Review by Sean Marland
Stars Jason Ritter, Sarah Roemer, Ian Anthony Dale, Blair Underwood, Laura Innes
Created by Nick Wauters | UK certification x | UK RRP £xx.99 | DVD Region 2 | Runtime xx minutes
Watching a show develop as it moves through the seasons is one of the most rewarding things about investing your precious free time and hard-earned cash in any serial drama. As such, the first series of any new show has a number of important tasks to accomplish: It must introduce a range of strong characters, set a consistent tone and slowly unveil new plot arcs that can be developed in future series. The Event accomplished all of these things eventually, but it failed in the most crucial aspect of all – holding the attention of John Q TV Viewer over the course of a 22 week run.
As such, the fact that it was cancelled by NBC (although there have been a few unsubstantiated murmurings of someone else picking it up) means that only the show's hard-core fans and high-end sci-fi lovers will see this boxed-set as a good purchase. Series are meant to evolve and transform over the years, but The Event will always be preserved in stasis as a one-off piece of television, a situation which could frustrate its fans just as the much as the constant flashbacks frustrated those who gave up on it soon after it debuted on British screens last year.
Ironically enough, this series actually finished rather strongly and opened up some interesting themes that could have laid the foundations for an intriguing second season, but unfortunately it laboured too long in the opening stages and demanded more than your average television viewer was willing to give for any pay-off.
As the series gets under way, we are gradually introduced to a string of lead characters who give us different angles on the legacy of an extra-terrestrial landing in Alaska during the Second World War. Various government conspiracies are indicated at various junctures, but despite the mysterious allure of the whole set-up, the writers don't quite give viewers enough plot-meat to get their teeth into in the opening episodes, leaving many frustrated as they languish half-a-step behind the story.
Indeed such viewers will know exactly how lead protagonist and stereotypical everyman Sean (Ritter) feels as he battles to find his girlfriend after she disappears on a luxury cruise. Elsewhere, the recently inaugurated President Martinez (Underwood) is just discovering that although many of the aliens (who are almost indistinguishable from humans – what are the chances?! – but age much slower than us) escaped into the population back in 1944, a hundred or so are being detained at an Alaskan facility called Mount Inostranka. The Obama-alike is subsequently caught between a sinister alien leader named Sophia who demands the captives are released, and a group of CIA neo-hawks who urge him to start rounding up the rest of the aliens. Sean's DIY investigation eventually leads him into the centre this mess and after that it's a sci-fi cover-up free-for-all.
The most common complaint about The Event comes in the form of the schizophrenically intense flashback-and-forwards that mark it out as a show that took many cues from more successful dramas like Lost, but failed to establish characters or give out answers fast enough. These inter-spliced retroversions ultimately proved too much for some viewers and the show actually improves when the writers drastically reduce them just before the half-way mark of this 22 episode series. Following this bedding in period, this series emerges as a rather thought-provoking piece of sci-fi, yet even amongst the genres biggest zealots, The Event will probably be seen as an opportunity missed.
EXTRAS ★★½ Six episode commentaries from the production team (creator/co-executive producer Nick Wauters, executive producer Steve Stark, director/executive producer Jeffrey Reiner and series stars Underwood and Dale), deleted scenes, photo galleries, episode recaps, visual effects documentaries. The audio commentaries do not provide the kind of detail that most fans of this series will be looking for and often sound repetitive.