That ''universality'' may be the reason Resurrection pulled an audience of more than 13 million when it launched in the US two weeks ago and why Channel Seven has high hopes for its Australian launch on Tuesday night. ''We all experience loss in our lives and we all have to figure a way to navigate through it,'' Zelman says.

The show, starring Frances Fisher (the nasty mother who tried to separate Kate Winslet and Leo DiCaprio in Titanic) and Kurtwood Smith (the nasty father who failed to separate Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher in That 70s Show), is about a small town where people who died 30 years ago come back to life, provoking complex emotional reactions in their loved ones. The first of the returned is their on-screen son Jacob (played by Landon Gimenez), an eight-year-old who drowned 32 years earlier. The series is based on a novel called The Returned, by Jason Mott, which also inspired a French series shown recently on SBS.

Zelman decided to turn the novel into a TV series because he'd gone through a painful divorce just before reading it. ''I didn't need to have someone close to me die to identify with these characters,'' he said. ''I had experienced grief for the relationship. There was a tremendous sense of loss for me in terms of the life that I had. Suddenly your in-laws are people you're not going to see much any more, if at all. I wanted to represent in the show all those different ways that people respond to loss.''

Zelman's past writing had mostly been for crime series such as Law and Order, Criminal Minds, Damages and the US version of The Killing.

What's surprising is that Resurrection was funded by the mainstream US network ABC. It sounds more suited to a cable channel such as HBO, which puts critical approval ahead of ratings.

Zelman says he's lucky to be working in ''the golden age of television'', when a story can be told in the voice of an individual author because the mainstream networks are keen to be credited with the next Breaking Bad, or Mad Men, or The Sopranos, or The Wire, or True Detective.

''There is a sense of authorship now that wasn't there before,'' Zelman says. ''The old model was that a guy created a show with a team of writers, and he might stay for a couple of years before handing the reins to someone else. That's a kind of group-think way of doing it. Now they look for one person's vision. It's impossible to think of Breaking Bad without Vince Gilligan, or Mad Men without Matthew Weiner.''

He has not been told yet whether the show will be renewed for a second season, but he hopes he'll be given time to let the story unfold.

''You have to get used to the rhythm of a show. You don't necessarily get it right away. Breaking Bad and The Wire took years before people started talking about them. They would have been instantly cancelled if they'd been on network television.''

I confessed to being reluctant to commit to his series for fear it would be a case of grabbing an audience with an intriguing idea, then disappointing them by dragging on for years with no satisfying conclusion.

Zelman tried to reassure me.

''That is a concern that we shared through the writing process,'' he said. ''I hope fans will always feel a sense that some chapter has been completed while a new one is set to begin. I can tell you right now there is a cliffhanger at the end of the first season. I don't want to be coy about that. But there is a satisfying conclusion also to many aspects that you've been tracking over the eight episodes.''

Resurrection airs on Tuesday at 8.45pm on Seven.

Pitch of the week

You get a lot of press releases in this business, promising a lot of ''extraordinary'' media experiences, but rarely comes a pitch as intriguing as this one, for a series being filmed for ABC2: ''Audiences won't have laughed this hard at a martial arts comedy since Kylie Minogue in Street Fighter.'' That came from Rick Kalowski, ABC TV's head of comedy (and a former writer for Big Bite, Comedy Inc and At Home With Julia).

He's talking about a series called Maximum Choppage, in which Lawrence Leung plays a Cabramatta youth whose mother boasts that he is a kung fu expert. The release continues: ''Whilst everyone thinks he was studying at a legendary martial arts school in Beijing, the truth is Simon was at Marshall's Art School, in Melbourne.''

Leung praises the ''incredible stunt team'' that is helping him look convincing in the series, which is pencilled in to air late this year. But he adds: ''I'm now regretting writing scenes which involve me being beaten up by martial artists.''

Kalowski and Leung win this week's award.

Over-55s' favourites

Last week, TV Liftout discussed the shows most-watched by kids under 12, so it's only fair and balanced to this week look at the other end of the scale - shows most watched by people over 55. It turns out the kids and their grandparents share a passion for the ABC. There were only two non-ABC programs in the kiddies' top 20 - My Kitchen Rules and The Block. There are only five non-ABC programs in the seniors' top 20, and one of them is My Kitchen Rules.

Here's the over-55s popularity chart: 1 Doc Martin (ABC1); 2 Australian Story (ABC1); 3 Downton Abbey (Seven); 4 Midsomer Murders (ABC1); 5 Seven News (Seven); 6 The Doctor Blake Mysteries (ABC1); 7 ABC News (ABC1); 8 Nine News (Nine); 9 Four Corners (ABC1); 10 Janet King (ABC1).

This seems to confirm the saying that the ABC serves the community from cradle to grave, but not much in between.

Now the ABC is fighting back, announcing it has bought the rights to that great American institution The Tonight Show. Last month Jimmy Fallon, ex-Saturday Night Live, took over as host of the celebfest that was launched in 1962 by Johnny Carson.

Fallon is seeking an under-40 audience with new multimedia segments involving selfies, hashtags and photobombing. ABC2 will screen The Tonight Show episodes 48 hours after their American broadcast, which will give Australians enough time to understand Fallon's jokes about President Obama. It starts tomorrow at 7.30pm, and will not be suitable for under-12s or comprehensible to over-55s.

For more details, read The Tribal Mind.