Wayward Pines - 'Where Paradise is Home'

The cast, many of whom are as yet mysterious.

Ethan Burke (Matt Dillon), Secret Service agent, wakes on the road into the small town of Wayward Pines, Idaho, with no wallet or ID. He dimly recalls an accident, a truck hitting his car and killing his partner. He remembers that he was looking for two other missing agents. And he can not get out of Wayward Pines, a town which seems too perfect to be true.

He meets a friendly barlady, Beverley (Juliette Lewis), who points him to a dilapidated house where the mutilated body of one of the agents awaits. He ducks the solicitous attentions of oh-so-chipper Nurse Pam (Melissa Leo), and attempts to extract his ID from either the hospital or the rum'n'raisin slurping Sheriff Pope (Terence Howard). Then a barman denies Beverley exists before knocking him out. 

As the cloying folksiness gives way to reveal a glimpse into something darker, Burke's family and co-workers in Seattle struggle with the fact that he has literally vanished: The car he was in has been recovered along with the body of his partner, but with no sign he was ever in it. His boss, however, seems to know more than he is saying.

A psychiatrist named Jenkins (Toby Jones, woo!) tells Burke he is suffering a brain hemorrhage and has him scheduled for surgery, but Beverley rescues him and tells him that the dead agent was trying to escape when he was killed. She also tells him that she has been in the town for a year, since a car accident in 1999. The next morning, he sees the other missing agent, his ex-partner and ex-lover Kate (Carla Gugino), but she is twenty years older and seems to have spent two decades in Wayward Pines since vanishing ten days ago. Considering this shit to be weirder than his pay grade, Burke breaks a rule; he doesn't buy a gun, but he does steal a car, he tries to run but he don't get far. The road out of town loops back on itself, and when he sets out on foot he finds a vast electric fence circling the town, bearing the legend: "Return to Wayward Pines. Beyond this point, you will die."

"What've they got in there? King Kong?"

Back at the car, the sheriff ambushes Burke and tells him 'you're not going anywhere'.

The opening episode of M Night Shyamalan's adaptation of the Wayward Pines novels is a beautiful thing, making the most of the bleak grandeur of its Idaho pine woods and mountains. The books wre a conscious tribute to Twin Peaks, and much has been made of the nods to other series on display here - in particular the parallels between the opening sequence and that of Lost. Sadly, the accelerated pace of the series loses some of the creeping weirdness that was so effectie in the first book, but it has to evolve and that might actually be easier from this base.