ManifesT Season One
Lost in transit
UK TBC US NBC, returns 7 January Showrunner Jeff Rake Cast Melissa Roxburgh, Josh Dallas, Jack Messina, Athena Karkanis
What would you do if you were on a flight that seemingly zapped out of existence, only to reappear more than five years later? That’s the central conceit driving Manifest, the latest show with more than a whiff of Lost about it. Flight 828 to New York vanishes off the radar, seemingly gone for good, for half a decade. The passengers, meanwhile, only experience a brief moment of stormy weather, a few unexplained light flashes and then a confused welcome – and no little suspicion – from everyone else once they’re back on the ground.
It might seem a little unfair to compare this new mystery/drama series to one that went off the air eight years ago, but it’s the story that it’s most clearly looking to emulate. It even involves weird things happening to airline passengers! Add to that characters debating faith and science when it comes to explaining their situations; plus there’s even some jumping around in time, with the show flashing back to the time of the flight and the period where everyone else was getting on with their lives, convinced that the passengers were never coming home.
Though there’s plenty of scope for drama here – spouses moving on, one half of twins growing up, unresolved issues festering – the main issue with Manifest is that the main characters are simply not engaging enough to make any of it particularly worth watching. Which doesn’t help the cast do their job, either. There are few memorable performances. Melissa Roxburgh mostly does haunted, regretful wide-eyed cop-with-apast, while Josh Dallas, a veteran of making fantasy adventures entertaining as part of the Once Upon A Time ensemble, here feels unmoored as Ben Stone, a mopey father who honestly seems ridiculous when he tries the driven action man schtick.
A natural part of any series such as this is the slow unwrapping of the onion layers, peeling back the mystery as to what exactly happened, why and who/what might be behind it, and in Manifest’s case, the unscrupulous types who are clearly looking to exploit it (take a bow, shadowy, government-tied corporation Unified Dynamic Systems, which as an acronym sounds a little like a urinary tract problem). But while we wait to get those answers – because the show can’t just dump all of them in one go – it’s largely a lot of the cast running around demanding to know what’s going on and trying to help each other. Most of the tropes on parade here have been well parlayed in the past, and Manifest doesn’t find a truly fresh way to spin them, meaning you soon give up caring whether it’ll land any big reveals. James White
The writers made a point of hiding the flight’s number, 828, in every episode, in addresses, Bible verses and more.
The main characters simply aren’t engaging enough