<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"Last week, former Lost star Terry O&amp;#039;Quinn - who enchanted fans for six years as the enigmatic John Locke - was promoting his new show 666 Park Avenue and dismissed any comparisons to his old series with the rather bold statement: &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t think anything&amp;#039;s going to be [the new] Lost.&amp;quot; Whether or not you think this is a good thing largely depends on whether you&amp;#039;re in the camp that believes Lost was one of the best TV shows of the past 20 years or if you&amp;#039;re one of those non-believers who thinks the show was a load of nonsensical mumbo-jumbo - all build-up and no pay-off. But whatever your own outlook, it&amp;#039;s clear that O&amp;#039;Quinn&amp;#039;s position isn&amp;#039;t shared by US network chiefs. Ever since Lost came to an end in 2010, we&amp;#039;ve been inundated with a deluge of shows eager to fill its boots. &amp;gt; Week in Geek - Doctor Who: Can spoilers be exterminated? &amp;gt; Week in Geek - Doctor Who: Iconic stars for the 50th Anniversary Originality has never been a strong point in US TV - find a formula that works and you can be sure that the networks will replicate it and flog it till it&amp;#039;s well and truly dead. Fox&amp;#039;s contemporary take on Moonlighting - the popular crime procedural Bones - was followed by ABC&amp;#039;s remarkably similar Castle and this year CBS serves up its own take on the format with Elementary - which is basically the same formula with a little Conan Doyle thrown in for good measure. But Lost is arguably the show that&amp;#039;s had the greatest influence on US television in the past ten years. Every fall season, we&amp;#039;re promised a show that will become the new Lost - a fair few of them coming from the show&amp;#039;s co-creator JJ Abrams - yet, for the most part, they&amp;#039;ve failed to capture the success of ABC&amp;#039;s island-set bizarro-fest.   First to step up to the plate was FlashForward, ABC&amp;#039;s own attempt to fill the Lost void. They even recruited a few of the show&amp;#039;s stars - Dominic Monaghan, Sonya Walger - but a dramatic ratings fall following an impressive 12.47 million debut meant that FlashForward fell at the first hurdle and was axed after just one season. Next, NBC&amp;#039;s The Event promised Lost-style thrills, but never quite seemed to get a handle on what it was supposed to be. Again, questions were posed but left unanswered as The Event failed to secure a second season - we never even found out what the &amp;#039;event&amp;#039; was, for crying out loud. Most recently, despite protestations from Hurley himself, Fox sci-fi thriller Alcatraz was widely compared to Lost but never clicked with viewers and - you guessed it - didn&amp;#039;t make it past season one.  So there&amp;#039;s a common theme emerging here, but we&amp;#039;re going to steer clear of suggesting that there&amp;#039;s some of kind of Lost curse floating around the television world. None of these shows failed because they were trying too hard to be like Lost - the hard truth is, for the most part, they simply weren&amp;#039;t very good. FlashForward, The Event and Alcatraz each had their own merits, but all three were also lumbered with dull characters, dodgy acting and bizarre plot twists. That&amp;#039;s what sunk them, nothing else. Remarkably it&amp;#039;s been over two years since Lost ended and the search for its replacement is still ongoing. JJ Abrams&amp;#039;s latest effort - NBC drama Revolution - is being talked up in some circles as the latest and best contender yet... And we&amp;#039;re wishing Abrams, Supernatural&amp;#039;s Eric Kripke and everyone else involved in Revolution the best of luck, but what they need to remember is, Lost wasn&amp;#039;t just twist upon twist and questions without answers... At its best, Lost boasted awesome central performances and terrific character drama, and if a new series really wants to become &amp;#039;the new Lost&amp;#039; then that&amp;#039;s the part of the show it should work to replicate. The substance of Lost was always far more important than its style. Do you think Revolution could be the new Lost - or are you tired of shows trying to replicate its success? "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/revolution/news/a402180/revolution-the-event-alcatraz-the-quest-for-the-new-lost/>