It’s a risky business being a fan of American television sci-fi. This year has seen V cancelled after only its second season, leaving fans of the series dangling by their fingertips, while NBC’s baby The Event was axed in May after ratings dropped from the pilot’s 10.88 million viewers to – on one occasion – a low of 3.85 million.
So what went wrong this time? The Event has all the ingredients needed for a successful run: a strong story that never feels as if it’s being made up on the hoof (hello, Lost), complex characterisation and above all that sense of mystery so essential to good serialised science-fiction.
The premise is this: in 1944 the CIA discovered and detained a band of 97 extraterrestrial biological entities or ebes, looking exactly like us but with much longer life-spans, led by the seemingly cooperative Sophia (Laura Innes).
66 six years later, when a mysterious assassination attempt on U.S President Martinez (Blair Underwood) is foiled using better-than-human technology, the CIA learns that Sophia has been lying to them, hiding the existence of ‘sleeper’ ebes at large in the population, led by the militant Thomas (Clifton Collins Jr).
In the meantime, a young software engineer and reformed hacker, Sean Walker (Jason Ritter), is on holiday with his girlfriend Leila (Sarah Roemer) when she mysteriously disappears. In his search for her he is drawn into a web of conspiracy, both human and extraterrestrial.
The pilot and the nine episodes after it are told in jumbled flashbacks and this narrative technique, intended to heighten the show’s suspense, can make the already-complicated story confusing, particularly as it darts between as many as three different time frames when two is probably the most a sci-fi mystery can support. This makes it the kind of show you have to pause and rewind in order to follow, at least until you’ve familiarised yourself with the characters.
But the series explores themes like the corrupting nature of power as deeply as Battlestar Galactica did and where BSG illuminated the aftermath of a genocide, The Event does a pretty good job of examining what leads up to one – the pressures that can precipitate one people to try to exterminate another.
The Event may finish somewhat abruptly, but it’s still worth every calorie of viewing-effort you give it. As with the majority of recent TV sci-fi, there’s no X-Files-style ‘story of the week’ here but rather an overarching one, with other plot strands spanning the season seasons and half-seasons. If the largest one of all isn’t completed due to the whims of NBC, many of the smaller arcs conclude gorgeously.
Released on DVD and Blu-ray on Monday 3rd October 2011 by Universal Playback.
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