A little boy returns to his home town 32 years after he died with no apparent explanation. That mystery, along with the spiritual questions it seems to ask of a small community grappling with shock, grief and awe, is the basis of the new television series Resurrection.
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The series is clocking up 2.35 million television viewers in Australia – astronomical numbers that are rare in a business increasingly defined by smaller audiences and niche demographics. In the last half dozen years a handful of shows have topped the 2 million mark, notably The Voice, My Kitchen Rules and Revenge.
The bigger question, however, is this: are the numbers proof that we are preoccupied with our own mortality or hooked by good marketing?
Our natural inclination, as beings who grapple with the big issues of life, death, what happens in between and what might await us afterwards, is to think mortality is at issue.
But it is more likely a result of marketing, and for evidence we need look no further than the time we asked, collectively, who killed Laura Palmer on Twin Peaks, what was the island on Lost and, all the way back in the 1980s, who shot J.R. on Dallas.
Perhaps complicating the question are signs from the broader mosaic of television and film, where the new science series Cosmos is exploring the majesty of our universe and Darren Aronofsky's epic blockbuster Noah is bringing to the big screen one man's rage against the might of inclement weather.
Life, death, the galaxies, God . . . and a lot of wet weather. It's easy to think that we're a society sitting on the precipice of a spiritual Waterloo. But we've been here before, and if you take the audience numbers as proof of our faith, then you must also take them as proof of our impatience.
Since Resurrection premiered in the US to an extraordinary 14 million viewers, it has slipped each week: to 11 million, 9.5 million and last week 8.3 million. These falls may reveal more about our faith in marketing than the impressive launch figure reveals of our divinity.
In truth, audiences have always loved television's big questions more than the answers that were later offered.
Some shows, such as Flash Forward and The 4400, were cancelled before they articulated their reality. Others, which arrived at their final episode with the best of intentions, left viewers frustrated or confused, such as The Sopranos, Dexter and Lost.
Others again, such as Twin Peaks, were simply confounding. Proof, perhaps, that in exploring big questions, the last thing we want to hear are practical answers.
Douglas Adams once joked – brilliantly – about the great question of life, the universe and everything. His answer was 42.
In a world of reincarnated children, supernatural powers, Black Lodges, red rooms, islands and ghosts, Adams' answer is perhaps more sensible than anything that has come since.
