What makes it different from others?

Far from Perfect, Far from Terrible

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

A bit overrated, but still an amazing film

What a brilliant show, filled with super powers and a huge amount of characters to go along with the powers. This show could have gone far, who silly idea was it to cancel itBring THE 4400 back please!! its better than any other show around these days. I watched it back then in 2004 and i am rewatching it now again, and still think its a brilliant show. Much better and more consistent than Heroes!! Can we have a petition or something along those lines to try and bring this show back, it definitely deserves another go...

Really enjoyed this series! good actors, interesting plots and twists too. A lot of fun and real interesting sci-fi for everyone! The show starts out well and progresses through all the seasons to a nice climax which finishes well with no loose ends. Could have gone longer but I guess some studios just give up mid stream for the old buck. Enjoyed every episode and all the different characters that were introduced as it went along, all the interesting abilities that were thought up were quite fascinating and very creative too. They had a lot of expansion room with 4400 potential character plots throughout that were never fully tapped. Gonna miss it!

I grew to love this t.v. series. But some people here are right, this show takes a few episodes to get into. After watching the first three episodes in one sitting and I didn't think much of the show. I was at the point of moving on to the next series on my list of shows to watch but decided to give this show one more shot. I can't explain how the show sucked me in from this one episode on, but it did, and I'll be forever fortunate to have stuck with this series. The storyline just got so much more involving after the 3rd episode and the show became much more enjoyable. I can be too quick to judge television shows, maybe it's because I've enjoyed so many great ones and have high standards as to what is allowed to occupy my time. After watching the complete series this show has become one of my favorites, although it was unfortunately canceled prematurely. Now, I've even purchased the novel that continues this series.Great story, great acting, and a series that piques your imagination. And this series isn't corny like No Ordinary Family and it doesn't turn into a huge soap opera like the Heroes series. By the way, another great series similar to this one is Alphas, that's the one I'm on to now!

Some viewers are right to complain that the plot lines in The 4400 have some jagged edges. But this is not to be mistaken for bad writing. These writers clearly know how to put a compulsive pulse to the story. The cliff-hanger is a bit formulaic and over-used but the plot twists are compelling and interesting enough in their implications to make you want to continue. We are at least talking about ideas here instead of passing off glossy action movies as sci-fi. Remember ideas? Oops! We were supposed to forget those. Long live Ray Bradbury... Rod Serling... Isaac Asimov... Art of the Impossible Made Possible. The whole messiah complex as an ongoing theme is both compelling and disturbing. As my Darling Clementine asked one night while watching The 4400: "What are the filmmakers' intentions here? What are their values?" Her confusion is understandable. One episode Jordan Collier seems like the next Mahatma Gandhi, the next he's closer to the Big Red Guy. Given that I don't particularly look up to authority figures like NTAC agents, I found it hard at first to adjust to seeing them as 'heroes.' And the implied 'War on Terror' gets a little bit grating at times. Fortunately actors Gretsch and McKenzie and the cast are good enough to make us care about their characters as we go along. And the moral complexities they face in the nature of carrying out duties for an authoritarian state are straight from hell. That's what I mean. Ideas. If there's an idea that makes me uncomfortable in The 4400, it's that the producers might have had a Christian agenda to making this series. Though once again, the writing is subtle enough to always leave you wondering. The Jordan Collier thing (JC) and the book of the White Light cult is an obvious allegory for early Christianity. That Collier's 4400 feel they must hide in the wilderness calls to mind Christianity when Rome still held power and had no intention yet of leaving its gods. The ridiculous lengths Kyle will go to in order to make the holy book's prophecy come true make it obvious the problem with prophecy in the first place. Written in the right language, it can be interpreted as being "fulfilled" in almost ANY historical age. His intensity to see it fulfilled ensures that he will do whatever it takes to make it happen. Ah, yes. The age-old problem with fundamentalist interpretations of religious texts. So are the show's producers pro, anti or neutral JC? Because I really hate sneaky preaching. On the other hand, with writers as clever as these ones, maybe they just wanted it left ambiguous, like life really is anyway. By now we surely understand how the mechanism of religion works on the human psyche. The predictable results and tragedies. At times on The 4400 I wonder if I'm watching a parody of religion. As entertainment, The 4400 is captivating, engaging, AND thought-provoking. Not three terms you see together much these days in movies. Even many European films of late have lost their narrative edge. But the writers to this series made us think about complex questions we might otherwise not have pondered: What would YOU do if you suddenly came back from nowhere with a completely new ability? Would you use it to make yourself richer, more powerful? Or more spiritually evolved?