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Touch
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Network: Fox
Main showrunner: Tim Kring ( Heroes )
Main star: Kiefer Sutherland
Script review/analysis: Picked up as a mid-season series (likely to fill the old 24 time slot in January), and given the greenlight on the strength of the script alone (or maybe just the fact Kiefer Sutherland has committed to it), Touch is most definitely the work of Heroes creator Tim Kring. Initially the story stems from the insular world of 10-year-old Jake Bohm, who has acute autism diagnosed as Childhood Disintegrative Disorder, but then it mutates into something else, connecting seemingly disparate characters across the globe via a lost cell phone. With Jake’s initial narration about mathematical patterns and chaos we come to learn that connection is inevitable and while he’s obviously brilliant with numbers, outside of his internal monologue, he can’t vocalise any of his wisdom to the people around him. Lost inside his drawings, notebooks filled with numbers and an obsession with cell phones, Jake seems to be isolated. But as the hour unfolds Jake’s immense, and misunderstood, powers set up the show’s major themes of destiny much like Heroes did, just without the superhero construct.
As of yet, Kiefer Sutherland is the only person cast, playing Martin Bohm, Jake’s overwhelmed father. Widowed on 9/11 when his wife died in the World Trade Center bombings, Martin is trying to raise and communicate with his enigmatic son in any way possible but failing at every turn. In the pilot, circumstances come to a head when Jake evades his father to climb a cell tower (again), putting Martin’s custody in jeopardy with Child Protective Services. Clea Hopkins, their new case worker, is sympathetic and along with Martin, also comes to realise that Jake’s numeric obsessions are extremely special and possibly precognitive. All the while, the global strangers are connecting through that lost phone bringing their personal destinies together… and they all orient around Jake’s numbers.
Aside from Heroes , there are shades of Knowing and Lost inherent too considering Jake’s obsession with the Fibonacci sequence and some electro-magnetism theories. Overall, it reads melodramatic and dark, but the boy at the center is an interesting linchpin. Let’s hope they keep the story focused and grounded rather than epic so it doesn’t go off the rails.
