We're cautiously optimistic about sci-fi refugee drama The Crossing: Review

Before you make any decisions about whether or not to watch ABC’s latest sci-fi mystery, The Crossing, the first thing you’ll need to do is ask yourself one question: What is my tolerance for risk?

Are you willing to invest your time and emotional energy in a high-concept thriller knowing that it may not be able to sustain its premise to your satisfaction, it could be pulled off the air before all of your many questions can be answered, or both? If you need a minute to decide, that’s fine. I’ll wait.

Still here? Fabulous — let’s continue. The Crossing (premiering tonight at 10 p.m.) begins with the arresting image of hundreds of people floating, mostly unconscious, in the dark-blue depths of the ocean. Eventually their bodies wash up on a rocky, picturesque stretch of Pacific Northwest coastline, and the 47 people who survive have a made-for-TV story to tell: They are refugees from the future, fleeing the war-torn hell America will become in 180 years, thanks to the rise of a genetically-enhanced, super-powered human population known as “Apex.”

As the Feds swoop in to interrogate the refugees — and sniff out the “bad actors” — local sheriff Jude Ellis (Steven Zahn), who discovered the bodies, continues his own search for answers. Usually cast as the manic, fast-talking source of comic relief, Zahn — his close-cropped hair sprinkled with grey, his face telegenically weathered — does fine, subtle work as The Crossing’s even-keeled lawman. Jude came to Port Canaan, Oregon, for a quiet life after some unspecified unpleasantness at his old police job in Oakland; unfortunately for him, this tiny town appears to be the entry point for Apex sleeper agents, who have been infiltrating America undetected for years.

The first hour of The Crossing is solid and quite compelling, but it raises a lot of questions, including but not limited to: What is Apex exactly, and why are they bent on exterminating regular humans? Why do the refugees refer to the coast where they landed as “the long peace”? Is every Apex superhuman evil, or are some, like Reece (Natalie Martinez) — who came through the migration with her daughter —trustworthy? What exactly happened to Jude back in Oakland? And why didn’t anyone tell Steve Zahn that Jude has a Southern accent in a few scenes?

Unfortunately, ABC has only made one episode of The Crossing available for review, so for now the show teeters on its own treacherous apex: It could be early-era Lost, or it could be, say, Flashforward. (Fair warning: Crossing’s co-creators Dan Dworkin and Jay Beattie were producers on both The Event and Surface.)

My curiosity is sufficiently piqued that I’ll be tuning in for The Crossing’s second episode — prepared for disappointment, but hoping for something a little less predictable. Grade: B