Having surmised that they have gone back in time and found that the past consists of an empty shell slowly losing all its energy, the survivors of the plane flight look for a way to get back to the time rift that they passed through. They face the multiple problems of a plane with no fuel, fuel that won't burn and a Craig Toomey who has gone utterly insane under the influence of the memory of his equally insane father and started to stab people. And that's not mentioning the Langoliers, unseen as yet, but getting ever closer.

All the answers are found in the concluding half of the story, but they still take their own good time about coming, much like the Langoliers whose presence remains for the most part just a sound, and a sound that can't be heard inside the terminal at that so it isn't the ever-present threat that it is in the novella. With the main threat unseen and barely heard, the cast of characters take their time ambling around and talking about the problems for far too long. Only when the businessman sets about killing people does the pace pick up a bit and then it accelerates to a conclusion that is trying to get so much in that it ends up being rushed rather than breathless.

Bronson Pinchot's performance goes from exaggerated to so far over the top it's down the other side, setting him aside from the others who continue to give good solid performances. The transition of the blind girl Dinah from a slightly gifted girl to an astral-projecting, future-seeing savant doesn't fit with the rest of the story as well. Neither does the now-contractual appearance of novelist Stephen King as the head of an imaginary board meeting that is so bad that it snaps the audience right out of the plot altogether at a crucial moment.

And so we come to the show's raison d'etre, the appearance of the Langoliers themselves. Looking like a prune with motorised teeth, they neither look real nor scary. They are something out of a very bad video game from the early years. They also act in a strange fashion. Their purpose is to eat the past (literally) until only a void is left and yet they are easily distracted and even take time out to taunt the occupants of the plane instead of just eating it, thus allowing it to get away. After them, anything else seems perfectly plausible.

There is one final act, even after the escape from the Langoliers, and it is an act of sacrifice. One of the good things about the story is that it is not shy about letting people die - and not just the people that might deserve it. There can truly be no guessing who is going to live and who is not and that, at least, is pleasing.