Containment

What happens to people when [insert fear here] strikes is the plot for every disaster movie ever. Containment, serviceably if not excitingly adapted by Julie Plec (The Vampire Diaries) from Cordon, a Belgian series, isn't out to reinvent the genre, even as it extends it to 13 episodes.

Its first episode raises some chills--those initial moments of realization during an outbreak always do--but as the series progresses it increasingly seems assembled from characters and plot threads that we’ve seen repeatedly.

A multi-character drama, Containment is fine but unexceptional.

It’s a series without interesting characters, story or a modicum of tension.

Undemanding viewers (not a judgment) may find Containment diverting nonetheless. If nothing here seems the least real, the series' flaws, from its underpowered budget to its overripe dialogue, are those of innumerable, sometimes beloved B-, C- and D-grade pictures before it — not excluding the high-toned epigrams, from Socrates and Matthew and such that introduce each episode with a sheen of classy meaning.

Containment has a reasonably suspenseful pilot as directed by David Nutter (Game of Thrones, The X-Files). But as the series proceeds, it just becomes more repetitive and tedious.