Vanished

A “drama-thriller" that doesn’t try to be anything more than it is. Although the subject matter seems pretty B-grade, this combination of political thriller, modern-day Freemason’s conspiracy and FBI investigation works surprisingly well. Although Vanished borrows some element from every successful series of recent years, it found its very own way of combining these elements. Visually, this series is the spitting image of 24 (it’s impossible to hide the FOX inside). A movie-like sheen, great work with music, suspenseful episodes, some really unusual twists and mainly decent pacing all go to make Vanished an above-average movie in its genre. Its weaknesses include some characters’ performances, but luckily it they are all bearable overall (although I sincerely hated most of them after watching the pilot) and, primarily in later episodes, the ever-greater preoccupation with cheap conspiration theories. Its strengths certainly include the fact that the individual episodes don’t have the same story structure and most of them significantly differ in terms of both style and genre. The good this is that this series didn’t survive its first season, because in the end it didn’t have that much potential, but just about enough for these thirteen solid episodes (the last four of which were merely shown online). (10/10/2006)

Vanished is a decent conspiracy-theory series with constant new twists, seductive mysteriousness and relatable characters. It’s too bad that the casting is rather conservative – someone more prominent should have appeared in the leading role of the agent. (10/27/2007)