The 4400 - Series 1 - Complete [2004]

RRP £24.99 Lowest New Price £8.60

Suitable for 12 years and over Paramount Home Entertainment Release date: Monday 10th of January 2005 Starring: Jacqueline McKenzie, Joel Gretsch, Laura Allen, Format: Anamorphic, PAL, Widescreen, Region code: 2 Running time: 380 minutes Language: English (Subtitled) Language: English (Original Language)

RRP: £24.99
Editorial
Amazon.co.uk Review

The 4400, which began as a five-week mini-series, is built around a deceptively simple, dramatically rich premise. What if all the people, who had ever been abducted by aliens, were suddenly returned to Earth? What would happen? Although they look exactly as they did when they left, they have no knowledge of where they were or why they were taken. Now some even have special powers, like clairvoyance. As with ABC's Lost, which centres on the survivors of a plane crash, The 4400 features a large cast of characters and a host of mysteries to be solved. If the special effects, which are kept to a minimum, can be a little cheesy at times, the concept--and the skillful execution of the concept--easily makes up for it.

Produced by Francis Ford Coppolla's American Zoetrope and created by Scott Peters (The Outer Limits), The 4400 is set in Seattle, where the 4400 are returned. The principal characters include Dennis Ryland (Peter Coyote of E.T.), the local supervisor of Homeland Security. He's joined by agents Tom Baldwin (Joel Gretsch of Taken), whose nephew was one of the returnees, and Diana Skouris (Jacqueline McKenzie of Romper Stomper), who takes in one of the youngest returnees.

Guest stars include Michael Moriarty (Law and Order) in "Pilot" and Lee Tergeson (Oz) in "Becoming." Billy Campbell (Once and Again) also appears in several episodes as Jordan Collier, a real-estate magnate and returnee who becomes an advocate for others like himself, many of whom are having problems adjusting to a changed world. Like Lost, one of the biggest success stories of 2004, The 4400 debuted to strong ratings and was renewed for a full season. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

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Editorial
Synopsis

When 4400 alien abductees return to earth just as mysteriously as they vanished, the Department of Homeland Security demands answers. But even more pressing than the concerns of the government are the experiences of the 4400 victims as they readjust to life on earth. Upon their return, these formerly missing persons lose all memory of what happened to them. Though they can't remember where they've been, they are haunted by the knowledge that their experiences have changed them. Operating in a cloud of unknowns, the victims start to go through mysterious changes, gaining powers that they can't always control.

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Get through it just to get Season 2
Review date: 2007-08-24 Rating: 8 out of 10

As the title says, if you can make your way through this series (and are either interested or entertained by the idea and plot) then the second series gets a whole lot better.
This fairly short (episode-wise) series starts with an 80 minute long Pilot in which we see the abduction of various people (from the 1930's through to 2001), followed by a skip ahead in time to 2004,when all the abductees, all 4400 of them, are returned all at once in Seattle. They are soon carted off to a quarantine area controlled by a government organisation called NTAC, where we are introduced to a couple of the 4400s (one of which is the son of an NTAC agent) who will appear in almost every episode of this, and the next two seasons.
The Pilot carries on to show what happens after these 4400s are released from quarantine and how they start to try and adapt to their new surroundings.
The next four episodes (each 40 minutes long) explore the lives of the few 4400s we met in the pilot, as well as the two NTAC agents assigned to watching over all the 4400s still living in Seattle (there are a lot of them) and adding a new 4400 character each episode (one who usually dies or goes away for some reason or another by the end of the 40 minutes).
Though, as other reviewers have said, there aren't many big special effects scenes in this first series, they were obviously saving the budget for the season finale.
Basically, the season finale (which arrived much too quickly in my opinion) cranks up a bit of tension through-out before telling you just about everything you wanted to know about the 4400s (why/where they went and who took them). The end, however, does set up the idea for the next season which, as I said in the title, is much better than this one in my opinion.
For ten quid I think this is worth buying and watching, and if you do enjoy it(even just a bit) then you should definitely check out the second season which is twelve 40 minute episodes long and improves a lot on the idea explored in this short season.

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