Attack Of The Clones! 5 TV Shows That Inspired Blatant Rip-Offs

FlashForward

The worst of the Lost clones, FlashForward began with its grizzled hero awakening in shock after a catastrophe – in this show’s case, a worldwide cataclysm in which everyone loses consciousness for two minutes and seventeen seconds, experiencing glimpses of their futures. Cue the extensive flashbacks, flashforwards, and just about every other kind of flash you can imagine.

As protagonist Mark Benford (Joseph Fiennes), an FBI agent, attempts to unravel the mystery of the flashforwards, he runs across all sorts of mysterious groups bent on keeping secrets about the reasons behind the event hidden. Though the show only lasted one season, it set up a ton of story arcs involving government conspiracies, kidnappings and all sorts of faux-intellectual sci-fi gobbledygook. Unfortunately, mediocre acting and weak scripts prevented FlashForward from connecting with its audience in the same way Lost did.

Just How Bad Is It? 9/10

Oddly, for a show called FlashForward, the ABC sci-fi drama felt like a blast from the very recent past. Almost every aspect of FlashForward was done first and better by Lost. Ralph Fiennes’ roguish but heroic FBI agent protagonist couldn’t hold a candle to Matthew Fox’s troubled doctor. The pilot felt extremely similar to Lost, with a catastrophic event unfolding within the first few minutes and the show’s characters coming together in response to it.

Both shows dealt with time travel head-on, and even some of the weirder aspects of Lost made their way to FlashForward: for example, Lost featured out-of-place polar bears rampaging around the tropical island, while FlashForward‘s protagonist was puzzled by the appearance of a kangaroo hopping around Los Angeles for absolutely no reason. ABC clearly wanted to replicate the success of Lost and could think of no other way to do it than by actually duplicating the same tone and heavily serialized format of Lost but moving it off the island to the much less interesting setting of LA.

The Event

Also a pretty awful Lost copycat, NBC’s sci-fi conspiracy thriller set up a ton of big questions with its heavily serialized first season but never got a chance to answer any of them. A half-baked plot about extraterrestrials assimilating into the general populace, an attempt on the President’s life, inter-dimensional portals and a kidnapping all tried to entice viewers, but messy execution, poor acting, an overabundance of confusing flashbacks and misleading advertising drove enough of the audience away that the show only lasted one season. Even the show’s typography was reminiscent of Lost‘s; The Event was ultimately a clear-cut case of network plagiarism, undone by its own ambitions and over-familiarity.

Just How Bad Is It? 8/10

While The Event didn’t quite steal from Lost as blatantly as FlashForward did, the show’s Gordian mess of plot threads and sci-fi elements felt unoriginal, especially when regarding its non-linear storyline. Despite promising big twists, the show couldn’t figure out what it wanted to be and stalled somewhere between the countless dimly-lit conversations between shady government types and the undercooked adventures of its ‘everyday’ characters. It’s mostly the marketing’s fault, which posited The Event as the thrilling, complex mystery it never was in the first place, but the showrunners must have known that their show was playing a dangerous game in trying to be the next Lost.