Having a show with great creative pedigree is no guarantee of success, nor even quality. There have been occasions when it happens that a great writing, directing and acting team get together and create a dud, possibly because of a surfeit of talent.

FlashForward almost suffered from that fate, but ended up with a far worse fate: indifferent reviews, middling ratings, a big break mid-season and a threat of cancellation.

In our house, nowadays we say that if a show gets cancelled by the network, it must good, especially when it comes to genre shows. I'm not even going to try and list them all, but as an example, the 2005 alien invasion series Threshold.

I'm using this one in particular because its producer, and sometimes writer, Brannon Braga was also responsible for FlashForward. Braga knows a thing or two about TV series, having produced and written for several flavours of Star Trek as well as 24. FlashForward's co-creator, David S Goyer is no slouch either having written the fantastic DARK CITY, along with the BLADE movies and TV series, as well as writing credits for Chris Nolan's two Batman movies (the less said about JUMPER the better).

FlashFoward's cast was also solid and included three Brits in the principal roles: Joseph Fiennes, Jack Davenport and Dominic Monaghan. So it is difficult to understand why it wasn't more successful.

The basic concept of the show is quite simple. Everyone in the world loses consciousness for two minutes and 19 seconds and exactly the same moment. In that time they have a vision of their future, of the same time in the future (29 April 2010 and 22:00). Cop Mark Benford (Fiennes) is determined to find out what happened and what the visions meant. The show questioned cause and effect, fate and predermination, and whether we can alter our future if the vision was not good. It was part cop procedural and part existentialist drama that may have proved too challenging for the average TV-watching audiences. Or maybe they were put off by the quantum physics. Who knows? Thankfully the show ran full season so it could be satisfactorily resolved, and it even leaves room for it to continue, should the network choose to. It was certainly more plausible and less convoluted than Lost and, for my money, more engaging.

If you missed it on TV then it is definitely worth a watch if you like your science fiction to have a good dose of science, time travel and human drama then will do the trick. And if you did see it on TV then it is worth a second look to see if there were any clues that were overlooked. The first season Heroes was one of those shows that improved on a second viewing because you could pick up on things that seemed in consequential at the time.

Review discs weren't available to look at the special features included on the five-disc box set, but they seem substantial and add both humour and insights to the show.

FlashForward is released on DVD on September 27 and is available from Play and all good retailers.