Harry Wyckoff appears to have it all in Los Angeles 2007. He is a successful patent attorney expecting to make partner, has a gorgeous wife, two kids and a nice house. There are clouds on the horizon of his world, such as the recurring dream of the rhinoceros, the fact that he can't successfully make love to his wife and his daughter won't speak, but that is nothing as to what happens when an old lover walks back into his office and his life. Paige's son has been missing for five years and she wants Harry to help find him. This chance encounter leads to a meeting with Senator Kreutzer, head of the huge TV network Channel 3 which is about to launch Church Windows, the world's first virtual reality TV show.

Also involved with the Senator is Harry's mother-in-law, the constantly facelifted Josie who is also in the habit of blinding artists and killing thier sisters. There's a wild man who is locked in an artificial reality world, an absent father and two organisations, the Friends and the Fathers, who seem to be at war and use kidnapped children as their battleground. When Harry loses his job and accepts a new one with Kreutzer, he is sucked deeper into a world of shadows where not everything is as it seems.

Although produced by Oliver Stone, this series is really the creation of Bruce Wagner, from whose comic strip it is taken. It is easy to see why it appealed to Stone, though, with its coruscating plot of conspiracies and altered perception. In this feature-length opening episode, there is a strong sense of the surreal. People are taken off the streets and out of restaurants without any curiosity from those around them. People share the same dreams in which the rhinoceros is apparently all that remains of the unicorn. The first words of the hero's little girl are the same as the Senator uses whilst telling a story about his dead father.

None of which has any explanation. There are many disparate more conventional mystery/thriller elements going on such as the mysterious, competing organisations, the corporate intrigues over the new 3D/virtual reality technology, the kidnapping of the artist's sister and his subsequent blinding, the links between Paige, Josie and the Senator. All of these elements slowly come together into a patchwork that is part of a bigger picture, but a picture that we have not yet been allowed to see.

The production design also works to put the show slightly off-kilter. Though set fourteen years in the future, everyone drives old style cars and the costuming throws back more to the fifties than forward to any theoretical future.

The performances from the cast (and what a cast) vary from the good to the stilted, sometimes from the same actor, again adding to the off-key, bizarre surreality of it all. With the likes of Belushi, Robert Loggia, Angie Dickinson, Dana Delaney and Kim Cattrall in the cast, all of whom are accomplished performers, this can only hope to be planned and explained in future episodes.

The mystery of what all this means and where it is going is intriguing, but there is also a sense that the show is trying to be TWIN PEAKS but without the humour, all too aware of its own quirks and bizarreness. Only time will tell.

The Floating World