Any tourist who has visited Alcatraz has seen the cells, heard the history of its closing and visited the gift shop that offers souvenirs of the forbidding prison. Want a tin cup stamped with the word "Alcatraz"? You can get it there.
But imagine what a chilling place it was when it was full of prisoners: clanking doors, footsteps on cement floors, guards shouting orders and pointing guns, and tantalizing, out-of-reach views of downtown San Francisco. So near, yet so far.
Now add in a big mystery, which is just what Fox's new series "Alcatraz," premiering in a two-hour slot on Jan. 16 at 7 p.m. (normal slot is Mondays at 8), does. Guards and 302 prisoners vanished from Alcatraz 50 years ago, but where did they go, how did they go and why?
San Francisco Police Detective Rebecca Madsen (Sarah Jones) gets caught up in a grisly homicide case — Alcatraz's sadistic former assistant warden, E.B. Tiller, is found dead. She finds a fingerprint of the killer, and it turns out to be that of Jack Sylvane (guest star Jeffrey Pierce), an Alcatraz inmate who has supposedly been dead for 30 years. And since Madsen's grandfather and surrogate uncle had been guards at the prison, she can't resist getting involved in the case.
When government agent Emerson Hauser (Sam Neill) tries to thwart her investigation, her resolve is strengthened. She teams up with Alcatraz expert Dr. Diego Soto (Jorge Garcia) to try to explain how Sylvane, who hasn't aged since 1963, is alive and why he's killing people.
They will discover that Hauser has been waiting for Sylvane's return for 50 years, and it soon becomes clear that Sylvane is only the first part of a much larger threat from reappearing prisoners.
Madsen and Soto join Hauser and his associate, Lucy Banerjee (Parminder Nagra), to stop Sylvane and keep the country safe from other dangerous Alcatraz criminals.
J.J. Abrams is the executive producer of "Alcatraz," and the show has some time-traveling touches of "Lost" — he was an executive producer and writer on that series.
The pilot episode shows promise for viewers looking for a crime-and-government secrets kind of show. Neill is effective as the secretive government agent, and Garcia lends a quirky element, much as he did as Hugo "Hurley" Reyes on "Lost." Jones seems a little young for her role as tough cop, but she is believable.
The premise of "Alcatraz" is intriguing, and the flashbacks in the story line are handled well. Fox may well have a new series that viewers will look forward to each week.
Sensitivity rating: The pilot episode, rated TV-14, contained plenty of violence (shootings and scenes of mild torture), as well as tough language and swearing.
E-mail: rwalsh@desnews.com