Either you dig time travel or you don’t. If you don’t, you might be thinking you’ll skip NBC’s Journeyman, which premieres on September 24, right after Heroes. And if you do, you’ve probably been so disappointed by duds like Sliders and Quantum Leap that you’re not about to get your hopes up.
Well, get ’em up. In Journeyman, steely eyed Scotsman Kevin McKidd, so spectacular in HBO’s Rome, plays a happily married father who suddenly finds himself being whooshed back in time to 1987—a year of brick-sized mobile phones, pre-Glasnost sensibilities and, of course, a long-lost love. McKidd alone would be worth tuning in for ... but the credits listing is heavy on West Wing alumni, which means that we just may see the Kill Your Grandfather paradox addressed with some wit and style—possibly for the first time since Kirk and Spock had to go back to the ’40s to save future-Earth from the Nazis. Who says you can’t go back?
Sheerly Avni has written for Salon.com and elsewhere