CBS, US, 45 min.

To sum it up briefly for the British I might call it a remake of The Survivors. How do you get by after the apocalypse? In this case a small town, Jericho, sees one day a mushroom cloud forming over the nearest city. What to do next?

However, Jericho has its own problems. For one, there is a troubling and pervasive feeling that things are better since the apocalypse. The chattering classes are gone, and while the loss of those big city folks is mourned, there is a strong feeling that the people left are those who really get things done. The effects of fallout are minimal, refugees are generally considerate enough to die before reaching town, and risks always pay off. One typical scene sees three characters wondering about the safest way to open a canister full of petrol that might explode at the slightest spark. Ignoring the safety-conscious twitterings of the big city girl, the ballsy farmer knocks the lid off with the butt of his rifle, and everyone lives happily ever after.

Another frustrating episode sees a library on fire, and not one character stops to consider just how crucial books might be if the rest of the world has been blown up. It’s just art in there, and who needs art when there’s shooting to be done?

One of the most stomach-churning plot threads is that of the class geek who becomes friendly with the hottest girl in class, due to their shared and sudden status as orphans. Whenever I see them together, especially the early scene in which they seal themselves into a house to avoid any possible fallout, "Let’s Do It for America" (from Grease 2) plays so loudly in my head as to drown out any dialogue. There might have been a nuclear holocaust, but he’s gonna get lucky (maybe)!

The people of Jericho seem to have something of a schizophrenic attitude to capitalism. The farmer who would rather burn his crops than let the townspeople share them is just standing up for his rights, whereas the store owner through whom everyone trades is a shameless, grasping profiteer. Inconsistent? Maybe, but then the farmer is a salt-of-the-earth All-American boy. In contrast, at first I thought the store owner was a Jewish stereotype. Or at least that’s what I thought until I noticed her name: Gracie Leigh. And then I began to wonder if that had originally been Gracie Lee… rather than a stereotypical Jewish money-grabber, maybe the character began life as a stereotypical Korean money-grabber. Either way, it goes without saying that she gets a number of come-uppances…

The strong and capable female protagonists of Lost are utterly absent here. At times it feels like whole episodes go by without a female character being the protagonist in a scene, as opposed to being the nursemaid, lover, mother, etc of one of the husky male heroes.

The nominal female lead is Ashley Scott, perhaps best known to genre audiences as The Huntress (the daughter of Batman and Catwoman, in TV continuity) in the short-lived action series Birds of Prey, or as the female equivalent to Jude Law’s Gigolo Joe in AI, who spent little time on screen but whose publicity photos launched a thousand wallpapers.

One female character who does get to take the lead occasionally is the big city, uptight tax collector who comes to repossess a farm, only to find herself sticking around for the lack of somewhere to return to, and slowly noticing the strapping charms of the aforementioned insolvent, tax-evading farmer. It’s classic bodice-ripping stuff, but worrying, in that a city had to die in flames for this big city gal to achieve some personal growth.

There is in general a lack of appealing or interesting characters, with most, in contrast to the rich and varied players in Lost, being fairly standard cookie-cutter types, who might just as easily have come from Everwood or Judging Amy.

The one stand-out is the mysterious newcomer to the town, Rob Hawkins, played by Englishman Lennie James, recognisable in particular from an eye-catching turn in Guy Ritchie’s Snatch. Everything about Hawkins is a mystery, even to his own family, and waiting to find out the answers about him is the biggest reason for watching at the moment.