With A Cryptic Brusqueness

New Zealand actor Sam Neill, 64, stars in Lost creator J. J. Abrams’ drama series Alcatraz, which premiered on American channel Fox this month. “The premise: The orderly closing of the prison on Alcatraz in 1963 was faked. Its inmates were not redistributed to other prisons; they disappeared, along with the guards — more than 300 people, we’re told. And now the convicts are returning, somehow having not aged and apparently on a mission orchestrated by unknown string-pullers. Directing the super-secret investigation into what happened is Emerson Hauser, embodied by Sam Neill with a cryptic brusqueness. The show derives much of its momentum from the interplay between detective Rebecca Madsen trying to drag details out of Emerson, who clearly knows much more about the strange goings-on in 1963 than he is sharing.”