Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen offers a viewing tip for the coming week.

Ever since ABC premiered “Lost” to critical acclaim and commercial success in 2004, networks have tried to duplicate its success with serialized, mystery-unlocking stories.

Rarely have networks succeeded. A litany of supernatural/alien-themed series — “666 Park Avenue,” “Invasion,” “The Nine,” “Flash Forward,” “Alcatraz,” “Surface,” “Revolution,” “The Event,” “Threshold,” “Resurrection” — followed “Lost.” Each one began by presenting a mystery, then stretched out the story and usually got canceled before they could provide resolution.

Their inability to provide answers ensured similar series that followed drew fewer eyeballs as viewers grew more wary of getting on board a similar ride. As more unresolved shows piled up and more viewers swore off this type of program, it became a self-fulfilling prophecy that these shows will more often fail. Networks keep trying them anyway.

NBC’s “Debris” (10 p.m. Monday, WPXI-TV) is the latest, joining the network’s “Manifest” (returning at 8 p.m. April 1), a double dose of watch-at-your-own-risk-of-disappointment TV.

“Debris” follows British MI-6 agent Finola Jones (Riann Steele) and American CIA agent Bryan Beneventi (Jonathan Tucker) as they chase down pieces of wreckage from an alien spacecraft. When these debris come in contact with humans, the debris can have mysterious effects, like making bodies levitate a foot above the ground.

The pilot episode is eerie and surprising at times but it also has that will-any-of-this-get-resolved? vibe hanging over it. There’s also a love-will-heal resolution that’s fairly cheesy as well as a frustrating opaqueness.

When Beneventi demands an explanation to one subset of the mystery from his boss, viewers will likely roll their eyes at the boss’s response, which echoes the show’s attitude: “That’s all I can share for now.”

J.H. Wyman, a veteran of Fox’s serialized mystery “Fringe,” is showrunner on “Debris” and acknowledged the need for a balance of serialized storytelling across the series with individual episodes that feel complete.

“That’s the biggest lesson I learned (from ‘Fringe’) is you’ll have a week to week show that people can come back to, but for the real hard-core fans, they understand that there’s a plan,” he said in a February online press conference during NBC’s portion of the Television Critics Association winter 2021 press tour. “There’s a feeling like there’s this unseen narrator pushing you silently down this road that’s going to amount to something — and something big.”

Of course, to get to “something big,” the show has to survive long enough. Viewers will have to decide for themselves if that risk is one they’re willing to take on “Debris.”

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