Ben’s sister, Michaela (Melissa Roxburgh) is an NYPD detective, and she - like the other passengers on the flight - have “callings” (or visions) that aid her in solving crimes, but that element of the series is eventually abandoned, as well. It’s a broadcast network television series, so naturally, it also attempts early on to take shape as a police procedural. Yes, when Ben Stone (Josh Dallas) returns, his wife Grace (Athena Karkanis) has a new boyfriend, and his daughter - who wasn’t on the flight - is now five years older than her twin brother, who was on the flight, but the family drama is dispatched with fairly early on (in fact, the wife’s boyfriend, played by Rescue Me‘s Daniel Sunjata, inexplicably disappears from the series after a handful of episodes). However, there’s only an inkling of that in the beginning. It seems like an obvious setup for a drama about passengers who must reintegrate into their lives after five years have passed and after many of their loved ones have moved on. However, when the 191 passengers land, they learn that five-and-a-half years had passed and that, in the interim, they were presumed dead by everyone else. It’s about the passengers of Flight 828, who left from Jamaica and arrived in New York City. It’s a compelling premiere episode with a fascinating premise. Its poor quality, however, is not entirely apparent from the pilot, which was heavily hyped on NBC ahead of its fall debut in 2018. I have watched every episode and recapped each one for another outlet. How well it does on Netflix could factor into NBC’s decision to give it a fourth season or put the series out of its misery. The series, which wrapped up its third season last week, is also on the bubble and has not yet been renewed.
Netflix doesn’t license as much off-network content as it used to, but despite having its own streamer in Peacock, NBC clearly felt that Netflix could provide the show with a bigger audience while collecting tidy licensing fees, to boot.
An NBC sci-fi series, Manifest, premiered on Netflix last week, and it has already taken up residence among the streaming service’s most-watched movies and television shows, according to Netflix’s own Top 10 chart (it held at number two all weekend, according to my Netflix account).