



That's Kyle Killen, the creator of Awake, the most exciting new show on TV. It debuts tonight with an ingenious first episode. If you've not heard of Lone Star, you're not alone. One of 2010's most critically lauded shows, the Fox drama about a con man splitting his life between two towns, wives, and families in Texas, lasted just two measly and deeply frustrating episodes. Its ratings were beyond abysmal; they challenged the notion that the show was actually airing at all. (The once highly touted Lone Star star, the likable James Polk, has since been relegated to a recurring guest spot on the sitcom Happy Endings of late.)

was created with hopes of correcting the mistakes of Killen's first show. It does.

In some ways, those corrections are made in clear and obvious ways. The premise of Awake is complicated but not complex, if that makes sense. It follows Detective Michael Britten (the great and unshowy Jason Isaacs, perfectly cast), a cop who's just lost his son in a car crash. Or is it his wife who died in the crash? Britten lives in two realities. When the show begins, his son has died. When he goes to sleep in that world, he immediately transitions to a world in which his wife is dead, while his son has survived. Follow that? If not, Awake makes both realities easily navigable. When his wife, Hannah, is alive, he's wearing a red rubber band on his wrist and the scenes have a red tint. When his son, Rex, is alive, he's wearing a green rubber band and the scenes have a green tint. Easy enough.

But a show about opposing realities, while conceptually fascinating, probably couldn't pass the Moron Test on network television. And so Awake has buttressed all of Killen's big ideas with a procedural element. Like Law & Order: Special Dreaming Unit. If Isaac's character were a school teacher or a garbage man, his struggles with waking and dreaming life would complicate the story. Instead, he's a cop, which gives him a new crime to solve every week. Though Killen, who also wrote last year's failed but interesting Mel Gibson-and-a-hand-puppet comeback vehicle The Beaver, has a mind for pushing the limits of what's possible in 42 minutes every week, he needs a stabilizing force. Enter Howard Gordon, the co-creator and co-showrunner of last year's annual Holy shit did you see that show last night? winner, Homeland. Before Homeland, Gordon had huge success with another high concept drama tethered to week-to-week mini-stories, 24. He's also a member of the increasingly prolific The X-Files family tree of scribes, which also includes his Homeland co-conspirator Alex Gansa, Breaking Bad's Vince Gilligan, and American Horror Story writer James Wong. So Gordon knows what he's doing and then some—his impact on Awake is tangible.

"There were elements in the procedural side of the story that needed to be made more clear," Gordon told me. "The therapists are like a Greek chorus and their roles needed to be more clearly defined."

Britten sees two therapists in the dueling realities, played by BD Wong and Cherry Jones respectively. Wong's character is more cerebral and imperious. Jones is maternal and searching. They're an invaluable part of the storytelling and without them, there is no sensible way to get inside the relatively closed-off Britten's head. Compelled by the department to talk about his traumatic experience, viewers get a window into the competing worlds every week.

"It's true that the realities are competing, but they're also compatible, Gordon says. "When Britten solves a work problem in one world, or a personal problem in one world, it helps him solve it in another."

That's probably the cleverest element of Awake. It is a procedural and a supernatural one at that. But this ain't Medium. If Britten solves a caper in one reality, like say the taxi driver murder in tonight's pilot episode, it's a clue to, as Howard put it, a compatible crime in the other consciousness. It's a fun parlor trick, though it's hard to know how long Killen, Gordon, and co. can pull the thread on this type of storytelling. (Which explains why the story grows in scope by the second episode—I'll leave it at that.)

"We have a writer's room and I have goals I've set that I want to hit," Killen says, though he was reluctant to expound on how far in advance he'd planned. There are ideas for future seasons, and that's all he would say.

For Gordon, the show is as much about character as conundrum. Casting Isaacs, a stiff-backed Englishman best known for Showtime's Brotherhood and his role as silver-haired malcontent Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter series of movies, is a stroke of genius. He is a strong silent type, consistently forced to confront the most devastating moment of his life. And Isaacs doesn't overextend. There's no manic twitching or eye-bulged freakouts. He's confused but coping. It's the type of shaded performance you see from the Don Drapers or Raylan Givens of the world, minus the cool. Britten isn't cool, exactly.

"Finding a leading man on TV is like hunting a rare species," Gordon says. "Jason was the perfect version of what we were looking for."

If it will work is difficult to say—it's not hard to be cynical. NBC has infamously , epically struggled to launch new shows in the past five years. (Show of hands from all you Lipstick Jungle fans out there. Nobody? How about The Black Donnellys? The Cape? Trauma? OK, we'll stop.) This one is not easy to explain to grandma. But you should try anyway. Killen and Gordon did.

"I feel like we bent over backwards to make the story clear to the audience," Gordon says. "In the title sequence, it literally explains everything. Every week."

Awake airs tonight at 10pm EST on NBC.

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