12 TV Shows That Don't Live Up To Great Premises
2. FlashForward
High-concept TV is all about that initial hook. FlashForward’s premise was particularly wild: after a mysterious global blackout, everyone on the planet loses consciousness for 137 seconds, and collectively experience a snapshot of their lives six months into the future. A federal team is assembled, for some reason, to get to the bottom of why this happened, and whether it will happen again.
That’s quite a lot to be getting on with, and the collection of set pieces made for a bravura, and well watched, pilot episode. The problem is: where do you go from there? Similar to the pitfalls experienced by Lost, the writers had made a rod for their own back. Viewers wanted the mystery to be solved; but to solve the mystery would most likely be to wrap up the show.
Accordingly, viewership trickled off over the course of the show’s run. There was much to like about FlashForward, not least its excellent cast, but the concept alone, the promise of a mystery to be solved somewhere down the line, wasn’t enough to keep people invested.