The Leftovers Season one: The stranger the better

So if the celebrity rags are to be believed, the preposterously handsome Justin Theroux - who is engaged to Jennifer Aniston - used to have to scavenge through rubbish bins as a struggling actor.

We're not talking a lifetime ago either. This was in the late 1990s, a decade from which many of my clothes hail. So why am I raising this, you ask?

There is an irony that his new series is called The Leftovers . Unlike his garbage-picking days, however, the leftovers to which the show refers are all the people left behind following an instantaneous event in which 2% of the world's population simply vanishes into thin air.

Set in the fictitious town of Mapleton, New York, the show focuses on a group of people left to deal with the aftermath.

As is the trend in Hollywood, it is not enough to have an outlandish story premise. One must add liberal doses of the absurd.

Enter rabid dogs prowling the neighbourhood in wolf-like packs, a priest whose life is being directed by a pair of turtle doves (yes, that's right) and, saving the best for last, a cult known as The Guilty Remnant who, so far as I can tell, believe strongly in only three things: wearing white, never uttering a single word and chain-smoking all the livelong day.

They basically just wander around and stand on people's pavements, puffing away, silently condemning their fellow townsfolk. You can almost hear their eyebrows twitching with disdain.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy bizarre things as much as the next guy - I lived through Twin Peaks, after all - but at some point the midget apparitions need to be explained. I hope for the show's sake the reveal is worthwhile.

One of the easiest things in the world is to begin a story in which a man's head transmogrifies into a dancing steak and kidney pie with a delicious singing voice that has the ability to both cure the sick and revive the dead.

The tough bit is coming up with a plausible explanation once you've reached the end of your story arc and the audience is sitting, arms folded, waiting for the catch.

So far I'm thoroughly enjoying The Leftovers, based on Tom Perrotta's novel of the same name, and co-created by him and writer Damon Lindelof, notably of Lost. It's intriguing, well put together and the acting is superb (Theroux looks hungry for the role - wait, uh, you know what I mean).

I only hope that, once the curtain is finally pulled back, I am not left with the sense that the writers went diving into rubbish to wrap up the plot.

• Crocker is an author. 'The Leftovers' is on M-Net 101, Saturdays at 9pm

What others say

'The Leftovers', might end up being the most meta show on television and one of the most overanalysed, navel-gazed shows in history.

Tim Goodman, Hollywood Reporter

The totality of the suffering feels new. The scale of it overwhelms, so much so that nitpicking the dialogue, the performances, or the filmmaking seems petty.

Matt Zoller Seitz, Vulture