This muggy spring weather may be keeping us guessing, but we have not one but two global premieres to look forward to today and tomorrow.
First, Heroes creator Tim Kring returns to his fixation about all human beings being connected in a web of fate in Touch (Fox; two-hour global premiere tonight at 8.55pm). The synchronised worldwide release of the drama bolsters that idea, albeit in a commercially self-serving way. The rest of the introductory work falls squarely onto the shoulders of Kiefer Sutherland (24), who plays Martin Bohm, a September 11 widower and former journalist, and David Mazouz, who plays his 10-year-old son, Jake, who neither speaks nor allows anyone to touch him.
The boy spends his time in self-isolation, scribbling numeric sequences (the golden ratio and the Fibonacci sequence, for a start) in a notebook and programming mobile phones that his father brings home from the lost and found department of JFK Airport, where he works as a baggage handler. Bohm struggles to provide for, and get through to, his son while fending off the well-meaning but curiously abrasive attentions of a social worker whose evaluation threatens to institutionalise Jake. Haggard and stressed, Bohm doesn't realise he is at the cusp of his 'true calling', which is to decipher Jake's numeric messages into a 'roadmap' of deeper connections with strangers in seemingly disparate situations.
Of course, it wouldn't be in Kring's oeuvre if there weren't a growing number of satellite stories from across the globe. The gimmick threading these together is unobtrusive enough - a mobile phone misplaced at London's Heathrow Airport that somehow finds its way to New York, Dublin, Tokyo and Baghdad. But how the phone's jet-setting journey culminates in a series of melodramatic final scenes will hurt your head while tugging at your heartstrings.
Even in the pilot episode, the Touch universe seems to expand too far, too fast - a development that suffocated Heroes in its second season. It's too early to tell whether Kring will make the same mistake here. Our hope is that he keeps the main focus on the Bohms and the considerable staying power of his leading man.
British fund-raising extravaganza Sport Relief kicks off with This Is Sport Relief (BBC Entertainment; Monday at 8pm). For the first time, the biennial event will enjoy an international broadcast; Hong Kong audiences will be treated to week-long programming, produced especially for those outside Britain - and there's a lot of catching up to do.
