Resurrection

The dialogue doubles as patronizing directives of what we’re supposed to be thinking, carefully dictating Resurrection’s themes.

On the evidence of the first two episodes, Resurrection seems just one more twist on an American obsession with investigating what lies beneath the surfaces of rural or suburban idylls. As a device to tell the same old stories about illicit love affairs, family estrangement, hidden crimes, and the secrets parents keep from children and visa versa, the arbitrary resurrection of the dead seems pretty extreme, and, frankly, a wasted opportunity.

The ABC show is more blandly cast and written [thanrench import "The Returned"], but it's still capable on occasion of hitting you in the gut emotionally, if not scrambling your brains.

The first 20 minutes of Resurrection are terrifically emotional and engrossing. When the focus is on Jacob and his parents, the show is a real heart-tugger. But then it gets into family soap opera territory (what big secrets have family members kept from one another!) and the mystery returns when another dead person is found to be alive.

Resurrection does something few dramas do today — it gives its characters breathing room to absorb and react to the fantastic in their lives, rather than forcing them to run from one plot point to another. Some will find this pace too leisurely.

Where "The Returned" was content to tell its story in elliptical scenes and character sketches, Resurrection keeps them tightly tied together and bound to an investigative uber-narrative--Marty and Maggie are partners in detection with the requisite possibility of romance. The result is a lot of narrative that often strays too far from the original and much more provocative conceit: Hey, we see dead people.

Yes, this is all very familiar--Sundance's "The Returned" was better, by the way--but there are still solid hints of an engaging series.

While the two shows both contain bereft parents, law enforcement officials with personal agendas, pastors with painful backstories, quiet and sometimes spooky small boys, and newly reanimated criminals, the atmosphere in which Resurrection places them is thinner than Mt. Everest’s. Compared to The Returned, Resurrection’s performances, eeriness, themes, its production values, storylines, and opening credit sequence are all similarly weak.

For a series with an out-there premise, Resurrection feels awfully ordinary.

It is non-terrible, but when there is a vastly better take on the exact same idea, the only excuses for watching this one are a lack of a Netflix subscription (and you can also buy the episodes on Amazon and iTunes) or a violent medical allergy to reading subtitles.

At several points, Resurrection feels like the kind of show that might have been better served by culling subplots and making it into a miniseries or a movie.

If not for Epps--and Fisher and Smith, who are terrific as two people trying to come to terms with the impossible--I might have preferred this one had stayed buried.

It's a sentimental show to be sure but it's almost refreshingly straightforward in its sentimentality and there's something heartbreaking in the performances of Kurtwood Smith and Frances Fisher as a couple who lost their son 30 years ago but now have to deal with his return.

Handled correctly, this has “Lost” potential.

Resurrection subverts expectations by sidestepping the creepy and macabre--although there are layers of mysteries and secrets in the small town of Arcadia, Missouri--and dwelling in a more bucolic and even tear-jerking manner on the spiritual and societal ramifications of this apparent miracle.

When Resurrection focuses on Jacob and his family, the actors and the concept carry it. But hours must be filled, and the more the show expands to include other Arcadians, most of whom are tiresome, the weaker it becomes.

It’s sometimes gripping, the acting is good, and for many it will seem fresh.

Resurrection starts out well enough.... All too soon, however, the mystery turns into soapy melodrama, and the supernatural is superseded by the clichés of network drama.

[A] smartly ordered, sizzling drama, which establishes itself from the opening scene and builds from there.

A solid yet initially disturbing new drama.

The first two episodes flex a fair amount of pulling power, even though nothing really jumps off the page. The series could use a more galvanizing, take-charge sleuth than Epps portrays.

It’s hard to look at Resurrection and not see all of the nerve that broadcast networks have lost.

Looking long term, Resurrection may be one typical TV dark secret that takes a while to unravel, and maybe that's good enough for most. But it's cutting enough corners here in the beginning to be worrisome. And if you were lucky enough to see The Returned (or will be streaming it asap), then Resurrection won't be for you.

If Resurrection fulfills even half its potential, it could easily become the most compelling drama on an ABC lineup that has become almost comically soapy.

Nothing could bring this show life.

It's not as atmospheric and artful, nor does it exude the same visceral sense of place [as French series "Les Revenants"]. But taken on its own, it is an absorbing, well-paced, thoughtfully rendered production with a quality cast that ranks as one of the better new winter shows.

Bogged down by mundane subplots and generic characters, it lacks the atmosphere, tension and emotional pull that defined Sundance Channel’s recent “zombie” show, “The Returned.”