Alcatraz (TV series)

Did You Know?

• The show was filmed in Vancouver and San Francisco.
• Warner Home Video released the entire series on DVD and Blu-ray on October 16, 2012.
• The National Park Service installed warning signs on Alcatraz tours stating the TV show is fictional.

Plot summary

On March 21, 1963, 256 inmates and 46 guards disappeared from Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary. The government covered up the disappearance by claiming the prison closed due to unsafe conditions and that inmates were transferred. Federal agent Emerson Hauser, a young police officer in 1963, discovered the inmates were actually missing. In present-day San Francisco, the missing individuals, called the "63s," begin returning one by one, unaged and with no memory of their missing time, but compelled to continue criminal habits and find certain objects. The government has been expecting their return, and Hauser now leads a secret unit to capture them. He enlists police detective Rebecca Madsen and Dr. Diego Soto, an Alcatraz historian, to track down the returning prisoners.

Cast and characters

Sarah Jones plays Rebecca Madsen, a San Francisco Police Department homicide detective whose grandfather was an Alcatraz inmate responsible for her partner's death. She was raised by her great-uncle, a former Alcatraz guard and cop, and helped him with case files as a child, inspiring her career. Jorge Garcia portrays Dr. Diego "Doc" Soto, who holds PhDs in criminal justice and Civil War history, wrote books on Alcatraz, and owns a comic book store. He experienced a traumatic abduction at age eleven. His detailed knowledge of Alcatraz prisoners helps the task force identify returning inmates. Sam Neill plays Emerson Hauser, an FBI agent who was present at Alcatraz in 1963 when the prisoners vanished; he now heads the task force and studied philosophy at Yale. Parminder Nagra plays Dr. Lucille "Lucy" Banerjee, Hauser's technician and friend, who was a psychiatrist at Alcatraz in 1963 before vanishing. She later recovers from a coma after a blood transfusion from an inmate with accelerated healing.

Reception

In June 2011, Alcatraz was one of eight honorees in the Most Exciting New Series category at the 1st Critics' Choice Television Awards. The series holds a 60% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 35 critic reviews, with the consensus calling it "lumbering, humorless." On Metacritic, it scored 62 out of 100, indicating "generally favorable reviews." Newsday's Verne Gay noted similarities to The 4400 and FlashForward. USA Today's Robert Bianco found the twists enjoyable but questioned how long the complexity could last. New York's Matt Zoller Seitz panned the series as mechanical. The pilot drew over 10 million U.S. viewers, but the season finale dropped to 4.75 million. In the UK, the pilot debuted with 496,000 viewers, a record for Watch channel's time slot since 2011.