When we look back at the "noughties" – pausing briefly to gently vomit in protest at the hideous made-up word "noughties" – we'll realise this was a golden age for absolute bollocks. Fun bollocks, maybe … but bollocks all the same.

Every new US show these days is fun bollocks. We've had the one where it's in real time (24), the one where they're stranded on a weird island (Lost), the one where they break out of prison (Prison Break), the one where the killer kills killers (Dexter) and the one where unfettered capitalism creates and destroys an entire underclass (The Wire).

Everything needs a hook, the hookier the better. Before long, we'll end up with the hookiest show possible: The Hookening – where everyone in the world suddenly passes out and wakes up 137 seconds later with a hook for a hand. Irritating for most of us; devastating for the jar industry.

We're not there yet, but who knows what could happen in six months' time? For now, we'll have to be content with FlashForward (Mon, 9pm, Five). It stars Joseph Fiennes as Mr Nice Cop with a Drink Problem, and it's the one where everyone in the world passes out for 137 seconds and has a vision of the future six months from now. Weirder still, it's not strictly a vision: their consciousness has somehow raced forward in time, so they've experienced precisely what they'll be doing for around two minutes on 29 April 2010. Some are performing mundane actions, like reading the paper on the bog; others are doing exciting things, like being shot at. It's the world's biggest spoiler.

Having wandered off into futureworld for roughly half the length of an ad break, they're sucked back into the present, where naturally everyone's now a bit confused. And in some cases, dead. Because absolutely everyone blacked out simultaneously, there were countless car crashes, air disasters, chip-pan fires and so on, vividly depicted in scenes in which Joseph Fiennes wanders around a semi-destroyed LA gawping at various bits of CGI devastation. Helicopter crashes account for some of the worst damage, although several buildings appear to have burst into flames out of sheer confusion during the blackout. In one scene we get a glimpse of London; Big Ben is on fire. Presumably the bells overheated during the timequake.

(Incidentally I call it a "timequake" because it seems vaguely similar to Kurt Vonnegut's novel Timequake, although apparently it's based on a different book, called, unsurprisingly, FlashForward.)

The rest of the story revolves around solving what caused the Great Leap Forward in the first instance. That's Fiennes's job. He saw himself in a big room full of clues, halfway toward solving the mystery, evading some bad guys. Oh, and drinking from a hip flask, so he knows he's going to fall off the wagon. Or does he? Yes! No! It rather depends on whether man truly has free will or not. Philosophers have wrestled with that one for centuries; this show promises to clear it up once and for all, and find room for a romantic subplot. Perhaps it was originally pitched with the working title Adventures in Compatibilism: A Determinist Thought Experiment.

Anyway, it's not bad: enjoyable bunkum in the manner of early Lost, although the paradox-heavy storyline easily overshadows the characters, who thus far could all be replaced by cardboard boxes with Character #1, Character #2 and so on scrawled on the front.

The fun comes in spotting flaws in the narrative. Such as: if everyone experienced the same bit of "future", how come their future selves didn't seem aware the flash forward was going to happen? They were sitting in meetings, or running around, or watching TV. Nobody saw themselves saying "Ooooh, this is the bit I saw six months ago".

It's not a show, it's a puzzle. There are 10 billion other paradoxes in the storyline. How many can you find? (Answers on page 94, six months from now).

• The caption to the picture accompanying this article was amended on Wednesday 7 October 2009. It shows Joseph Fiennes, not Ralph as we said. This has been corrected.