In the early and mid-aughts, Peter Krause was a particularly hot property on television, mainly due to his greatest role in Alan Ball’s family drama masterpiece, “Six Feet Under.” Once the HBO show ended in 2005 after five seasons, Krause was immediately cast in the lead role of “Civic Duty,” a conspiracy thriller that flopped hard, both critically and commercially. He was never really the movie star type, so he went straight back to TV to headline Christopher Leone and Laura Harkcom’s supernatural mystery-sci-fi, “The Lost Room,” on SyFy, which can now be binged on Tubi or The Roku Channel.
Although the three-episode show couldn’t reach the same heights as “Six Feet Under,” it performed relatively well and provided another notable role for Krause on the small screen. Due to its alluring central mystery, “The Lost Room” has found a cult following among viewers, although its initial critical reception wasn’t much to write home about.
The plot follows Krause’s protagonist Joe Miller, a detective from Pittsburgh, who discovers the existence of the Lost Room (a regular motel room from the 1960s, existing outside of time and space, containing objects with supernatural powers) and believes that his missing eight-year-old daughter Anna (Elle Fanning) disappeared in it. With the Key that can provide clues as to how to locate the Room and gain access to Objects within it, Miller is on a desperate mission to solve the mystery and find his kid. However, other groups called The Cabals are also after the Room, seeking its Objects for their own self-motivated reasons, and some of them are even willing to kill to get to them first.
With a prestigious cast, obscure plot, and a relatively short season, The Lost Room is a neat treat for mystery enthusiasts
<img src="https://www.bgr.com/img/gallery/peter-krauses-overlooked-sci-fi-series-is-a-perfect-weekend-binge-watch/with-a-prestigious-cast-obscure-plot-and-a-relatively-short-season-the-lost-room-is-a-neat-treat-for-mystery-enthusiasts-1793039802.jpg” alt=”Joe Miller and Jennifer Bloom looking at some documents together intensely”>
The multi-layered, and at times even staggeringly enigmatic, writing is what turned “The Lost Room” into a cult show over time, but the terrific cast was certainly key in its success, too. First and foremost, starring Krause and Julianna Margulies as two primarily reliable TV actors at the time was a big draw. But it also featured well-known and beloved character actors like Kevin Pollack and Chris Bauer, as well as the irresistibly sweet Elle Fanning as a child, and other notable actors like April Grace, Dennis Christopher, and Peter Jacobson (before his “House M.D.” fame).
Originally, the series consisted of three episodes (which were later broken into six 45-minute episodes on the DVD release), all feature-length, airing across three days in the original broadcast in December 2006. Although its initial critical reception was mixed, the series is currently holding a 77% score on Rotten Tomatoes. But once it aired on Syfy, the show rather quickly succumbed to obscurity.
However, over the years, due to its elaborate lore and rich sci-fi mythology, “The Lost Room” gained a bigger and bigger fanbase that contributed to its reappraisal as a hidden gem. If you’re a huge mystery series enthusiast hungry for something different from a previous era, and somehow missed this one, you should definitely seek it out and binge it on your next free weekend.
