Clearly positioned as ABC’s replacement for the soon-to-end Lost, FlashForward turns out to be a surprisingly creepy-crawly mystery story about a worldwide phenomenon in which everyone blacks out for 137 seconds and has visions of their lives six months in the future.

Boasting one of the better hour-long pilots of the season, the first episode neatly and succinctly lays out a dizzying array of characters and plots. At the center is FBI agent Mark Benford (Joseph Finnes, who is ageing nicely), whose flash of the future involves investigating who or what caused the blackout. There’s also his surgeon wife, Olivia (Sonya Walger), his partner Demetri (John Cho), and both his and Olivia’s co-workers, all of whom have varying reactions to their visions.

The premise is satisfying goose-pimply, as hundreds of thousands of people die in airplane crashes, on the freeways, and walking up stairs. But even as you shiver at the thought of how fragile your every day life really is (happily crossing an intersection with an iPod jammed in your ears seconds before you blackout and end up killed by a careening car, for instance), there’s still a feeling that the writers have taken the most obvious ideas and run with them. The glimpses of the future are all easy choices: an alcoholic who has fallen off the wagon, a single woman getting a sonogram, the man who doesn’t see anything in six months. Still, just because the future as depicted on the show feels a little too pat doesn’t detract from the relentless pacing and great performances.

Fiennes, in particular, shows an adeptness and charisma that makes his delayed appearance on television seem mystifying. Free from floundering in his career’s no man’s land, his Mark is both businesslike and terrified. Seeing yourself menaced by men with tattoos and masks in six months has that affect, of course, but his tentative reluctance to simply accept what the future has in store is both quixotic and invigorating, much like the show’s premise itself. How a show that has already told us what will happen by season’s end will play out remains to be seen, but anyone who watches the pilot will stay glued to their TV to find out.

Photo: Ron Tom/ABC