Few things generate more buzz and hook more viewers than a good mystery. In 1980, the question on everyone's lips was: 'Who shot J.R. Ewing?' Ten years later, we wanted to know 'who killed Laura Palmer?', while we began the 21st century with the conundrum: 'Who actually watches The Simple Life?'
All these puzzles have been put into the shade lately by a show that has more inexplicable posers than a university sex survey. Lost (Thursdays at 11pm), which returns to AXN this week for a third season, has kept viewers guessing the answers to a host of questions, from why the characters are on the island and how they are connected, to the various riddles surrounding the underground bunkers and the ominous Others.
While answers have been either elusive or have arrived in the shape of yet more questions, this hasn't stopped fans of the show putting forward theories on websites and online message boards. These have ranged from the suggestion the island is purgatory and each person is stuck between heaven and hell, to the implication the castaways are all unwitting contestants on a Truman Show-esque reality-TV show, to the idea that all the events take place in the mind of one of the characters (a la Jacob's Ladder). Each of these scenarios has been scoffed at by the show's makers - but they could hardly respond differently otherwise they would have to change the name to Found.
Season three starts off with the plot thickening still further - presumably to the metaphorical consistency of meatloaf - as Kate (Evangeline Lilly), Sawyer (Josh Holloway) and Jack (Matthew Fox) are interrogated by their captors. Elsewhere, Jin (Daniel Dae Kim), Sun (Yunjin Kim) and Sayid (Naveen Andrews) launch a rescue mission while Locke (Terry O'Quinn) resorts to some unusual measures to help Mr Eko (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje).
If the first few episodes are anything to go by, season three will continue in the same action-packed vein as the conclusion of the previous series. Mercifully, a few of the pieces start to fall in to place as more is revealed about the Others, the cryptic Dharma Initiative and the pasts of the various castaways - although, for the most part, this merely results in the realisation that the puzzle is much bigger than you first imagined.
Having not followed Lost religiously, I was daunted by the prospect of tuning into such a densely plotted show 47 episodes late, but the producers have solved this problem by kicking off the new season with a bumper recap, Lost: A Tale of Survival (Thursday at 10pm). This hour-long special brings viewers up to speed by replaying the key points from seasons one and two in an admirably concise fashion before the new series starts in earnest with a firecracker double episode.