Manifest is the type of show that you can sit down with a bag of potato chips and be confident that the artistic quality of the show is no better than that of the chips. The premise is that an airliner flies into an electrical storm and barely pulls out of it to find out they they have been time-warped 5 years into the future. This creates an obvious problem for loved ones and friends who figure that the passengers have all gone down to the deep six and who have moved on in their lives. More worrisome, the passengers seem to be having supernatural visions that compel irrational actions and generate deep suspcion. The visions seem to have a spiritual component that is never fully explained but does work well to generate plot lines for the various episodes. Manifest follows a recent trend for shows to combine science fiction with domestic drama (ie soap opera). If this sounds a bit putrid, well, I think that is an accurate assessment, but none the less many of us find guilty pleasures in both genres, and when you put them together the result is exponentially more cheesy. There is also a fair amount of stilted acting and writing, but admittedly this is offset by the enthusiastic and loving participation of the cast, as they deadpan their way through many ludicrous plot evolutions. We can't help but be caught up, and the conclusion is that this is very good tacky entertainment indeed.

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