Spaced in Lost

As it teeters to the edge of its latest series - shrunk by the writers' strike- LOST needs addressing.

Here in the Heart of England we are fewer and further between than in shiny America, but I actually met several Losties during lunch at a conference last week. In Alton Towers, of all places, the most famous English theme park.

I put forward my idea that LOST is really more like a reality show or a sport event than a drama . The viewer engages with it under the misapprehension that this is almost an interactive experience. Clues, mysteries, puzzles proliferate and seduce.

But the series wilfully keeps useful information from you, partly by selecting scenes to tantalise and surprise but never to inform, and ,more importantly , by presenting the least curious set of protagonists ever to grace the square screen. My new chums at Alton Towers and I knew more about each other in 5 minutes that the LOST folk know their fellow-castaways after 90-something days on a desert island.

I have ranged the web looking for answers, but what I really want is more LOST. That's the engagement, both apparently interactive and uselessly passive.

The worst storyline of all will be the conclusion. I'm not saying they won't make it brilliant - it's just that it will be over and the end cannot be as good as the expectation, the confusion, the Black Smoke, the whispers and the elusive moral status of just about everybody involved.