Under the Dome: "Let the Games Begin"

The villainous Maxine reveals her new plans for Chester's Mill to Barbie, starting with an underground 'fight club' at the old cement factory. Big Jim goes looking for leverage against Maxine, and comes face to face with a woman with a shotgun. Joe, Norrie and Angie go looking for the elusive 'fourth hand', the identity of whom comes as a complete surprise.

Actually that last sentence is a total lie. It's not a surprise at all, in fact it's the most obvious character it could possibly be, so obvious in fact that I spent the second half of this episode waiting for the inevitable twist that someone else was actually the fourth hand - but no, it's the one you'd expect and it happens exactly how you'd expect it. Despite my total lack of surprise, the 'mini-dome' arc turned out to be the strongest aspect of this episode, one that - while boasting some decent performances - was pretty much entirely derailed by evil Maxime and her evil Maxine ways.

Under the Dome: "The Fourth Hand"

Joe, Norrie and Julia go looking for the mysterious egg - only it has vanished from its original location in the woods. After a resident of Chester's Mill is accidentally shot, Big Jim orders a buyback of the town's guns. Angie has a seizure, while the 'pink stars are falling' mantra turns out to have deep significance for Junior. Linda and Barbie follow a trail from a home invasion by a junkie to the late Reverend Coggins' drugs operation to Big Jim's propane store - and Barbie and Big Jim turn out to have a connection neither had anticipated.

You might guess from the above synopsis that a lot happened in "The Fourth Hand". This was a very busy episode, with a lot of plot development and some excellent work drawing the series' disparate elements into one strong direction. It also featured quite possibly the most irritating plot thread introduced to the series so far, one that irritated me so much that it damn-near derailed the whole enterprise.

Under the Dome: "Thicker Than Water"

It's our eighth day under the dome: the showdown between Big Jim and Ollie the farmer heats up, as does the conflict between Big Jim and Junior, as well as Big Jim and Barbie. Joe shows Julia the glowing egg in the woods. Norrie and Angie bond as Norrie grieves for her mother. Some people get shot. Some stuff explodes. There's some more ominous but perplexing foreshadowing.

Each week it becomes more and more obvious what a debt Under the Dome owes to Lost. It's got the diverse spread of ordinary people trapped in extraordinary circumstances, and more significantly it has the long, teased-out hints at explanations like a heat haze on the horizon. I used to be fascinated by heat hazes as a child. I grew up in north-western Australia, and when you drove down the highway there would always be this shimmering water-like mirage at the end of the road. No matter how far you'd drive, you'd never reach it. I was fixated on that image as a kid, and I feel like I'm back on that highway again when watching this series. There's a shimmering explanation for what's going on somewhere ahead, but it's pretty obvious we're not reaching it any time soon.

Under the Dome: "Imperfect Circles"

The police are on another manhunt, this time for the Dundee brothers after they murdered Rose and attempted to rape Angie. A pregnant woman sees a vision of her absent husband, only to enter premature labour the moment she touches him. Big Jim's authority over the town comes under a new threat. Joe and Norrie track down the centre of the dome, opening an all-new mystery as to its origin and purpose.

"Imperfect Circles" marks the midpoint of Under the Dome's first season, and a fairly seismic shift in the sort of story that the series is telling. This is what I wanted in the first place: less soap opera theatrics, and more strange goings-on and weird phenomena. I suppose the main question now is whether this is a permanent upturn in the series or a once-off aberration.

Under the Dome: "The Endless Thirst"

Tensions continue to rise inside the dome as Chester's Mill runs out of fresh drinking water.  The townsfolk begin to riot, while Julia tracks down a source of radio interference, Joe and Norrie go looking for insulin, Angie hides from Junior and Big Jim goes negotiating for the town's last surviving well of fresh water.

"The Endless Thirst" is, all told, a better episode than last week's effort. That said, it's still fairly ropey television drama. For me, the biggest problem with the series at this stage is that it's getting kind of boring. I care less about the town's survival issues and care more about what the dome is, who made it and what it's for. The longer the production holds off from answering those questions, the less interested I become. CBS confirmed this week that it had commissioned a second season of Under the Dome for 2014, so I'm guessing we won't be getting answers worth a damn this season.

