MUMBAI: With its tight fist focus on action, AXN will now try contemplate the sci-fi genre to gauge if it can help the channel to generate edge over competition. The broadcaster will air the show The 4400 every Tuesday at 10 pm from 1 February.

The title refers to the number of missing people who suddenly resurface. Some have been missing for 60 years, yet they are not a day older when they disappeared.

The 4400 seem to be completely unaware what has happened to them in the intervening years. The US government tries its level best to figure it out.

The rest of humanity is less amazed by the strange phenomena and more deeply worried by this bizarre reappearance. When it turns out that some of the 4400 have also developed unusual gifts, tabloid journalists see in the 4400 convenient scapegoats.

When they are released from quarantine, the anonymity they have been granted now seems paper thin when many already bear a seething hatred for them.

It may be recalled that a couple of years ago Star Movies had aired the science fiction show Taken. That show had woven together the stories of three families over multiple generations and their crucial role in the history of alien abductions. While Taken fared well in Taiwan it however drew a lukewarm response in India despite a multimedia campaign.

It remains to be seen as to the kind of response AXN's new initiative receives.