• Network: ABC
  • Series Premiere Date: Sep 24, 2009
  • Season #: 1 , 2
FlashForward Image
Metascore

Generally favorable reviews - based on 26 Critics What's this?

User Score

Generally favorable reviews- based on 111 Ratings

  • Summary: For 2 minutes and 17 seconds, everyone see their future in this loose adaptation of Robert J. Sawyer's novel of the same name.
  • Genre(s): Drama, Action & Adventure, Science Fiction
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 19 out of 26
  2. Negative: 0 out of 26
  1. If you like big-screen-level thrills and complicated plot structures, you'll opt-in to FlashForward. And you'll be rewarded. Here's hoping it stays strong and compelling as it heads to April 29.
  2. Like so many contemporary television thrillers, FlashForward works just as powerfully as a domestic drama as it does as a mechanism of apocalyptic intrigue.
  3. ABC's new FlashForward requires concentration and endurance. It's well worth the investment of both.
  4. If the procedural plotting in FlashForward was ordinary, all the conversations about destiny and free will--and what any of it means for the poor sap who didn’t see anything during the blackout--made the first episode feel vibrant, engaged with heady concepts and questions.

See all 26 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 32 out of 46
  2. Negative: 6 out of 46
  1. 10
    All of you have got to be kidding me! This show was great! I just finished the whole first season on Netflix and i cant wait to see the second, and then i learn that the show was canceled?!?!?! So i read the reviews and people were complaining about the characters the plot and a whole bunch of other moronic stuff. So for anyone reading this let me explain why these people who gave this show a bad rating were wrong. First of all the characters were complex and changed through out the entire show, I don't understand why anyone wouldn't enjoy that, nowadays people like the plain, boring and/or idiotic characters like the ones from "Jersey Shore." The plot was great, the show tried to give an answer to an age old philosophical question "Fate vs. Free-Will", but i now see that people have completely forgotten what makes a good show good. Its NOT just some steroid filled idiots arguing all day and fist pumping, a good show is one that helps people learn or at least helps them to think about things outside of their miniature world. Expand
  2. eliasc
    8
    I wasn't expecting much from 'Flashforward'. I have been a fan of Canadian SF author Robert J Sawyer for a long time and liked his novel 'Flashforward' a lot. However I could not understand how it could possibly be translated to TV when I read of the upcoming series late last year. After all, the novel, like all good SF, is about ideas, and this particular novel almost required a reader's understanding of aspects of particle physics. This was not the usual audience that TV aims at. To my surprise, the TV series actually succeeds. Obviously to fans of the book, only the germ of the book's plot is translated onto the small screen. The main characters aren't the same. The complications and the implications of seeing into the future have not been hinted at as yet. And the time shift event's effect on space-time and people has been simplified into some sort of mystery. Still, it all works. The producers have taken the science out of the story. Probably most of the more fascinating scientific speculations will not appear in this series. In the novel, the main characters are not even American, but they are physicists who work at Cern and all around the world; not the FBI in LA. Still it works. Like Battlestar Galactica before it, the writers have created a potentially great show by re-tooling an idea from an older source, in this case a book, for a new audience. The original BSG was a mediocre series that was transformed into great SF television. 'Flashforward' has the same potential for greatness. I only hope that the series also takes the opportunity to actually do a little bit of education along the way and discusses, in easily digestible fashion, the fascinating world of high energy particle physics. Expand
  3. philipw
    7
    It's just intelligent enough and interesting enough to pique my interest for at least another 3 episodes. Then we'll see. Like 24 it has plot holes big enough to drive a semi through, but like early Prison Break it moves quickly and offers enough plot twists to keep up one's interest. Expand
  4. ManolisM.
    4
    Prons: Nice idea, unique. Cons: Slow, confusing, bad writing, bad directing, mediocre acting.

See all 46 User Reviews

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