Scary Science.(Fringe)(Television program review)

Byline: editor: Valerie Steiker

Joan Juliet Buck is gripped by a brilliant new thriller series from the creator of Lost.

If you can drag yourself away from the coverage of the Democratic and Republican conventions, you can catch up with a stunning new series. New series used to erupt in giant clumps each fall, like mushrooms after a heavy rain, but this year, thanks to the writers' strike, there are fewer of them, and they're scattered right through the winter.

With Fringe (Fox), the writer/producer/director J. J. Abrams, who brought us the agile, wide-eyed, long-haired CIA agent Sydney Bristow in Alias, and the confused but furious castaways of Lost, has perhaps made his masterpiece. Anna Torv, who plays the heroine, FBI agent Olivia Dunham, has a mobile, transparent face and a real talent, and she's going to be a huge star. She's Australian, a cross between Cate Blanchett and Scarlett Johansson, and Fringe may be your last chance to catch her on television before she takes off.

Fringe brings together the most satisfying elements of television drama--an agile, determined heroine, infighting and illicit sex among public servants, father-son tensions, and a big hidden plot. There are some classic touches: a mad Frankenstein scientist, some references to The Third Man, and a chic, Gattaca -like use of big white graphic place names that suggests a punch line about secondary realities right out of the Matrix movies. Like Lost, Fringe begins with a terrifying scene in an airplane. Flight 627 from Hamburg ...