Television series

Resurrection

Name: Resurrection
Genre: Drama, Science Fiction, Mystery
Released: 2014
Cast: Omar Epps, Frances Fisher, Matt Craven, Devin Kelley, Mark Hildreth

Other titles called Resurrection: the 1980 film, the 2022 film.

A small Missouri town is shaken when dead people—including a man who vanished as a child three decades ago—start reappearing unchanged. Part mystery, part supernatural drama, *Resurrection* trades in genuine unease: these arrivals break every law of nature and no one knows why. It's for viewers who want emotional stakes tangled up in sci-fi premises, and who can sit with slow-burn uncertainty.

TVMaze rating

3.6

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you enjoy quiet small-town puzzles where the supernatural stays ambiguous and grief does most of the heavy lifting, and you don't need every question tidied up.

Skip it if the pace is deliberate and the mystery often circles back on itself, so if you want steady answers each week, this will frustrate you.

What it asks of you: Twenty-one episodes over two seasons, unhurried, with long stretches of quiet talk; its moods build slowly and it asks for patience more than sharp attention.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

The Leftovers2014

A masterpiece about how communities process inexplicable loss when 2% of humanity vanishes. Like *Resurrection*, it uses a central mystery to explore grief, faith, and how people fracture under the weight of the impossible.

But Heavier and darker than *Resurrection*—it goes to places of real despair. The mythology gets complex fast and never fully explains itself, which some find unsatisfying.

Dark2017

A German series where a small town's missing child triggers a decades-spanning mystery that bends time itself. Shares *Resurrection*'s structure: outsider investigator, small-town secrets, the uncanny made intimate, answers that raise bigger questions.

But Deliberately obscure and often punishing. Requires patience with subtitles, multiple timelines, and the knowledge that not everything will make intuitive sense until the end.

Les Revenants2012

French series (also called *Les Revenants*) about a town where dead people begin reappearing as they were when they died. Slower and more introspective than *Resurrection*, but shares its core: exploring what it means to have the past physically walk back into your life.

But Glacially paced. The dread is atmospheric rather than plot-driven, and some find the lack of forward momentum frustrating over the full run.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Resurrection

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Sixth Sense1999

Both pivot on what the living owe the dead, and both use this question to examine small-town American morality and family guilt.

A boy sees dead people; a child psychologist tries to help. On the surface a thriller, but its real subject is exactly *Resurrection*'s: how the living process the presence of the dead, and what obligation we have to them. The ending recontextualizes everything.

But The twist is famous now. Knowing it strips away the mechanism, though the emotional core holds up if you let it.

Manifest2018

A plane lands after five years missing, its passengers unchanged. Mystery-box TV done with genuine heart: it balances the supernatural puzzle with character drama and explores how people rebuild lives after impossible loss.

But Often falls into melodrama. The mythology gets unwieldy in later seasons, and it can feel like it's making up answers rather than discovering them.

Fringe2008

An FBI agent investigates parallel universes and experimental science gone wrong. Like *Resurrection*, it pairs a logical investigator with the genuinely inexplicable, and finds its best moments in the emotional cost of impossible phenomena.

But Starts as procedural and gets increasingly sprawling. Tonally uneven—shifts from horror to action to soap opera, which doesn't always land.

Carnivàle2003

A Depression-era drama where a traveling carnival intersects with a minister's dark secret in an Oklahoma town. Like *Resurrection*, it's a mystery built on small-town America, moral complexity, and the sense that something profoundly wrong is happening just under the surface.

But Deliberately arcane and symbolic. The narrative moves in circles; clarity is withheld as a stylistic choice, which will frustrate viewers wanting straightforward storytelling.

The Innocent Man2018

Spanish thriller about a man released from prison after sixteen years, trying to reclaim a life that no longer exists. Like *Resurrection*, it explores the horror of the past intruding on the present, and how communities are changed by what they did or didn't do.

But Grim and morally murky. It doesn't offer catharsis or easy justice—it's about people stuck in the consequences of old choices.

Yellowjackets2021

A plane carrying a high school soccer team crashes in the wilderness; they survive, but something comes back with them—or perhaps was already inside them. Shares *Resurrection*'s structure of past trauma reshaping the present, and its refusal to separate mystery from character.

But Deliberately non-linear and cagey. Some viewers feel it prioritizes atmosphere and shock over coherent plotting.

Twin Peaks1990

A murder in a small Washington town cracks open decades of secrets, moral rot, and something stranger than crime. The template for everything *Resurrection* attempts: how a central mystery becomes a study of a place, its people, and what we inherit from the past.

But The second season loses focus badly and the finale is divisive. It can feel slack and self-indulgent, though the recent revival restores its reputation considerably.

Come and See1985

Both are about how communities are transformed by death made literal and undeniable, and how the past refuses to stay buried.

A Soviet war film following a boy conscripted into WWII as his village is destroyed. Blisteringly intense and deeply strange—it uses surrealism and visceral horror to show how trauma shatters the ordinary world. Like *Resurrection*, it asks: what does it mean to live in a place where death has become intimate?

But Brutal and difficult to watch. Not a drama but an ordeal—it's designed to be harrowing, and sustained bleakness is not entertainment to everyone.

Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer2021

Both center an ordinary outsider trying to rationally document the irrational, and both understand that the real story is how the mystery changes the investigator, not how it's solved.

A newspaper reporter investigates the supernatural in 1970s Chicago; each episode is a standalone encounter with something that shouldn't exist. Vastly influential, tense, utterly unglamorous. It's the DNA of *Resurrection*'s investigative structure and its refusal to explain the inexplicable away.

But Episodic format means no arc, and the production values are visibly low-budget. Some find the repetitive structure dull.