Even when its intricately interwoven storylines don’t all untangle themselves into happy endings, there remains something wonderfully life-affirming about Touch.
The plots are as complex as algebraic equations but the emotional core of each episode is as simple as the two times table and as effective as smacking someone around the head with a maths textbook. Somehow, it always finds a way of punching through our snarky, ironic, too-cool-to-care facades, reminding us we’re human, we’re alive, and we have the capacity to feel.
For a TV series to do that once is astonishing; for it to do it every week, as Touch does, is truly incredible.
The show’s sixth instalment, Lost and Found, sees Jake Bohm (David Mazouz) still sidelined at the board-and-care home, painting numbers for fellow mathematical medium Professor Arthur Teller (Danny Glover) who has bluffed his way in to talk about the mysterious Amelia Sequence with his mute protégé.
Meanwhile, Jake’s dad Martin (Kiefer Sutherland) and principal social worker Clea Hopkins (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) are out on the streets of New York, searching for the latter’s estranged, schizophrenic mother, who has kidnapped a young boy she mistakenly believes is her own. Armed only with a street map (‘I’m kind of old school like that’), his trademark borderline-asthmatic-huskiness and a Sheldon Cooper-style short-sleeved shirt, long-sleeved t-shirt combination, Martin tracks Mrs Hopkins to an old jazz musician hangout which is about to be demolished in favour of a shiny new condominium apartment block.
Coincidentally – except, of course, there are no coincidences in the interconnected world of Touch – the arrangement to build the new skyscraper has been brokered by a jazz-loving real estate agent, Will Davies (David Julian Hirsh), who is having second thoughts even before his flight out of JFK crashes shortly after takeoff. Bleeding profusely but somehow still alive, Will (who is that rarest of breeds: an estate agent without a trace of sliminess) stumbles back to his office and tells his boss he wants to call the deal off.
‘We shouldn’t be tearing it down,’ he says, listing the jazz legends that have stayed and rehearsed in the building, ‘we should be turning it into a museum.’ When the head honcho looks at him askance, Will heads off to stop the demolition personally, leaving a trail of blood behind him.
Through Will’s distracting the wrecking crew and Martin’s mix of ‘You’re not going to believe this, but …’ grittiness and paternal sensitivity, both Clea’s mother and young Andy are saved. It’s a happy ending, but only of sorts, as it turns out the gallant realtor is the American equivalent of David Keller in The Survivor: he was killed in the plane crash, but some supernatural force kept him alive a little longer in order to do a bit of good.
His deed thus completed, Will dies – and if that isn’t the cue for the collective lip to wobble, the revelation that his previously donated sperm is a perfect match for the woman whose seat he was given on the doomed flight out of JFK is definitely the moment for a mass outbreak of that well-known affliction, ‘something in my eye’.
Hopefully, nobody is too overcome to notice the cliffhanger ending, in which Martin and Clea find Arthur Teller in his car, slumped over the steering wheel. Is the prof’s number up?
Touch’s labyrinthine plotting and emotional bulldozing have swiftly propelled the show to must-see status (even if the ratings aren’t exactly reflecting this just yet), but it’s not just this twin assault on the brain and heart that make it so consistently enjoyable.
Kiefer Sutherland’s superbly weary portrayal of stoic, half-repressed sorrow is captivating in a way that Jack Bauer wasn’t after about the third season of 24, while young David Mazouz manages to dominate every scene without speaking a single word. Together, they are an irresistible combination. You do the maths.
Aired at 8pm on Tuesday 24th April 2012 on Sky1.
> Order the Season 1 boxset on Amazon.
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