Everybody loves a good dystopian drama. Somehow it makes whatever mess we're in now seem not so bad.
And the natural tendency to root for the underdog going against overwhelming odds is part of what we get when Colony debuts at 9 p.m. today on USA. The series comes from executive producers Carlton Cuse (Lost) and Ryan Condal (Hercules).
The series also unites a couple of fan favorites. Josh Holloway (he played Sawyer on Lost) stars as former Army Ranger and FBI agent Will Bowman, and Sarah Wayne Callies (Lori Grimes on The Walking Dead) portrays his wife, Katie.
The show is set in the near future when the couple, along with two of their children (a third is missing), live in a Los Angeles under the brutal heel of military police known as the Colony Transitional Authority, Homeland Security or Redhats. They carry out the will of unseen extraterrestrials following an invasion, euphemistically labeled the Arrival.
The aliens are referred to as the Hosts or the Raps (for raptors), depending on which side of collaboration you fall. The collaborators keep telling themselves that once the benign Hosts get whatever resources they came for, they'll leave and things will return to normal.
In addition, L.A. is segregated from the outside world by a towering wall. Access and egress are tightly controlled by the Redhats and their omnipresent spy-in-the-sky mini-drones.
The series deals with the Bowmans' struggle to simply survive in the new order and do their part to bring liberty back to the people.
Put off by alien stuff? It's unclear how much influence their presence will be in the series. It may just be a convenient plot point to set up a study of human behavior under trying conditions.
Comparisons have been made to Paris under Nazi occupation during World War II, where some chose to collaborate, others to resist. Some just tried to stay out of the way and get along.
Chief collaborator is smarmy Proxy Alan Snyder (a perfectly cast Peter Jacobson, House), opportunistic governor of the Los Angeles Bloc (walled cities are now called blocs) living the high life while most folks barely scrape by.
When Bowman, who has been working as a truck driver and auto mechanic, is caught trying to sneak through the wall into Santa Monica to search for his missing son, Snyder discovers his true identity and coerces him to put his FBI training to use to track down the resistance leader.
If he collaborates, Snyder tells Bowman, he'll help him find his son. If Bowman doesn't help, well, he and his family will be shipped off to "the Factory." Not a good place.
There's one final plot twist at the end of the pilot that I won't reveal because it sets up the entire series and is a major spoiler.
We've seen the component parts of this drama many times before, but that's true of most new dramas. It will be interesting to watch the obvious chemistry between Holloway and Callies play out to see if the series can maintain the intensity of the pilot.
USA has ordered 10 episodes to catch your fancy.
• Seen a sasquatch? If you've seen a sasquatch or beheld Bigfoot, the cast of Animal Planet's Finding Bigfoot wants to hear about it, and they're coming to town to preserve it for posterity in a future episode.
Each episode of Finding Bigfoot, which airs at 9 p.m. Sundays, has a "Town Hall Meeting" segment where people from a local community share their sasquatch encounters with the cast.
The gang will be in Little Rock on Jan. 21 for a town hall meeting at a time and location that was undecided at press time.
But don't let that stop you. If you've experienced something unexplained that went bump in the night, if you've found giant, hominid-like, footprints that baffle the cryptozoologists, then contact show producer Sean Mantooth at [email protected] for more details and where to show up on the 21st.
• Celebrating Willie. Singer-songwriter and legendary country outlaw Willie Nelson will be honored at 8 p.m. Friday on PBS and AETN.
Willie Nelson: The Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song will feature performances by Nelson, Rosanne Cash, Neil Young, Raul Malo, Edie Brickell, Cyndi Lauper, Lukas Nelson, Jamey Johnson, Alison Krauss and Paul Simon.
• $#@!#!. Count the bleeps as chef Gordon Ramsay welcomes 18 masochistic new contestants to verbal abuse in Las Vegas when Season 15 of Hell's Kitchen debuts at 8 p.m. Friday on Fox.
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Weekend on 01/14/2016