Having now seen all of Series (Season) One of ‘Touch‘ (via Sky One in the UK), I think I’m hooked. Yet, damnit, I’m hooked at the end of the season, and I am left hungry for more. Sigh.
Written by the same guy that hooked me and reeled me in to watching Heroes, Touch is similar in plot devices, whilst also being completely different. (I have to add, I gave up on Heroes half-way through Season Two when, to my mind it jumped the shark and it lost my attention and enthusiasm.)
Touch is a supernatural thriller series with aspects of spirituality and science and it stars Keifer Sutherland playing the part of a widower huffing and puffing his way through each scene as he tries to keep up with his mute son.
His son, played by the awesome David Mazouz, doesn’t really communicate in the conventional sense, and shows all the signs of an advanced anti-social isolating form of autism, whilst busying himself writing numbers. He has exercise books full of numbers, usually repeating and recurring over and over again, a bit like how Bruce Willis had loads of bits of paper with apparently nonsensical writing all over them in Twelve Monkeys. The numbers are somehow demonstrated as being the threads that in some strange way bind us to events and consequence and each other.
Put simply, the young 11 year-old can predict events before they happen and his father’s task is to somehow change events or make new things happen through their intervention, after working out what the numbers might mean. Yeah, sounds a bit lame when you explain it like that, doesn’t it? But it’s not lame. Not yet, anyway.
Added to the pot is the fact that some sinister organisation wants to take the boy, plus, there’s custody issues as the ‘state’ is trying to put him in a home, assessing that the father is incapable of looking after his special needs.
So, there you have it. Each week has a series of events during which wrongs are righted, plus there’s a longer story arc as father and son are learning how to communicate and then deal with the major issues of protecting the boy from those who wish to take him and experiment on him.
Whether or not this can run for much more than a further season, I’m not too sure. If they can keep it believable and, well, as ‘touching’ as it has been, then this is a major hit.
You probably missed this whole season. But, I would honestly highly recommend getting the DVD box-set and watching it. You’ll be touched.
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