Under the Dome: "Blue on Blue"

The military has returned to the dome, bringing with them friends and family of those trapped inside. While the people of Chester's Mill enjoy their reunions, something else seems to be afoot. Meanwhile, Father Coggins goes off the deep end, Big Jim tries to work out what to do about his son holding Angie prisoner, and Norrie receives an unexpected piece of news about her past.

And it's all terrible. This is an utterly awful hour of television, packed with soap opera-style storylines, narrative twists so obvious they're visible from orbit and cringe-worthy dialogue that made me want to flee the room. What's particularly perplexing is that this episode is written by Brian K. Vaughan, whose comic book work on Y: The Last Man, Saga and Ex Machina demonstrates that he should be way, way better than this. I'm not entirely certain of what went wrong.

Under the Dome: "Outbreak"

Tensions heat up within the dome as the US military move out. Then, one by one, the townspeople begin to succumb to a mysterious illness. The hospital is short on antibiotics, and someone has raided the town's only pharmacy.

There's a bit of a bounce-back in "Outbreak", returning the show back to the quality demonstrated in its first two episodes. Don't get me wrong - I think that Under the Dome remains a relatively clunky and awkward series, but this week it was significantly more watchable and certainly a lot more enjoyable. It's funny that this series is being produced for CBS because, all things considered, it resembles pretty much exactly a late 1990s drama from Fox. There may be a continuing storyline, but each episode pretty much has its own self-contained and neatly concluded plot. This week it's a meningitis outbreak that appears to appear, manifest and go away in the space of a day. Sure it was entertaining, but it is kind of ridiculous.

Under the Dome: "Manhunt"

With a former police officer armed and on the run, Big Jim and Barbie team up to take the rogue officer down. Meanwhile, Junior goes looking for a way out of the dome, and Joe and Norrie make a connection.

I don't know if this is a deliberate creative decision, but each of the three episodes of Under the Dome so far have taken place over one day of story. This is making it already feel excruciatingly drawn out, particularly when a lot of time in this episode is devoted to Jim Rennie Jr's cartoon-like mental illness. I want things to speed up: I know Under the Dome was a long novel, but things could be tightened up so much without damaging the narrative.

Under the Dome: "The Fire"

With Under the Dome's second episode, most of my suspicions - both positive and negative - seem to be getting proven correct. With the Chief of Police dead, Mayor "Big Jim" Rennie goes into overdrive to hide his secret drug manufacturing industry. This leads to a string of unintended consequences - chiefly the fire referred to in the episode's title.

This episode brings with it a fairly significant pedigree in that it's written by Rick Cleveland, who won an Emmy award in 2000 for his West Wing script "In Excelsis Deo" (co-written by Aaron Sorkin). Given the matter-of-fact and fairly perfunctory work done with the characters in this episode, you'd be forgiven for thinking that with "In Excelsis Deo" Sorkin may have done a lot of the heavy lifting. It's not a bad episode, but it's a superficial one. It pushes the plot forward and solidifies what each character's arc is likely to be, but it's pretty slack in giving anyone any kind of depth or nuance.

Under the Dome: "Pilot"

Bless Australia's Ten Network for arranging to broadcast Under the Dome in this country less than a day after it's US broadcast: it's been obvious for years that this is the best strategy to combat online piracy, yet for the most part Australia's networks have resisted the urge to do this. I think this was the first full hour of commercial television I have sat through since 24 ended.

Under the Dome is a 13-episode adaptation of Stephen King's science fiction novel, in which a small American town is mysteriously enclosed within an impenetrable dome and cut off from the rest of the world. While key residents of the town look for a way out or a means of destroying the dome, some begin to use the isolation to their advance and others begin to slide into a pit of madness and murder. The series is produced by King alongside Steven Spielberg, while the head writer (and the writer of this pilot) is Brian K. Vaughan of Saga and Y: The Last Man fame.

For the most part this pilot is very, very good. It does have a few poor elements, and we'll get to those in a moment.