Along with 24 and Alias, Lost is one of a small group of high-profile genre shows from the last few years that have been battling to claim the crown left vacant by The X-Files as the undisputed "King of the Cult Shows" that can actually manage to gain a respectable audience as well.

Starting with the crashing of a passenger plane which was en-route from Sydney to the United States, the series followed a group of survivors as they discover that the island on which they were now stranded was rather more mysterious and dangerous than it first appeared. As the series progressed, the lives of the survivors before the crash were shown in flashback, often as they encountered difficulties in the everyday struggle just to stay alive.

With a mysterious creature in the jungle ready to pick off the unwary explorer, a mad Frenchwoman who's been stranded on the island for sixteen years and what appears to be another group of people on the island, the series quickly caught the public's imagination.