From: Season 1

The Matthews family are confused when they drive through a small town only to find themselves repeatedly driving back through it again, whatever route they attempt to take. The locals tell them they are trapped in a snowglobe, a town which is normal enough during the day but at night is besieged by strange, human-looking monstrous creatures who only want to torture and kill. The family, and the locals, decide to try to find a way to escape.

Back in the late 2000s, every other show on television was a supernatural mystery thriller, inspired by the runaway success of Lost. Most of those shows crashed and burned without a trace, with the arguable biggest success - Fringe - both using some of the same creative firepower as Lost and also doing enough differently that it didn't come off as a lame cash-in. 

The last few years have seen a resurgence of such shows, most successfully with Showtime's Yellowjackets. From is in a similar vein, but taps some of the original team, with Lost producer-director Jack Bender and Fringe writer-producer Jeff Pinkner (who also wrote a few episodes of Lost) acting as producers on this show, along with first-time showrunner John Griffin.

From, at first glance, resembles some of those older shows in its construction. The central mystery is where the hell the town is (people stumble across it from all over America), why and how it keeps people trapped, and how people can escape, not to mention the nature of the creatures that keep attacking it. The show balances exploring these mysteries with more character-driven stories about both the town's existing residents and the newcomers. The Matthews family - father Jim, mother Tabitha, daughter Julie and young son Ethan - act as our eyes and ears in this world, sharing their confusion over how they got stuck in the town and how it should be possible to flee.

The show stumbles a little bit compared to early Lost, which remains a masterclass in how to deliver a huge amount of interesting character introductions and exposition in a pilot, attached to a well-crafted story. From's characters are less immediately compelling and it takes a few episodes for them to become anywhere near as interesting. It doesn't help that ostensible co-lead Jim Matthews (a game but under-challenged Eion Bailey) is a little bland as a character. More compelling are Catalina Sandino Moreno (Oscar-nominated for Maria Full of Grace) as his wife Tabitha and genre stalwart Harold Perrineau (also of Lost, but also the Matrix films, Oz and Romeo+Juliet) as the town sheriff Boyd. Perrineau in particular gives a very strong performance as Boyd's desperation to protect the people and find a way to escape is palpable, and later flashbacks show the horrible decisions he's had to make along the way to keep people safe.

The town is split into two groups, with one group living down in the houses in along the main road and another living in Colony House, a very large house atop a nearby hill, which is a bit more hippy-ish. The Matthews family becomes divided between the two locations due to family drama, which the show maybe leans a bit more into than it should.

From's biggest early problem is trying to feel fresh whilst indulging in over-familiarity. One character has a crush on another but cannot articulate it. Other characters are having visions and weird dreams which may be clues to the mystery or might just be the logical outcome of stress. One brilliant but socially ill-adjusted character (with shades of Gaius Baltar from Battlestar Galactica) is trying to find a way out but is constantly frustrated by the stupidity of everyone around them. There is tension between the people who've been in town for a while and made a life for themselves (albeit one that's dangerous), and the latecomers who are more focused on escape. There's only so many shows with psychic kids that one can take. A late-season obsession with erecting a radio tower to send out a mayday makes one think of Lost's first season obsession with a raft, and both shows have something odd happening underground.

Still, if From is ploughing a familiar field, at least it does so entertainingly. Once the first few episodes, with their clumsy exposition and stodgy pacing, are out of the way, the show does a better job of rotating between the character dramas and the mysteries. A devastating late-season event does a great job of raising the tension, whilst the finale builds up to a nice series of cliffhangers (and, as the second season is already available, it's not a major issue to roll straight into the next batch of episodes).

Scepticism over the show's long-term viability is natural, and certainly From (***½) doesn't start with the verve and confidence of either Lost or Yellowjackets, but give it a few episodes to heat up and eventually a reasonably interesting horror-mystery drama emerges. The show airs on MGM+ in the USA and on NowTV in the UK. A second season is already available, and a third season has been commissioned.

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