Flash Forward: Season 1 Review

• 4th Oct 2010

With Heroes crawling away to die a slow and lonely death and Lost making it’s grand exit leaving viewers equal parts annoyed and tearful, a hole was left in our hearts and viewing schedules for something new to grab our interest. So ABC commissioned Flash Forward in the hopes to give us a new love.

The premise of Flash Forward is that the entire world blacks out at exactly the same time, for 137 seconds, and has visions of their future in six months time. The twenty-two episodes of the season follow the lead up to this future moment revolving around a collection of characters who are all ultimately linked by what you could refer to as the lead character, Mark Benford (played by Joseph Fiennes), an FBI agent who has a vision that he investigating the reason for the blackout and at that moment in the future is uncovering the “truth”.

The concept behind the show is truly inventive and provides a variable host of situations and issues that the characters deal with when they are faced with the knowledge of some kind of future. The evolving approaches they have to fate versus free will, the potential for branching possible futures and whether we have a set goal and it is just the path that can change are an intriguing plot to follow. You will find yourself wondering what would happen if I had a glimpse into my future, would I be sat here on this sofa? Be doing something interesting? Would seeing that vision effect how I make choices in life?

Flash Forward has an inventive plot, decent characters and has some great visuals. There are moments that they pull out the big budget action film style techniques that you could say reflect the enormity of the concept they are tackling. However there are the drawbacks. As audiences we have become saturated with this 22 episode season which always dangle that carrot just in front of us and tend to throw up more questions than answers. The constant “ooo-ahhh what’s this new clue mean?” can get repetitive and you begin to predict rather easily where things are headed. Luckily the show does move at a fast enough pace so you don’t get dragged down by the constant reveal/hide/reveal. The other typical critique of a show this size is that it is quite clear when you watch the whole season through a box set that some of the character development and relationships were not thought through entirely. The writers evidently got halfway through and thought it was a good idea to change directions for a couple of characters. Now sometimes this works in longer length shows and provides a flexibility for creative drama but at others you do just wish the writers had sat down and thought ahead about plot lines before they started filming (take note writers of Lost we are still annoyed at you for not doing this).

The DVD contains the usual extras of “making-of” documentaries which predictably are just self-promotion and don’t really reveal anything extra. The commentaries might open up a little more interest though.

Overall though Flash Forward is well worth the watch. What is a true shame is that for some reason ABC decided not to renew it for a second season. Admittedly while that prevents it from dragging on for years and desperately pulling any old tricks to make the viewers watch, Flash Forward could really have done with season 2, especially as they leave the end of season 1 set-up for the next.

Lauren Cracknell