ABSENTIA
Amazon Prime Video, 3:00 a.m. ET
SERIES PREMIERE: Stana Katic from ABC’s Castle stars as an FBI agent who is captured and held captive by a serial killer – for six years, long after her husband and young son, along with her colleagues at the bureau, have presumed her dead. Then she suddenly resurfaces, but with no memory of her captivity. And the word “resurfacing” is literal, because she emerges from a large glass tank filled with water, used intermittently to almost drown her. It’s the same torture device used in the movie The Cell, and, like almost everything about the opening episodes of this new Amazon series, is almost depressingly familiar. There have been so many smart serial killers lurking on TV the past decade or so that Absentia just seems vaguely, darkly cookie-cutter – except for the eventual realization that evidence may link her to some of the killer’s crimes as a co-conspirator. And while Katic’s performance is strong and at times bravely lacking in vanity, the central plot of Absentia never quite seems other than elaborately contrived. For a full review, see David Hinckley's All Along the Watchtower.