I'll be honest - I never really liked Lost.
I watched the first few episodes and couldn't believe how quickly I lost all interest in the show. It didn't seem to be about anything, just a collection of questions about a mysterious island that we were supposed to care about. What was the noise that came from the trees at night? Why had the plane crashed? Why was I wasting an hour each week on this? I switched off early on, but the show continued for six years, finally ending a few months ago - and apparently not answering all that many questions to a degree of satisfaction. I noticed the name on the credits way back in 2004 - 'created by JJ Abrams'. A name I resolved to be cautious about in the future.
Flash forward to 2006, and Abrams releases Mission: Impossible III, a film that surprised me by being better than the first. He then of course topped it with Star Trek, an astoundingly good reinvention of a tired series. Perhaps Lost was an anomaly, and this guy was actually rather good. And that's when I discovered ALIAS.
I'm not surprised that I never heard of ALIAS before. I don't remember it being shown on British TV, and if it was, it can't have been that popular. Even in America, the show was never massively successful, gaining a 'cult following' but never transferring that into viewing figures. Still, it was kept on by ABC for a full five years, something which we should all be very pleased about, because the show itself is just awesome.
I've only watched the first nineteen episodes, but already ALIAS is number two on my all-time favourite TV shows list. It's that good. Episodes may be formulaic (Sydney is given a mission, receives a cool piece of tech, deals with a personal situation, goes to a far-flung location, sets up a cliffhanger for next week), but this is actually way less of a problem than one might think. The missions and locations are so varied that it never feels like a retread of old ground - and the plot has been so well thought out that we're constantly hooked. Something that seems out of place in Episode Four - a piece of a stainglassed window - will fit into the bigger puzzle of the ALIAS plot - when inserted into a special Rambaldi clock, the glass displays a star map that points to one location on the Earth. This is a show that not only gives us answers, but reasons to care about those answers.
Ah, yes, Rambaldi. A long-dead inventor, and some might say prophet, it is his collection of works that our group of agents are chasing in the first series. It's all adding up to something - I don't know what, yet, but I know it will be brilliant. But what ALIAS really excels at is the simplest spy story of all - that of the double agent. We know, and Sydney knows, that SD-6 is evil, and her CIA allegiance is the true side of good. But how long can she keep up the pretence? How long until she's found out? How game-changing would that be? Watching the show, we're constantly forced to re-evaluate characters and sympathies. Dixon unwittingly kills four CIA agents when he blows up a facility... but he thinks he's on the side of good. Does that make it acceptable? Is Sydney right to let her colleagues be taken in by the SD-6 fabrication of lies? Does she have a right - or a responsibility - to make that choice?
Even the elements I shouldn't like, I do. The frequent visits to Sydney's home life and her friends would normally irritate the hell out of me on any other show (and indeed the level of hatred I have for the character of Kim Bauer on 24 cannot be expressed in mere words), but on ALIAS they really work. The constant use of pop songs over emotional montages I like slightly less, but it's still acceptable, because the spy element of ALIAS - the reason I watch - is so good that almost anything else can be forgiven.
The cast are excellent. Jennifer Garner excels in the lead - if she originally thought she would have trouble with the role, as rumoured, it certainly doesn't show. Prize of the acting honours, however, must go to Ron Rifkin as Arvin Sloane, head of SD-6. This is a man that we know is a villain, yet we are forced to see his kinder side displayed to Sydney and his dying wife, and Rifkin portrays all aspects beautifully. I actually felt sorry for him when he was betrayed by, of all people, Roger Moore. That's something new. When have we ever felt properly sorry for villains before? And yet despite this, Sloane is so brilliantly creepy that we know he can never be redeemed. Is he wholly evil? No. But I somehow have the feeling that he wouldn't be above letting his wife die if she ever found out about SD-6. ALIAS doesnt' just show us its villains, it puts us in the hearts and minds and challenges us to like them. What other show has dared to do that?
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