'American Odyssey' follows too-familiar path

It seldom pays to be a late arrival at the TV table.

There's perhaps an outside chance that NBC's American Odyssey (Sunday, 10 p.m. ET/PT, *1/2 stars out of four) might not seem quite as impenetrably dull had we not already seen — or ignored — a hundred similar tales of terrorist conspiracies and government cover-ups. But we have and it does, and there's really no coming back from that.

For those who are still intrigued, American Odyssey (formerly just called Odyssey before NBC, for some reason, decided we might not know what country we live in), follows three far-flung Americans who get separately entangled in a deadly plot to fund jihadists. Sergeant Odelle Ballard (Anna Friel of the much-missed Pushing Daisies) is a married soldier serving in Africa; Peter Decker (Peter Facinelli) is a New York lawyer; and Harrison Walters (Jake Robinson) is a political activist.

They have nothing in common except a slowly dawning realization that no one (NO ONE!) can be trusted and a discovery that will put them all at risk. This is clear in the opener, when Odelle treks through the desert in a seemingly hopeless attempt to get home.

You know not to count Odelle out, and you know that eventually the three will unite. What you don't know is how long that union will take, or whether there's any chance the show will do well enough — or NBC will be patient enough — for the trio to wend their way to the story's conclusion.

The Odyssey odds don't look very good to me, but like our intrepid trio, you're free to take your chances.