The Leftovers: A Mesmerizing Mystery

This summer, Sunday night has become jam-packed with quality television. Leading the fray is The Leftovers, the magnificent HBO series based on Tom Perrotta's book of the same name. Written and produced by Lost's Damon Lindelof, this show is a mystery that gradually unfolds with each episode, occasionally answering some questions but always posing new ones, and never ceasing to amaze.

The show opens on October 14, an ordinary day. A harried woman is at the laundromat, talking on the phone, with her screaming baby in tow. Finally she gets to her car, straps her baby into the car-seat, and sits down in front of the steering wheel. Still talking on the phone, she suddenly realizes her baby isn't crying anymore. She turns around, and he has disappeared. At first she is bemused, then terrified. Screaming for her child, she thinks he must have been kidnapped. But her terror is only amplified when she looks around and discovers a boy screaming in the parking lot for his father. More people start screaming for missing relatives and friends, and cars start crashing on the road as their drivers have mysteriously vanished. This is not an ordinary day.

Flash forward to three years after this incident. 2% of the world's population disappeared on that day, and no one has been able to figure out why. Religious leaders of all faiths have their own explanations, while secularists argue that this was random happenstance. Families were wrenched apart, the world was irrevocably changed, and everyone has different ways of dealing with the subsequent chaos. The Leftovers focuses on the residents of Mapleton, a small town with a sprawling cast of characters, who all have their individual tales of loss and hardship that will gradually be uncovered via flashbacks over the course of the series.

I won't delve into any further details about these individual stories because each one is compelling and satisfying as it is told. The cast features Justin Theroux, Amy Brenneman, Liv Tyler, Christopher Eccleston, and many more, all of whom are all turning in excellent performances. These characters are broken people trying to cope with their survivors' guilt and make sense of a world in which anyone could suddenly disappear at any moment without any explanation. Some of them are trying to get on with their lives as normally as possible, while others go completely off the rails. Human beings are complicated, and in such complicated circumstances, there's no knowing what these people will do.

The Leftovers is a bizarre and wonderful show. Beautifully shot, impeccably acted, and tightly scripted, it is something I look forward to every week. I have no idea how it will end, and of course, the danger with something that has such a vague and mysterious premise is that it will never end satisfactorily. But even if the show never reaches a consensus about what happened on that fateful day, I am more than satisfied with the gradual reveals about the characters that populate this town. Each individual mystery is a thrill to uncover and every episode is a televisual treat. Interestingly, despite being on HBO, so far there hasn't been a lot of gratuitous nudity. This suggests the showrunners have a great deal of faith in their ability to keep the audience interested with a compelling plot rather than a slew of sex scenes. So log on to HBO Go or pull up HBO On Demand and delve into the world of The Leftovers. Just because Game of Thrones is over, it doesn't mean HBO still doesn't know how to entertain you on a Sunday night.