Perhaps you could think of ABC’s “Resurrection” as a zombie drama in which the undead are hungry for hugs — instead of famished for flesh.
Inspired by Jason Mott’s best-selling 2013 novel “The Returned,” the series centers on 8-year-old Jacob Langston (Landon Gimenez), a Missouri boy who drowned in a river more than 30 years ago but mysteriously resurfaces — literally — in a present-day Chinese rice paddy.
(A hit 2012 French show called “The Returned” — which aired on Sundance Channel last fall and will return for a second season later this year — follows a similar back-from-the-dead premise.)
His reappearance shocks his now-60-something parents, Lucille and Henry Langston — played by Frances Fisher and Kurtwood Smith — and perplexes a customs officer (Omar Epps) assigned to his case.
What drew Fisher to the show, which premieres at 9 p.m. Sunday, is its contrast to AMC’s zombie opera “The Walking Dead.” While surreal, “Resurrection” is about emotions, rather than humans battling reborn people with deteriorating skeletal systems.
“I haven’t seen anything like this in television before — the big ‘what if,’ you know?” the 61-year-old actress tells The Post in a phone interview from her LA home. “It’s done from a very realistic point of view. It’s not about zombies. It’s not science fiction to me. It’s an extraordinary event that happens in ordinary peoples’ lives.”
Tension is stirred as the elder Langstons react differently to their son’s sudden reappearance. Henry’s skepticism builds an emotionless wall between him and Jacob, while Lucille tries to pick up parenting where things left off — the three-decade absence be damned. “My husband cannot grapple with this extraordinary event, because how is that possible?” she says. “The mother’s experience is just different — it’s an answer to a prayer.”
The show also adds dramatic, soapy elements, including spooked and judgmental townspeople and a subplot about infidelity.
Fisher thinks viewers will connect with the series because of the “miracle” that her motherly character embraces. “We’ve all wanted to have one more moment with the people we’ve lost, and that affected me as I was reading it because I thought about the people I’ve lost in my life,” she says. “If you go into it with that in mind, it can be a very emotional journey.”
How would Fisher herself react in this type of other-worldly situation? “I think probably very much like my own character reacted — shock and disbelief — if I didn’t run screaming in the other direction, depending on who it was,” she says, laughing. “It completely destroys your perception of what you think reality is.”
Although Lucille Langston is her first regular prime time part since 2002’s “Glory Days,” Fisher is no stranger to television, with work stretching back to her years playing a cop on the daytime soap “Edge of Night” in the 1970s.
She also had a recurring part on the Kiefer Sutherland drama “Touch,” and last month she played an Anna Wintour-esque fashion editor on an episode of ABC’s “Castle.”
With “Resurrection,” Fisher — who has a 20-year-old daughter, actress Francesca Eastwood, from a six-year relationship with actor/director Clint Eastwood in the 1990s — underscores her particular affinity for maternal roles.
She has played both Andrey Hepburn’s and Jackie Kennedy’s mothers in TV movies. On “ER” in 2005, she played the mom of Carrie Weaver, even though Fisher is only five years older than Laura Innes, who portrayed the character. In the 2004 film “Laws of Attraction,” Fisher also was the mother a character played by Julianne Moore (who in real life is only eight years younger).
But Fisher is perhaps best remembered as the domineering mother of Rose DeWitt Bukater (Kate Winslet) in the 1997 blockbuster “Titanic.”
That movie left her feeling typecast. “This business is a little myopic sometimes. I got material sent to me that was the same thing: they wanted to see me as the snooty mother who was refusing to let her daughter date her boyfriend,” she says. “I thought, ‘I don’t want to keep playing that same kind of part.’”
Ultimately, however, that was fine with Fisher because she was able to take about a year off from acting to be a full-time parent. “It was more interesting to be with my daughter and raise her and take her to school every day and have that time because you don’t get it back,” she says, adding. “Once it’s gone, it’s gone.”
Now, though, she recognizes that playing moms — like the one on “Resurrection” — is just part of a natural career progression.
“I’ve played high-powered professional women, too — like in ‘Castle’ — but, you know, when you get to be the age I am, you’re either a mother or you’re not, so playing mothers is a part of what a woman does, just like if you’re a man you play a father,” she says. “That’s part of the zeitgeist of being a human being.”