The Dead Zone is — so far — a fun series. Question in my mind is: how long can they carry it on? Is this going to be an interminable series, or does it have a definite arc planned? And what will they do with Johnny Smith at the end?

The original novel was written, many years ago, by Steven King. There was a film version starring Christopher Walken as the main character. Both of those ended quickly, without possibility of sequel. The film version was, if anything, better plotted than the book version (do I speak heresy?). The series is, I think, better than the film version.

To recap: young Johnny Smith, playing hockey on the ice at his home town of Cleaves Mills back in the seventies, suffers a fall and a mild case of brain damage, which causes him to become adept at finding lost items, winning at the roulette wheel, and occasionally making delphic predictions about other kids falling through the ice and almost getting drowned. Twenty years later, Johnny (Anthony Michael Hall), now a high-school biology teacher, is on his way to pick up some videotapes and popcorn for a pleasant evening with his long-time girl friend and fiancee Sarah (Nicole de Boer) when a truck hits his car. He wakes up in hospital to discover that he has just passed six years in a coma, that Sarah is now married to the county sheriff (Chris Bruno) and they are raising a son (Johnny’s), and that he now has genuine visions of the post, the present, and the future that might-be.

It’s been a long time since I read the book, but it feels to me as though the first two episodes follow the original story fairly closely (Johnny’s awakening, the sheriff’s deputy who is a serial murderer; in the first episode, Rev. Purdy mentions up-and-coming politician Greg Stillson who is the original novel’s villain, but that has not yet been followed up on). By the third episode the series diverges from the original story (Johnny is coaching the student he has to save from a dreadful fate, in a public situation, and not tutoring him in private); later episodes don’t remind me of any particular thing in the novel. At least two new important characters have been introduced: the Rev. Eugene Purdy (David Ogden Stiers, who has been underused since M*A*S*H disappeared), who is described as thirty-year-old Johnny’s guardian and who — having inherited Johnny’s mother’s money — may have reason to want him kept on a short leash; and newspaperwoman Dana Bright (the luscious Kristen Dalton), who shares a diet of donuts with Sheriff Walt Bannerman’s men and yet doesn’t seem to be affected (well, at least not unpleasantly) by them. Sarah is Johnny’s past and, to some extent, present (though she, Sheriff Walt and Johnny have not yet … quite … collapsed into a ménage a trois); Johnny’s visions suggest that Dana may be at least part of his future.

The series is good and enjoyable; but I still wonder about its ending. An hour a week for many weeks gives you a chance to get to like Johnny, and hope that he will be doing the psychic hot-line thing clear into his old age; but those who have read the book and seen the movie will remember that the young Johnny died in a hail of bullets, saving the world from a potential madman. Is that where the series is going?

Catch it on USA every sunday evening at ten p.m. It’s rebroadcast on Thursdays and, a couple of weeks later, on the Sci-Fi Channel.