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"We&amp;#039;ll admit that, from the start, we didn&amp;#039;t have high hopes for Revolution - a string of BIG shows with BIG high-concept ideas and a BIG pilot to match that ultimately have no clue where they&amp;#039;re going and end up dying on the vine have left us with what is best termed &amp;#039;Abrams Fatigue&amp;#039;. It&amp;#039;s always nice to be proven wrong of course, but for the most part, this collaboration between JJ Abrams and former Supernatural supremo Eric Kripke is exactly the show you expect it to be - it combines elements from FlashForward and Terra Nova into something wholly unoriginal and mostly uninteresting. &amp;gt; Revolution, The Event, Alcatraz - the quest for the new Lost Revolution takes place in the near future, in a world where all forms of energy one day mysteriously ceased to exist. The immediate aftermath is the most interesting part of the blackout - a freeway packed with cars, their headlights on full beam, suddenly descending into darkness, is a visually arresting image.  It&amp;#039;s a pity then that, bar flashbacks, this takes up a mere three minutes before we leap forward 15 years to a dystopian world overgrown with plant-life, with a hokey voiceover filling in the missing years. Scientific explanations for what actually happened during the blackout are thin on the ground - when what is basically a magic amulet is the one thing that restores power, it&amp;#039;s perhaps unsurprising that &amp;quot;physics went insane&amp;quot; is genuinely the closest thing we get to an explanation. Revolution attempts to compensate with BIG visuals and BIG notions. Ooh, car bonnets are used to grow plants now and, gasp, even Google is gone. But already we found ourselves wondering how long the series can rely on the distraction of impressive visuals - a wrecked plane, a football stadium covered in moss - when there&amp;#039;s so little substance underneath.  The &amp;#039;substance&amp;#039; - such as it is - involves Charlie Matheson (Tracy Spiridakos), a spirited young girl who must hunt down her elusive uncle Miles (Billy Burke) when her father Ben (Tim Guinee) is killed by a sinister militia. This pilot episode immediately kicks up a gear the moment Giancarlo Esposito rocks up on horseback with his sinister sunglasses and sinister musical accompaniment, clearly relishing another chance to roll out the cold, calculating villain act he perfected on Breaking Bad. But one decent villain does not a good show make, especially when our heroes are as dull and insipid as this sorry bunch. The actors aren&amp;#039;t really to blame - Spiridakos is fine, but her character is unforgivably dull. The fault lies in Eric Kripke&amp;#039;s script - bizarre, when you consider how clearly defined the characters of Sam and Dean Winchester were in his Supernatural pilot back in 2005. &amp;gt; Revolution is &amp;#039;ass-kicking adventure&amp;#039;, says creator Eric Kripke Of our leads, Billy Burke is given the best material to work with and as such delivers the strongest lead performance. It helps that Miles also has serious bad-ass credentials, taking out an entire militia troupe in what is by far the episode&amp;#039;s most exciting sequence. If Revolution was just Miles vs Esposito&amp;#039;s Captain Tom Neville, without any of the weaker secondary characters, we&amp;#039;d be far more excited by the prospect of future episodes. As it is, we&amp;#039;re left with a thoroughly uninspiring series premiere. For all its bells and whistles, this pilot commits two major crimes - its central premise is dull and we don&amp;#039;t care about its central characters. As ever with a pilot, there&amp;#039;s a chance that things could improve along the way but right now Revolution burns about as brightly as one of the show&amp;#039;s own extinguished lightbulbs. Watch the stars of Revolution discuss the show with Digital Spy below:  What did you make of the Revolution pilot? Let us know your thoughts below! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/revolution/review/a406580/revolution-review-does-jj-abramss-new-sci-fi-drama-burn-bright/>