I don't know that I've ever liked a show that I've known as little about as I do "John Doe."
Like who the heck the main character is.
That, however, is the central premise behind the new Fox series. John Doe (Dominic Purcell) is the quintessential enigma wrapped inside a mystery.
As the premiere episode begins (tonight at 8 on Ch. 13), John Doe awakens alone and naked in the middle of a wilderness (an island off the coast of Seattle). He has no ID and absolutely no idea who he is.
But that's the only thing he doesn't know. The man could answer every question on every quiz show ever devised.
Ask him how many blue cars there are in the state of Washington, and he'll tell you. Ask him how many bottles of Coke are sold on Tuesday, and he'll tell you. Ask him who he is, and where he came from and he's blank.
He can speak every language, handle every job that requires special skills. He can analyze every situation, which comes in particularly handy at the race track (and quickly makes him independently wealthy).
Oh, and John Doe has a few other quirks. For one thing, he sees only in black and white — except that sometimes he sees individual items (or people) in color. Which might be a clue as to who he is. Or it might not.
In the premiere, John Doe sees a kidnapped girl in color on a television report, giving him direction and a purpose — finding her and helping with other seemingly unsolvable mysteries.
Of course, the mystery he really wants to solve is his own. Does he have a wife? A family? Is he an escaped prisoner? An escaped mental patient? Is he an alien from outer space?
All of which makes John Doe about as angst-ridden a guy as he could be.
He does gain a couple of friends (and supporting cast members). Karen (Sprague Grayden) is a young woman who is sort of reluctantly pulled into his investigations, and Digger (William Forsythe) is a bar owner in whom John Doe confides.
As for the cops, they don't know what to make of this. Officer Frank Hayes (John Marshall Jones) certainly appreciates John Doe's help, but Hayes' boss, Lt. Jamie Avery (Jayne Brook), is convinced that John is up to no good.
All of which makes "John Doe" both intriguing and very iffy. It's all going to depend on how good a job the writers do in making this mystery work over the long haul. If they follow the "X-Files" example of one-step-forward, one-step-back, this could get old quickly.
If they figure out a way to keep the mystery alive and interesting, "John Doe" could be a lot of fun.
WHO KNOWS? The producers of "John Doe" say they know who he is. The man who plays him, Purcell, doesn't.
And neither, apparently, do the people who are putting the show on the air.
"I don't know what the payoff will be . . . but I do know that the writers know," said Fox Entertainment president Gail Berman.
Which seemed to take her boss at least a bit aback.
"You told me you knew," Fox Entertainment chairman Sandy Grushow said to Berman.
"I have some ideas, but I can't say definitely," Berman replied.
E-mail: pierce@desnews.com