Fox has released a new long-form trailer for its upcoming mid-season series Touch. The show, which stars Kiefer Sutherland, is a fantasy drama combining elements of big-mystery series with the action of a procedural.
It seems similar in scope and devise to Person of Interest: A man has to try to stop bad things from happening by responding to a mysterious prescient force. In this case, however, the prescient is his own mute, estranged son.
The protagonist must, in each episode, attempt to figure out what the child is trying to tell him about something bad that’s going to happen, so it can be prevented. It seems, at least from the pilot trailer, that most of the story will be focused on trying to figure out what the message is, rather than the actual attempt to try to stop the thing from happening. Yes, this is an interesting twist, but one that could get stale quickly if not executed properly.
This new trailer basically just combined the footage we’ve already seen from previous trailers and teasers with some new graphical elements.
The real treasure here is the recently released long-form synopsis which gives a lot of detail for the new show:
From writer/creator Tim Kring (Heroes, Crossing Jordan) and executive producers Peter Chernin (New Girl, Terra Nova) and Katherine Pope (New Girl, Terra Nova) comes TOUCH, a preternatural drama in which science and spirituality intersect with the hopeful premise that we are all interconnected, tied in invisible ways to those whose lives we are destined to alter and impact.
The series follows a group of seemingly unrelated characters – beginning with a former firefighter tormented by his inability to save a dying woman, an Iraqi teenager who will go to great risks to help his family, a gifted singer whose actions at a karaoke bar save lives thousands of miles away and a British businessman desperately trying to retrieve a key piece of information from his lost mobile phone – who affect each other in ways seen and unseen.
At the center is MARTIN BOHM (Kiefer Sutherland, 24), a widower and single father, haunted by an inability to connect to his mute 11-year-old son, JAKE (David Mazouz). Caring, intelligent and thoughtful, Martin has tried everything to reach his son who shows little emotion and never allows himself to be touched by anyone, including Martin. Jake busies himself with cast-off cell phones, disassembling them and manipulating the parts, allowing him to see the world in his own special way.
After multiple failed attempts at keeping Jake in school, Martin is visited by social worker CLEA HOPKINS (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), who insists on doing an evaluation of the Bohms’ living situation. Although new at her job, Clea sees a man whose life has become dominated by a child he can no longer control. She believes his attempts to communicate with Jake are just wish fulfillment, and determines that it’s time for the state to intervene.
But everything changes when Martin discovers that Jake possesses a gift of staggering genius – the ability to see things that no one else can, and the patterns that connect seemingly unrelated events. Jake is indeed communicating after all. But it’s not with words, it’s with numbers. Martin meets ARTHUR DEWITT (Danny Glover), a professor and an expert on children who possess special gifts when it comes to numbers. Now it’s up to Martin to decipher the meaning and connect the numbers to the cast of characters whose lives they affect.
TOUCH is a production of Chernin Entertainment and Tailwind Productions, in association with 20thCentury Fox Television. Tim Kring created the series and wrote the pilot. Kring, Francis Lawrence (Water for Elephants), Peter Chernin, Katherine Pope, Kiefer Sutherland, Suzan Bymel (The War at Home) and Carol Barbee (Jericho) are executive producers. Lawrence directed the pilot.
No start date has been announced yet for Touch, but as it’s intended to be a mid-season starter, I would expect the first episode in January or February.
