Dead Zone

Show Premise

Popular high school science teacher Johnny Smith (Anthony Michael Hall) has a great life. He loves his work and his students, he loves the girl he just got engaged to, and his rich mother only has a mild touch of religious mania.

All that changes the night Johnny is involved in a car wreck, winding up in a coma that no one expects him to ever awaken from.

But six years later, awaken he does, to a changed world.

His former fiancee Sarah (Nicole de Boer) is married and has a little boy. His mother has died and her estate is being administered by her favorite preacher Rev. Gene Purdy (David Ogden Stiers), who is now Johnny's legal guardian.

Waking to Strange New Powers

The biggest change, though, is to Johnny himself. He has emerged from the coma with a new power, the ability to learn about people from a single touch and the ability to see their future as well as their past. It's a scary ability, scary to the people he touches and scary to Johnny himself. He is very ambivalent about his new ability, but learns to use it when necessary to help people. Physical therapist Bruce Lewis (John L. Adams) becomes a friend, almost a sidekick, and helps Johnny deal with the transition to a new life.

A Stephen King Concept

The Dead Zone, which premiered on the USA cable network in 2002, is based on the novel of the same name by Stephen King. There are some differences from the novel, and the most intriguing change is that in the series ex-fiancee Sarah is married to the local sheriff Walt Bannerman (Chris Bruno). Bannerman is wary of Johnny, and with good reason. The child he is raising as his son is actually Johnny's son, born after Johnny's accident.

But Bannerman is a good man and a good cop, and if appealing for help from his wife's old boyfriend is what it takes to catch a serial killer, that's what he'll do. At first highly skeptical, especially when Johnny implicates a sheriff's deputy who is Bannerman's good friend, by the end of the pilot he and Johnny have joined forces to apprehend the perp.

The Dead Zone: An Ongoing Story

In later episodes, Johnny serves on a jury where he is the only person who believes (in fact he knows) that the accused is innocent. He tracks down a runaway, reunites old lovers, deals with a hostage crisis in a bank.

The "Dead Zone" of the title, by the way, refers to the changes to Johnny's brain - the theory is that his brain has rerouted around damaged areas, the aforementioned Dead Zone, and in so doing has accessed parts of the brain dormant in the rest of the population.

Readers of Stephen King will recall that the novel ended with Johnny Smith's death. We can presume that the television Johnny Smith will survive to predict and rescue for a long time, especially if the ratings hold up.

Show History

The Dead Zone airs on USA on Sunday nights.