The Passage S1

Doctors hunting for the ultimate cure to all of humankind’s disease realise the answer they’re looking for lies in a 250-year-old man living in a cave in Bolivia. It turns out that he’s a vampire, and he turns one of the doctors into Patient Zero for the virus that can potentially save people from any and all illnesses.

A few years on, and the virus is being tested through medical trials on death-row inmates, who’ve been incentivised with reduced sentences. They’ve all been infected with the virus – but what the scientists don’t realise is that these half-human, half-vampires are developing superhuman strength and telepathic powers – and they want to escape.

But then the scientists realise that they’ve been making a terrible mistake. They should have been testing the virus/vaccine on a child all along. Where to find a child who no one will notice is missing? That’s where ex-Special Forces agent Brad Wolgast comes in. He’s tasked with kidnapping a recently orphaned 10-year-old girl called Amy, but he can’t bring himself to do it. Instead, he and Amy go on the run, and develop a father-daughter bond on the way.

This bond is the strength of the show, writes the Guardian: “The developing father-daughter bond between Brad and Amy (a performance by 12-year-old Saniyya Sidney that belies her years and the fact that her character description for such a sturdy workhorse of a production surely comprised two words at most: ‘Sassy, scrappy’) … pulls it all together. Sidney and Gosselaar have real chemistry, sparking and bantering but nailing their (unsentimental) emotional moments as they grieve their losses. They lift the credibility of the whole thing, and are far better than they need to be.”