man tricking him by saying he'd seen crows fall dead out of the sky, or is there a link to something similar that happened in Somalia in 1991 where birds fell from the sky apparently on the release of a gas cloud?

FlashForward is meant to be the new Lost from the same studio ABC.

It's just as mysterious but has more of a sense of humour.

Mark's wife Olivia (Sonia Walger) leaves him snarky notes and his boss Stanford (Courtney B Vance) has threatened the sack he ever reveals Stanford 'saw' himself reading the paper on the toilet then rushing out to give mouth-to-mouth to a man drowning in a flooded urinal. Eww.

Now that's a good reason for trying to change the future.

 FlashForward Mondays on Five 9pm and repeated on Saturdays on Fiver at 9pm 

Gillian Crawley