Flawed ‘Persons Unknown’ half-baked but addictive

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For far too long now, NBC has been guilty of not giving viewers what they wanted. “Knight Rider.” “Kath & Kim.” “Kings.” And those are just the K’s.

Now, though, the network may have overcorrected by giving viewers what they wanted before they knew they wanted it.

Hands down, the TV-related complaints I hear the most are: “Everything I watch gets canceled before there’s a resolution” and “There’s nothing on in the summer.” (No. 3, if you’re keeping score at home, is “I can’t find ‘Matlock.’ ”)

“Persons Unknown” (8 p.m. Monday then 8 p.m. Saturdays as of July 17, KVBC-TV, Channel 3) solves both of those problems — “By the end of summer,” the commercials promise as a beacon to those still suffering from “Lost” fatigue, “all will be revealed” — yet the 13-episode drama has barely made a hairline crack in the nation’s conscience. (“Matlock,” by the way, can be seen at 7 a.m. weekdays on WGN-America.)

Created by Oscar-winning “The Usual Suspects” writer Christopher McQuarrie, “Persons Unknown” follows seven strangers — a single mother, a loner, a Marine, a mental patient, a socialite, a CEO and a con man — who are kidnapped from around the country and awaken to find themselves locked in a mysterious hotel.

Their new surroundings are part of one square block of what looks to be a ’50s-era town square plopped into the middle of nowhere. (Technically, it looks more like a studio backlot dressed to resemble a ’50s-era town square plopped into the middle of nowhere, but that’s just picking nits.)

And they’re being watched around the clock by dozens if not hundreds of cameras — knock one out, and another slides into place.

In other words, it’s your basic Stephen King starter kit. It’s also the most addictively nutty thing I’ve seen in a long, long time.

The quaint little townlet features a stocked hardware store, dress shop and drugstore complete with a soda fountain. There’s also a barbershop, sheriff’s office and a soon-to-open movie theater, all of which gives off the feeling of being menaced by a Norman Rockwell painting.

Most importantly, there’s the Shanghai Palace, the fully staffed Chinese restaurant that serves what the Marine (Chadwick Boseman) calls “the best damn Chinese food I ever had. I could eat it every day.” Good thing, since it’s the only food available.

But for the life of me, aside from Janet Cooper (Daisy Betts), who doesn’t know what has become of her young daughter, I couldn’t understand why everyone was so hellbent on escaping.

They’re being put up in a hotel where the rooms are cleaned and the beds are made daily, any damage is quickly fixed and you sometimes return to find a gift: a butterfly, clothes or a pistol in case you want to take whomever is holding you up on his or her offer — expressed through a fortune cookie, no less — of killing another captive and going free.

But try to escape, they do — over and over and over again — to hilariously futile results.

When they first make it out of the hotel, they try to run away, only to be brought down by biometric implants in their thighs that dose them with tranquilizers.

They cut those out with a pocket knife and try to run again, only to encounter an invisible wall that uses high-intensity microwaves to cook the water molecules in their skin.

They spend a week tunneling underground, only to reach a steel wall that emits a poisonous gas.

They steal the Shanghai Palace delivery van and drive off into the wilderness, only to be overcome by a blinding white light and end up right back where they started.

And they try to start a signal fire, only to realize that nothing in the town will burn. But in the first episode, they were able to build a fire by rubbing together pieces of a broken dresser drawer. So that’s either a continuity error, or someone — or something — sneaked in one night and treated everything with a flame retardant. And in the world of “Persons Unknown,” it’s really six of one, a half-baked half-dozen of the other.

Finally, though, in last week’s fourth episode, everyone’s overwhelming need to flee finally made sense: The hotel doesn’t have TV reception.

“Persons Unknown” is far from perfect, starting with that cumbersome title. The acting’s a little suspect at times. The writers obviously spent way more time thinking about the plot than the dialogue. And that character who seemed like a natural to be in on the kidnappings? He’s in on the kidnappings.

But as part of the networks’ best model yet for summer programming — stories with a distinct beginning, middle and end that are short enough for any viewer to follow — it, like last summer’s failed CBS horror series “Harper’s Island,” makes for an entertaining canary in the coal mine.

Hopefully, something like “Persons Unknown” will be around whenever viewers realize they’ve been ready for it all along.

Christopher Lawrence’s Life on the Couch column appears on Sundays. E-mail him at clawrence@ reviewjournal.com.