The premise is inviting: How about a take on "The Rapture" that is also the first TV project by "Lost" co-creator Damon Lindelof, on HBO, no less?

Yes, please.

What if 2 percent of the world's population abruptly vanished? What if a Rapture-like event caused a massive disappearance, involving not just Christians and in some cases, not even very nice people, but all sorts of folks?

OK, an allegory based on the idea of "The Rapture" might be delectable. Science fiction meets religion with novelist Tom Perrotta and Lindelof at the helm, based on Perrotta's book "The Leftovers."

Imagine what clever fun they could have.

Ostrow's Off the Record Blog


But save your appetite for something fresh as these "Leftovers" have been warmed too many times. HBO's 10-episode drama series "The Leftovers," premiering June 29, is more maddening than intriguing.

Rather than a clever riff on the Rapture, this is a story about loss and grief and the human desire to make sense of the inexplicable. Maybe if Louis C.K. did it as a comedy...?

While it touches on faith spiraling into fanatacism, the series is mostly about emptiness and the unrewarded search for meaning. It's a consideration of how different people react to emptiness in different ways — anger, denial or the urge to join a cult. It's about coping, in sometimes extreme ways.


The lack of a coherent storyline, even in a piece dedicated to exploring the lack of coherence in the world, makes "The Leftovers" a frustrating challenge. There is more than enough randomness in the world to leave us vulnerable — that's why we turn to storytellers to arrange the random into a narrative and provide a tale, if not a lesson. Angst isn't, by itself, enough.

Fans of Lindelof who thought "Lost" had difficulties paying off several setups and grand metaphysical concepts will be even more disappointed by "The Leftovers."

Instead of leading us through a complex piece, executive producers Lindelof, Perrotta, Peter Berg and Sarah Aubrey keep setting us up and leading us on.

The acting is less problematic. Justin Theroux ("Six Feet Under") looks perpetually confused and angry; Amy Brenneman ("Private Practice") has a thankless task as a broken mother who has taken a vow of silence after the Departure; Ann Dowd ("True Detective") is always compelling as the leader of the GR, or Guilty Remnant, a cult; Christopher Eccleston is suitably creepy as the reverend who thinks he knows what the Departure was and is intent on revealing the negative traits of those who are gone.

In the aftermath of the "sudden departure," some have given up hope, some develop theories to try to make sense of the event, some lose their sanity.

Viewers, too, may have a variety of responses. Some may react with anger, or perhaps with elaborate explanations and recaps. Or maybe by chucking the remote.

Look! A screen full of frightening and mysterious events! Crazy inscrutable motives, bizarre cults and suspicious cure-alls. Shock value. Random occurrences and then more unfathomable events. And dead dogs.

Things happen, and there's no telling why — and that is apparently the point. Judging by the first few hours of "The Leftovers," it's time, in light of 9/11 and all manner of End Times fears, to stop groping for answers and just live.

You might start by saving yourself the next 10 hours.

Joanne Ostrow: 303-954-1830, or