"Alcatraz" on Fox, With Sarah Jones and Sam Neill For almost 20 years now the crime rate in the United States has been dropping. J. J. Abrams and company seem determined to do something about that. Liane Hentscher/Fox Alcatraz Sarah Jones in this series's premiere on Fox, Monday night at 8 Eastern and Pacific times; 7, Central time. In "Alcatraz," which has its premiere Monday night on Fox, they import a bunch of hardened criminals from the past and set them loose in San Francisco. But the involvement of Mr. Abrams, who was also instrumental in the artful oddness of "Lost" and "Fringe," guarantees that mere time travel is only the beginning. The result is an appealing concoction that, at least in the first two episodes, serves up an accessible bad-guy chase each week for the casual viewer but layers on the supernatural for those who want to book in for the long haul. That combination and tasty casting make "Alcatraz" a spunky upgrade over the collection of interchangeable police procedurals clogging the television schedule. Determining who is doing what on Mr. Abrams's shows is something of an adventure; here he is credited as an executive producer, while Elizabeth Sarnoff, Steven Lilien and Bryan Wynbrandt are listed as creators. Whoever's brainchild this is, it's a good one. The premise: The orderly closing of the prison on Alcatraz in 1963 was faked. Its inmates were not redistributed to other prisons; they disappeared, along with the guards - more than 300 people, we're told. And now the convicts are returning, somehow having not aged and apparently on a mission orchestrated by unknown string-pullers. Sarah Jones plays the detective Rebecca Madsen, who stumbles on the phenomenon. She refuses to be turned away by the man directing the supersecret investigation into what happened, Emerson Hauser, embodied by Sam Neill with a cryptic brusqueness. "He played us, like he knew we were coming," Rebecca says in Episode 2 after one of the convicts inflicts some damage. Do these guys know we're chasing them? Emerson's chilly response: "What does that matter?" The show derives much of its momentum from the interplay between these characters, Rebecca trying to drag details out of Emerson, who clearly knows much more about the strange goings-on in 1963 than he is sharing. The piece that really makes the core cast click, though, is Jorge Garcia from "Lost," who plays Diego Soto, an Alcatraz expert. Mr. Garcia enlivens every scene he's in and provides droll humor as well. Not much cleaning up seems to have been done at Alcatraz since 1963, because the investigators are constantly finding just the right remnant in an inmate's cell or a storage room to give them the insight they need to track down one of the time travelers. In Episode 1 it seems for a while as if the show's gimmick will be simple score-settling: an inmate named Jack Sylvane (Jeffrey Pierce in a recurring role) isn't happy about how he was treated way back when and wants payback. But at the end of Episode 2 a plot twist is thrown in that makes clear there will be nothing simple about this slick series. Fox, Monday nights at 9, Eastern and Pacific times; 8, Central time. Produced by Bonanza Productions, Bad Robot Productions and Warner Brothers Television. Created by Elizabeth Sarnoff, Steven Lilien and Bryan Wynbrandt; J. J. Abrams, Bryan Burk, Jennifer Johnson, Daniel Pyne, Jack Bender, Danny Cannon and Ms. Sarnoff (Episodes 1 through 8), executive producers. WITH: Sarah Jones (Detective Rebecca Madsen), Jorge Garcia (Dr. Diego Soto), Sam Neill (Emerson Hauser), Parminder Nagra (Lucy Banerjee), Robert Forster (Ray Archer), Jonny Coyne (Warden Edwin James) and Jason Butler Harner (Associate Warden E. B. Tiller).