Resurrection: TV review

Premieres Sunday, March 9 at 8pm on ABC.

Sunday night is zombie night—at least it has been since AMC's ratings juggernaut The Walking Dead premiered in the fall of 2010. But for audiences that want to experience the warm and fuzzy side of life after death—without the rotting flesh and cannibalism—ABC offers the new drama Resurrection.

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Set in the small town of Arcadia, Missouri, the story tells of residents who died several years ago, only to return un-aged, much to the shock and relief of their relatives. Young Jacob Langston (Landon Gimenez), who drowned in a river at the age of eight, is the first to be discovered, after he awakens in the middle of a rice paddy in rural China. Immigration officer Martin Bellamy (Omar Epps) helps the young boy find his way back to Arcadia, where his parents, Henry (Kurtwood Smith) and Lucille (Frances Fisher), now thirty-two years older, are stunned by his miraculous return. While he may be the first of the resurrected to find his way, Jacobs will certainly not be the last.

Part sappy drama, part supernatural whodunnit, Resurrection suffers greatly from following on the heels of Sundance's airing of the far superior French series The Returned, which bore an almost identical plot. Where The Returned was artful and eerie, Resurrection feels plodding and manipulative. Despite boasting some impressive talent, the ensemble of characters is very thinly drawn leaving little to connect with other than their emotional reactions to reuniting with lost family members. As for the supernatural aspects of the plot, Resurrection rolls out the details far too slowly, preventing the series from gaining any decent plot momentum.

Resurrection places too much emphasis on the melodramatic aspects of its plot, resulting in a soggy, bore of a supernatural drama.