What if, one day, scores of the dead came back to life with seemingly no explanation? Not as rotting, flesh-devouring monstrosity spreading disease in their death, but as if they’d never left?  What if they looked the same and sounded the same but healed instantly, had incredible strength, and appeared to no longer need to sleep? Would we see it as a miracle? Or a threat? That’s the question behind the Aaron B. Koontz and Luke Boyce adaptation of the Tim Seeley/Mike Norton comic series Revival.

Well, not the only question. It’s also about the mystery of why it happened. What Em Cypress (Romy Weltman)—daughter of Wausau, Wisconsin police chief Wayne (David James Elliott) and younger sister of possibly Wausau’s only competent cop Dana (Melanie Scrofano)—was up to the night before the dead walked again. How does the creepy pseudo-religious rhetoric spouting Blaine Abel (Steven Ogg, good enough to distract from that groan-worthy name not found in the source material) fit into it all? But mostly it is about how a town, a society would react. And, more largely, especially in the present political climate, it’s about how we respond to any crisis, to any sense that things are changing in ways we might not wholly understand.

It is hard to watch Wausau’s hasty, porous, self-imposed quarantine and not think of the COVID lockdowns of less than five years ago. While it goes away too quickly, there are a handful of early moments that capture the strange sense of suspended animation colliding with time rushing onward that characterized the first few months of COVID where most sat, isolated, and a handful of others went to their jobs at grocery stores, hospitals, and care facilities, too “essential” to stay safe. Revival also reflects the moments where people decided just to act as if everything was back to normal again with Dana’s near sexual encounter with the CDC’s Ibrahim Ramin (Andy McQueen) in her car after a night of drinking. Given how little media has acknowledged the plague we lived through, it is both validating and unnerving to witness this show evoking that era.

Revival isn’t just a mirror to five years ago, however. It also feels very of the moment with its treatment of the Revivers (their walking dead). While not a perfect one-to-one for America’s current ICE age or certain people’s gross attempts to criminalize trans people, one can’t ignore the connections. The series shows people begging for special dispensations for their friends and family from the labeling and hasty incarcerations that face other Revivers. “You know them!” they insist. “They’re not like the other ones,” they argue.

Meanwhile, fear takes hold. When one Reviver proves dangerous, well, the rest simply cannot be trusted, can they? Some officials impose the restrictions reluctantly. Others do so inconsistently. There are hardliners sure they’re doing the right thing. And then there are the zealots, represented by Abel, who have made ruining the Revivers’ lives a religious crusade. Shifting from the source material’s “us” (the sheriff’s department) vs. “them” (the US military/the CDC) orientation to one where it is the community hurting itself is a smart choice. This isn’t some shadowy conspiracy. It is the sheriff and the governor betraying their neighbors and constituents. No one says, “the enemy within,” but every decision drips with that attitude.

A show is more than its political allusions, though. To work, Revival needs compelling characters, people who capture the audience’s attention. On that front, the series offers the Cypress sisters. From her first moments, Scrofano puts the show on her back and starts carrying it. She’s not doing anything flashy, but she’s making every scene she’s in better with a naturalism. There’s a snap to her that lives near bitterness but never fully defines her. She’s clever and thoughtful but still makes rash and selfish decisions. She’s a talented detective but spends the six (of ten) episodes screened for critics playing catch-up, often missing clues until nearly too late. In other words, she feels like a person.

Weltman, on the other hand, takes a few episodes to come into her own. Even that, however, ultimately makes thematic sense. Born with a disease that makes her prone to easy and painful injury, Em has spent her entire life protected from pain and, more broadly, everyday human experiences. So the ramp-up to her coming into own is watching someone push themselves into individuation for the first time. The more she “becomes” herself in the world of Revival, the more compelling she becomes on-screen. It’s an evolution that keeps the audience emotionally invested.

As a SyFy (with Hulu) program, there are budget constraints. However, cinematographers Justin Black and Martin Wojtunik, along with the directing corps led by Amanda Row and Samir Rehem, know how to pick their shots. A small-town street corner suddenly flooded with people dressed in their funereal best, each lost and confused. A man bursting from a crematorium oven. That same man, still partially ablaze, crossing through a scene of near-panic, a strangely near-calm element in the chaos. A suspicious glowing hand pressed, briefly, against the outside of a child’s tent.

When it isn’t those moments, though, the show often lapses into a one-shade-too-dark black and blue composition for outdoor shots. Those visuals make the already not exactly lively paced series feel leaden at times. And while the fluorescent visions of hospitals and police stations may be location-accurate, flipping between the murk and the harsh lights can make for some unpleasantness.

The pacing, it should be said, does improve. The more the show concerns itself with, the more human concerns—what happened to Em that night, the actions of the Check crime family, Ibrahim’s adherence to his principles—the better it works. There is evidence to suggest Revival is finding the best balance between the human, the cosmic, and the spiritual. Hopefully, the final four episodes will bear that out.

Revival day is June 12 on SyFy before hitting Hulu on June 19.

Revival Trailer: