Jacinda Barrett

Zero Hour, the American conspiracy television series created by Paul Scheuring, premieres on ABC tonight (February 14, 2013), though early critics reviews have left us with absolute NO IDEA as to whether it's going to be any good. Some viewers may have made their minds up - the pilot episode has been available on Hulu since February 1.

The show certainly seems to boast a decent pedigree - Scheuring was the mastermind behind the thrilling drama Prison Break. The show won the 2006 People's Choice Award for Favorite New TV Drama and was nominated for the 2005 Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series Drama. Zero Hour follows the story of Hank (E.R.'s Anthony Edwards), who runs the magazine Modern Skeptic with his friends Rachel (Addison Timlir) and Arron (Scott Michael Foster). The group finds themselves involved in a dangerous worldwide conspiracy after Hank's wife (Jacinda Barrett) is kidnapped.

As mentioned, the show has polarized critics - basically, nobody knows whether it's the best or worst television drama since, err, Prison Break. Dorothy Rabinowitz of the Wall Street Journal was generally impressed by Zero Hour, "It's a measure of the skill brought to this script by Paul Scheuring that a first episode so awash in multiplying complications manages to maintain its coherence and even a significant measure of suspense," she wrote. David Hinckley of the New York Daily News offered cautious, though Tom Goodman of the Hollywood Reporter wrote, "Zero Hour has lots of twists and turns that could be worth following. It also has the DNA to be laughably bad." It's safe to assume Aaron Riccio of Slant Magazine will not be tuning in for the rest of the series, writing, "The first 12 minutes are enough to bury it, though given the shoddy acting, overwrought dialogue, and poor production values, it's easy to imagine that 12 full episodes would in fact bring about the end of time itself."

Continue reading: 'Zero Hour' Is Either Laughing Bad Or Ridiculously Good, You Decide