FIRST IMPRESSIONS: Designated Survivor – “The New Watercooler Show”

Let’s get the obvious out of the way first. Designated Survivor, ABC’s new primetime drama, is about to be The Show. You know what I’m talking about. There are always great TV shows out there, especially these days, but in any given month there’s always the one show everyone’s talking about. It might be Game of Thrones, 24, Homeland or Lost. As of this week, it’s Designated Survivor – for good or bad, like it or not.

So what’s the fuss all about? Why is the story of a mid-level bureaucrat thrown into the role of President after a devastating attack on the State of the Union Address getting everyone pants-wet excited? Well, firstly, it’s actually pretty good. Kiefer Sutherland plays Jack Bauer- I mean Tom Kirkman, the Secretary of State for Housing and Urban Development. If you’re thinking that’s not a very interesting job, you’d be right. But Kirkman’s real story is his family. He’s a goofy, laid back and affable father who makes scrambled eggs for his kids and knows exactly how much he embarrasses his teenage son.

As the least important guy in the President’s cabinet though, he’s not granted a place at the State of the Union Address. Instead he’s fobbed off as the Designated Survivor – the one member of the cabinet hidden in an undisclosed location as a precaution against a devastating terrorist attack on Congress. This being TV, of course, the only reason the show would bother to tell us this is if there is a devastating terrorist attack. So there’s a devastating terrorist attack, obviously.

President, dead. Vice-President, dead. All the other ones, dead. So now Tom’s being sworn in as President while wearing a grey hoodie and jeans as his wife Alex (Natascha McElhone with a role she can finally sink her teeth into) looks on in disbelief. The rest of the episode follows Tom’s efforts to come to terms with just how decisive and focused he needs to be in his new role. There’s the Presidential speechwriter Seth (Kal Penn) who’s not sure he’s up to it, and a jingoistic General who’s already making secret moves to oust him.

Oh, and Maggie Q shows up as an FBI agent investigating whodunnit. We’re not given a huge amount of this in week one, but there’s a reason Maggie Q keeps getting work – keep an eye out for more of this in future episodes.

If we’re being honest, Designated Survivor could become a massive hit on its premise alone. The first few minutes – a flash forward to the moment of the attack – are designed and delivered perfectly to hook us in. Surrounded by a world of 24 hour news channels warning us of ISIS, Ebola and North Korea, perhaps it just taps into our modern preoccupations and fears in the West. The aforementioned Homeland and 24 got a long way by doing just that.

Premises can only keep you hooked for so long though, and it’s pleasing to see that Designated Survivor has a lot of plates spinning. Firstly, Sutherland and McElhone both deliver likable, charming performances as easy going middle class types thrust into a world of responsibility and intrigue. As odds are stacked against them and political insiders write them off, it’s remarkably easy to root for them. We want Tom to succeed as the mild mannered accidental president no one is really expecting to last five minutes.

Which is where those spinning plates come into play. There’s Maggie Q’s Hannah and her hint that the attack might not be over. There’s Tom’s kids – the drug dealing son and the precious snowflake of a daughter. What about Tom’s chief of staff and her mini-feud with one of the former President’s most senior surviving advisors? Most importantly though, who’s behind the attack? It’s too early to say whether Designated Survivor will flesh these sub-plots out into satisfying arc, but for now they’re a solid reason to keep watching.

From the moment its trailer dropped earlier this year, Designated Survivor looked like a strong contender amongst the onslaught of the new television season. Week one confirmed it. This isn’t going to be an awards winner, but it is going to be on everyone’s lips. It’s the new watercooler show, so be ready for five seasons of it.

Designated Survivor airs Wednesdays on ABC, and is available in the UK on Netflix.