Continuum Preview: “A Stitch in Time” [VIDEO] 

With some shows. I’m just an easy mark. Y’all know about my mad love for all things Canadian, particularly Vancouver. Well, when Continuum rolled around last spring, I was ready. But U.S. networks weren’t. Until now. Syfy is debuting the series tonight (yay!) in a brand new Monday that includes new seasons of Being Human and Lost Girl. It’s going to be a hell of a lineup for genre fans.

Continuum is a time travel show wrapped in a cop show wrapped in pretty heady time-space continuum science fiction. We begin in Vancouver, 2077, when the world has evolved at a pretty fast clip but there are still hitches among the general public. On the heels of an uprising by a faction called LIBR8 that ends with a 9/11 style catastrophe, LIBR8’s members are sentenced to death but they have other plans.

Kiera (Rachel Nichols) is a police officer with the benefit of 21st century tracking technology embedded in her brain, and she wears an impressive neoprene suit that is so much more than it seems. In a blink of an eye, when the executions go very wrong, LIBR8’s members, and Kiera, disappear and land back in 2012 Vancouver. LIBR8 knows what to do with that, but Kiera doesn’t.

The series follows her as she finds her way onto the modern-day police force, partnered with Carlos (Victor Webster), a detective who’s frequently bewildered by how she knows what she knows. She’s helped considerably by Alec (Erik Knudsen), a young tech genius who will figure importantly into the future.

And that’s pretty much what you need to know. Every week is a mix of a crime of the week, LIBR8’s efforts to begin its uprising in the present, and Kiera’s efforts to catch up with them.  The show flips back in forth between present and future as Kiera’s memories of the life and family she left behind influence the life she’s stuck with now. She desperately wants to get home to her husband and son, but she also wants to bring down LIBR8 or take them back with her.

It’s refreshing that the show is set and shot in Vancouver and uses a boatload of recognizable faces. I wrote previously that Roger Cross and Brian Markinson, who’ve both been on Arrow this season, had markedly different roles over here. Now you can see what I meant. Keep your IMDB handy because you will see people you know. It’s a rather large cast beyond the three leads and they’ve assembled an awesome collection of actors to fill the roles of LIBR8 and the police department.

Continuum isn’t like anything else on TV right now. It may initially feel like another flavor of an alternate reality show but TPTB here keep everything grounded in the now. We don’t get glimpses of a changed future based on Kiera’s actions in the present because she herself doesn’t know if she’s changed anything. We know what she knows. And it’s fun to watch her adapt to a world that hasn’t caught up with the world she left, so things like physically holding a phone and manually driving a car have to be learned.

Thankfully, the show’s already been renewed for a second season, so it’s great time to get on board. You can catch sneak peeks here:

Continuum premieres tonight on Syfy at 8 pm/7 c.