JUST FINISHED WATCHING: THE LEFTOVERS (2014–2017)

Three years after the disappearance of 2% of the global human population, a group of people in a small New York community try to continue their lives while coping with the tragedy of the unexplained nature of the event.

TRIVIA: On October 14, 2014, over a month after season one concluded, HBO aired the entire season all day as a nod to the date in which the "great departure" occurred in the show.

Season one covers the length of Tom Perrotta's novel 'The Leftovers', the second and third seasons are completely original material.

Justin Theroux's then-wife Jennifer Aniston refused to help her husband with rehearsing lines because she wanted to avoid spoilers. Aniston was a huge fan of the series.

The ceiling of Virgil's trailer is covered with light bulbs. This is a reference to Ralph Ellison's classic of American literature, Invisible Man, in which the protagonist is an outlaw squatter in a basement that he has outfitted with 1,369 light bulbs.

Several episodes show a religious fanatic who has chosen to deal with the Great Departure by living on top of a pillar. This is a real phenomenon in the history of Christianity; the first known such person was St. Simeon the Stylite, a Syrian Christian ascetic who lived for thirty-seven years on a small platform atop a pillar near Aleppo, before dying in 459 A.D. ("stylite" referring to the Greek for "pillar"). Simeon had a slew of Byzantine-era acolytes and imitators.

MY VERDICT: I really enjoyed this show. I’m glad I waited until it was finished to watch it because I think it would have been really hard to wait to find out what came next in each season. The seasons get progressively weirder and more far fetched but it still manages to stay grounded in some sense of reality. It’s a hard line to walk but I think the show gets it right, it makes you ask lots of questions, especially of faith and I think it’s a great show to watch with someone and discuss.

Watch this here…