4400 people materialise in the middle of a Detroit park with no explanation and nothing to link them – can the authorities work out what’s happening before things get out of hand, and will these people ever see their loved ones again?

Having missed out on the original run of The 4400, I come to this reboot with no preconceptions and indeed no knowledge at all of what the show is about. So how does it measure up on its own merits to the uninitiated like me? Well, not half bad.

The central premise is reminiscent to me of the recently cancelled/reprieved Manifest, a group of people randomly re-appearing with no logical or apparent scientific explanation. But that vague thread is where any similarity ends. These people are unknown to one another, and it quickly becomes apparent that they aren’t only strangers geographically, but also from an array of different time periods.

The episode chooses to focus mainly on Shanice, a lawyer we see in the opening scenes getting ready to return to work after a period of maternity leave who is then flung from her car in 2005 to Belle Isle in 2021 together with the various other members of the 4400. Her journey is a good lens through which to view these opening events – she’s smart, legal educated and not afraid of getting the face of authority. She also has an important stake in getting back to a world where her husband and daughter think she’s been missing/dead/who knows for the last sixteen years.

Other key characters include Claudette, a housewife from the 1960s; Isaiah, a reverend from the 1990s,; LaDonna, a party girl from 2015; and Andre, a doctor from possibly longer ago than any of the others. The unifying factor for all of these characters is that they are people of colour, and the show uses this as an opportunity to examine the way in which authority and power are used against that section of society in modern day America, as viewed through the eyes of a selection of people who might mostly have hoped the world may have changed for the better by 2021, even against their own experience and better judgement.

This carries on with the two key characters on the ‘other side’ of events, Jharrel a social worker with a very personal interest in the event as well as a professional one and Keisha, a parole officer who has no such connection and quite a bit more suspicion of the 4400 and what, if any, threat they might represent. These two inevitably butt heads as to the best way to approach events, though each has their own reasons for their chosen path and one senses that they will form a solid friendship, though thankfully not a romantic one given they do not share the same sexual orientation.

It’s perhaps a little on the nose with some of its writing, one of the guards watching over the 4400 in particular being a basic template for Angry Racist Cop, but it’s difficult to argue, in light of all we have seen on the news both in the USA and here in the UK that it’s necessarily particularly unrealistic.

The decision to centre people of colour in the main narrative could be seen as either a timely use of the experiences of a marginalised community to explore the ideas in the material or a slightly exploitative use of the tics and tropes associated with the slave trade and the treatment of that community since in order to shorthand some basic plot points, and I freely acknowledge I am not the best person to give a view on this. For what it’s worth, I’m willing to give it the benefit of the doubt on this score for now, not least because the focus is very much on the 4400 themselves and their own agency in a situation which attempts to rob them of it, but it’s definitely a thought I’ll be keeping in mind as it proceeds.

Verdict: A strong opener for an interesting, if unusual series. Could be good. 8/10

Greg D. Smith