'The Leftovers' Trailer: The Rapture Instantly Transforms Middle America

By Russ Fischer/April 28, 2014 11:30 am EST

Writer/producer Damon Lindelof returns to TV — or, excuse me, to HBO — with the upcoming show The Leftovers. Based on the 2011 novel by Tom Perotta and directed by Peter Berg, the pilot of The Leftovers begins to explore the aftermath of a society that loses a small percentage of its population overnight. Was it the Rapture? Maybe! The question really is: how does everyone stuck on Earth deal with the fact that their loved ones are simply gone? The show stars Justin Theroux, Liv Tyler, Christopher Eccleston, Amy Brenneman, Michael Gaston and Ann Dowd. Check out the first full The Leftovers trailer below.

The song here is 'Retrograde,' by James Blake. Here's an embed of the tune on its own.

The Leftovers premieres on HBO on Sunday, June 29 at 10 pm. Here's the poster. Trailer via The Playlist. the-leftovers-poster

What if—whoosh, right now, with no explanation—a number of us simply vanished? Would some of us collapse? Would others of us go on, one foot in front of the other, as we did before the world turned upside down? In The Leftovers, that's what the bewildered citizens of Mapleton, who lost many of their neighbors, friends and lovers in the event known as the Sudden Departure, have to figure out. Because nothing has been the same since it happened—not marriages, not friendships, not even the relationships between parents and children.

Kevin Garvey, Mapleton's new mayor, wants to speed up the healing process, to bring a sense of renewed hope and purpose to his traumatized community. Kevin's own family has fallen apart in the wake of the disaster: his wife, Laurie, has left to join the Guilty Remnant, a homegrown cult whose members take a vow of silence; his son, Tom, is gone, too, dropping out of college to follow a sketchy prophet named Holy Wayne. Only Kevin's teenaged daughter, Jill, remains, and she's definitely not the sweet "A" student she used to be. Kevin wants to help her, but he's distracted by his growing relationship with Nora Durst, a woman who lost her entire family on October 14th and is still reeling from the tragedy, even as she struggles to move beyond it and make a new start.