Recently I’ve been watching an old favourite TV series that I picked up in my local CEX shop on the High street. I last watched Lost season 1 in Affric ward in New Craigs. And before that I watched Lost, for the first time, when I was living in Connel in Argyll (near Oban).

Lost is a fictional series with 6 seasons set in a tropical island in the Pacific Ocean. A plane full of passengers crash lands on the island’s beach. It’s set just before smartphones came in in the noughties (2004). 

Lost is brilliantly written with an excellent plot (with appropriate cliffhangers and plot twists). However the characterisation is also brilliant. In each episode the show picks an appropriate character and shows clips of their life before they ended up on the island. This helps us get to know the characters better. For example there is a Korean couple who can barely speak English and we get to know how they met and the strains on their relationship via the past clips in one episode. In another example Locke is a wheelchair user before he ends up on the island who is frustrated by lack of physical capacity. On the island, by an apparent miracle, he can walk normally.

The first season features 14 main characters (like the ones mentioned above) that we get to know via these past clips.

Probably my two favourite characters however are the first two that are introduced: Kate the fugitive and Jack the surgeon. 

Kate especially is a complex character who shows kindness and moral and personal strength early on. She also often acts as a leader, dealing with the difficult interpersonal relationships and personalities on the island. Jack too acts as a leader of the group for most of the season. But from the past clips we see Jack has struggled (but also excelled) with high expectations of his parents and his career all his life. Throughout the season Jack struggles to make the moral decisions for the island group. Rather aptly, his surname is Shepherd.

Jack and Kate have a special relationship early on with the initial challenges of the crash landing. This relationship does change later (I recall) with other characters coming into prominence.

No prizes for guessing my least favourite character. Sawyer actually turns out to be a victim when we see his historical clips (before he was on the island). He seems to be from the South of America. But he is selfish (and even racist) throughout the season. Funnily enough I actually liked Sawyer when I first saw the tv series back at my house in Connel. Sawyer’s philosophy of ‘every man for himself’ was perhaps more acceptable and credible back then.

In terms of plot one of my favourite cliffhangers is when a small group tries to broadcast a signal from the highest point on the island. They discover an unknown French lady has put a radio message on a loop (that has been playing for 16 years). One of the characters, Shannon, translates it piece by piece, brilliantly leaving a really eerie feeling in the minds of the audience (‘the rest of them are all dead’).

I first watched Lost as a teenager in Connel but even revisiting it as a 33 year old adult some of its best moments live up to scrutiny.