Television: Doom Is Big, and All Is Lost

Three spooky new dramas recall a current tragedy a little bit--and recall a certain ABC hit a great deal

Four autumns ago, the TV networks presciently, weirdly, scheduled three terrorism dramas just before 9/11. This fall, just after Hurricane Katrina, the lineup includes three sci-fi series about menaces from the water. Is it conspiracy? Clairvoyance? No, just TV: blame the success of ABC's Lost, in which plane-crash survivors battle eerie phenomena and seaborne attackers on an island.

The wettest of the Lost wannabes is NBC's Surface (Mondays, 8 p.m. E.T.), in which a new species of giant (mostly unseen) creatures appears in the world's seas. Idealistic oceanographer Laura Daughtery (Lake Bell) bumps into a mystery beast during a deep-sea bathysphere dive....

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