Because I’ve seen ABC’s Resurrection before (when it was done much better and called The Returned on Sundance channel), I was less distracted by how cool this show seems to be, and far more focused on how it actually is. Even though Frances Fisher and Kurtwood Smith lend respect to the project, it just didn’t capture the tone it was going for. That is to say, I wanted it to be much eerier and somber than it was, and far less melodramatic. Don’t get me wrong, though. I don’t mind the actual drama, and I love a show with a juicy set of secrets, but this show is not as coy as it should be for something with as much potential and is trying too hard to get us to buy in.

Omar Epps plays Marty Bellamy, a former cop that now works for Immigration and is charged with the task of escorting the first of the returned, Jacob, back to his Missouri home after he wakes up in a rice paddy in China. Jacob has been dead for over thirty years, and he is returned to stunned parents well in to their sixties. Jacob is the vehicle in which the audience learns that these previously-dead folks are, in fact, who they say they are, and there is a lot of talk about believing and miracles and such. Also, he is the first of [presumably} many that will resurface in the Missouri town of Arcadia.

But there is a lot going on in this series and I feel like it is too much to work through this early in the game. Can’t the show just explore this idea of returning dead people without inserting cryptic strangers or torrid extra-marital affairs? If you don’t mind participating in tired stereotypes of stoic, yet tortured characters suffering with unhealable wounds, or are able to overlook the clichéd freeze frame of a character’s intense surprise reaction, then you might enjoy this show. Otherwise, seek out the original. You’ll be glad you did.

A new episode airs tonight at 9 on ABC. Tweet me what you think about this show – ESPECIALLY if you have watched both; I would love to know how you are reconciling the two.  https://twitter.com/sroseholt