"Alcatraz" - DVR Record Series Options: ALL NEW EPISODES.

Easy call. If the first two episodes of Fox's new mystery-drama "Alcatraz" (8 p.m. tonight) are any indication, I'm enthusiastically in.

The premise of this captivating new JJ Abrams show is that when the legendary Alcatraz prison shut down in March of 1963 and prisoners and guards were transferred off the island, 302 of them vanished into thin air. Then suddenly, the missing people begin showing up one by one in present day San Francisco. The action of the show flips back and forth in time from 1960 (or 1963) to 2012.

The missing, dubbed The 63s, are being tracked by federal agent Emerson Hauser, played by a scowling Sam Neill. Neill, who can be menacing in the role, has a unique connection to The Rock and to the missing 63s. Sarah Jones plays San Francisco detective Rebecca Madsen, one of those beautiful-but-slightly-damaged TV cops that every crime show apparently needs. Her damage (at least the damage we know about so far): her last partner was killed in front of her in the line of duty and her parents died when she was a child. She was raised by "uncle" Ray (Robert Forster), who was a guard on Alcatraz, as was her long-deceased grandfather.