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12th Jul 2021

Manifest is a must-watch for those who love big mysterious shows

Rory Cashin

Brought to you by NOW

If you loved Lost, then you’ll defo want to check this out.

If you are making a show that centres around a mystery that involves a plane-load of passengers who are missing and presumed dead, but are all actually heavily involved in a science-fiction’y, unexplained phenomenon… then you can’t help but draw some comparisons to Lost.

That particular mysterious-plane-crash show effectively changed the game for modern TV in terms of “Mystery Box” television – see also: The Leftovers, Servant, WandaVision, The OA, we could go on and on.

So if you’re going to borrow some themes from one of the best TV mysteries of all time, then obviously you could do a lot worse than take notes from Lost, and that is exactly what the folks behind Manifest have done.

The central premise revolves around the passengers of a flight who take off from Jamaica and land in New York City, but upon landing they find the runway swarmed with the NYPD. The passengers are then told that they and their flight have been missing for over five years, but somehow none of them have aged a day.

In an Avengers: Endgame-esque twist, the world around them has been forced to move on without them, with some partners finding new lovers, some family members having passed away in the interim, and so on. So while each of the passengers attempts to reacclimate to a world that has already mourned them, officials attempt to understand the mystery behind their missing time.

The show has some big names behind the scenes, including being produced by Oscar-winner Robert Zemeckis (Back To The Future, Forrest Gump, Cast Away), and has episodes directed by the folks behind The Wire, The Devil Wears Prada, Alias, Fringe, and Dexter.

Seasons one and two of Manifest are available to stream on NOW right now, and season three arrives on NOW from Friday, 16 July.

Brought to you by NOW

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