What Is ‘The Event’?
If you are missing 24 and Lost, this is the next show that will have you setting your Sky+ or even giving up your Friday night’s out to try to work out just what’s going on.
The much anticipated US drama series The Event makes its UK debut with a double bill. Judging from these promotional pictures with a plane crash and a gorgeous exotic location it may seem that they are just doing a direct rip off of the much missed Lost, and despite jumping forward and backward in time as a story telling tool, this is where the similarity in the stories ends. As the trailer reveals, the assassination plot against the president is not The Event. The disappearance of main character Sean’s girlfriend is not The Event. The CIA cover-up is not The Event…
In the series premiere, Sean and girlfriend Leila (pictured above) go on a Caribbean cruise where Sean intends to propose. But everything doesn’t quite go to plan and when Sean returns to the ship to discover that Leila has disappeared it seems that he has stumbled into a national conspiracy. Elsewhere, President Elias Martinez, America’s first Afro-Cuban president is scheduled to announce the release of a group of detainees led by Sophia Maguire, despite the disapproval of his Director of National Intelligence, Blake Sterling. Their futures are on a collision course in a global conspiracy that could ultimately change the fate of humankind.
“They’ve thought through this world, the mythology of this world,” Blair Underwood who plays President Martinez says. “these characters and really kind of plotted out the first five years but really clearly the first two years. Now we know in television that can alter depending on what the audience wants to see this, that and the other but it’s important I think to take a stab and know where you’re going.”
“The writers basically know what the story is,” Jason Ritter who plays Sean reveals. “The whole trick is figuring out in what order to tell it, what information to divulge about these characters, and how to keep it exciting, human and realistic.”
There is something for everyone in this series as it is political thriller cum Sci-Fi cum action cum mystery series and it takes more than a little thought to try and put together the pieces of the first couple of episodes to try and work out what is going on. Some will fall at the first hurdle, thinking it is all just too hard. But me, I am grateful that there is another mystery for me to talk about with friends, hypothesis and debate about – I just hope that it lives up to the hype.
The Event, starting Friday 9pm, Channel 4
