TV preview: The Leftovers

Margaret Qualley as Jill in The Leftovers.

A series about a vanished 140 million people might be the next great thing.

HBO has been chief usher for the Golden Age of Television, starting with The Sopranos and moving on to shows such as The Wire, Boardwalk Empire, Six Feet Under and Game of Thrones. Its willingness to invest in costly, quality drama has seen other networks step up, too, such as AMC with Mad Men and Breaking Bad.

Now HBO has to keep up with the Joneses.

With Game of Thrones over for the year, and True Blood finishing soon, the network is hoping for a new hit with The Leftovers, which debuts on Soho on Monday night, the day after its US premiere.

No, it's not a food show - it's a character drama set in small-town America three years after 140 million people, 2 per cent of the global population, vanished instantaneously.

Some consider the Sudden Departure to be the biblical Rapture, where the purest souls ascend to heaven. Others aren't so sure, given not all those taken were believers, nor were they all model citizens.

This is no satire of the Rapture and the religious, but a vehicle to explore loss, grief and how life goes on after unthinkable events.

It is drawn from the eponymous 2011 novel by Tom Perotta, who is on board as writer/executive producer.

Somewhat alarmingly, the series showrunner is Lost's Damon Lindelof. Will The Leftovers also get weirder and weirder then end abruptly with too many unanswered questions?

Thankfully, Lindelof says he has learned from reactions to Lost.

The first episode of The Leftovers opens on that fateful day, as a baby disappears from his car seat and a driverless car crashes. But these scenes are kept short, and the focus stays on those left behind.

Three years after the town of Mapleton lost 100 people, some "Leftovers" have put their lives back together and are moving on.

Others are tormented by the past and unanswered questions. Where did they go and why? If it wasn't God, who took them? And is there any point to anything any more?

One man struggling to cope is police chief Kevin Garvey (Justin Theroux), who has lost wife Laurie (Amy Brenneman) not to God, but to a cult whose acolytes wear all white, don't speak, chain-smoke, and believe the Departure was just a teaser to the real Rapture.

Kevin, whom I suspect has post-traumatic stress disorder, is trying to connect with angry teenage daughter Jill (Margaret Qualley) and to contact college-dropout son Tom (Chris Zylka). I know many Americans breed young, but why is an actor 14 years younger than Theroux playing his son?

That said, it's about time the multi-talented but underused (and seriously sexy) Theroux got a lead, and not just as Mr Jennifer Aniston.

It's hard to tell whether The Leftovers will be the cult hit HBO hopes for, but it's more than an intriguing premise. Peter Berg's gritty direction and the realism of the hand-held cameras create a world that feels everyday yet not, with an undercurrent of danger.

Lindelof and co resist cramming too much in and being too flashy, instead focusing on the characters and their unhealed wounds.

Lindelof doesn't promise this new show will answer the big questions it poses, but it won't be all flashbacks and confusion. After all, the series' tagline is "grace period is over".

* The Leftovers premieres Monday, 8.30pm on Soho.