The “Work Its” of the world notwithstanding, sometimes midseason is the perfect launching territory for a series too unique to fit on a fall schedule, and too full of potential to be submerged in a sea of September competition.  “Touch,” a new drama starring Kiefer Sutherland, represents a perfect example of this idea.  While we’ll never know if  “Touch” would have pulled away from fall’s freshman pack, its preview airing tonight at 9pm ET/PT on Fox ensures this latest series from “Heroes” creator Tim Kring  has a better-than-decent chance of getting the attention it deserves.

Certainly a portion of “24‘s” faithful will tune in to see Sutherland’s return to series television…  and as it turns out, 9/11 has a significant role in “Touch’s” pilot.   But viewers searching for shades of Jack Bauer won’t find much of him in Martin Bohm, a widower and single father struggling to raise his 11-year-old son Jake (David Mazouz) while still mourning a wife who died in the collapse of the Twin Towers. Bohm is stubborn and driven, but Sutherland’s portrayal grants him a level of fatigue and frailty his action hero rarely (if ever) displayed.

What has Bohm so emotionally frayed is Jake’s condition, which we discover has been incorrectly diagnosed as autism.  Jake has an obsession with numeric sequences and mobile phones, and even touching him makes him react with such force that people will have to “peel him off the ceiling,” his father explains.  The kid also has a habit of scampering up cell phone towers, and one climb too many draws the attention of  well-meaning social worker Clea Hopkins (Guga Mbatha-Raw).  Like his father, Hopkins  is concerned that Jake’s condition has closed him off from the world as we know it.

Naturally Jake is anything but disconnected from humanity, and viewers witness this through Jake’s internal narration and other perspectives, including the stories of people around the world that the boy will never meet but nevertheless are affected by his actions. Jake’s role as a hub of universal interconnectedness – vaguely explained by a somewhat kooky expert on the phenomenon (Danny Glover) – is fascinating to watch as the quilt of plotlines reveal themselves, and ever more inspiring when each disparate story comes together in end. Rare is the pilot that manages to be uplifting without getting caught in a sticky bog of maudlin sentiment, but the first episode of “Touch” pulls off that feat.

This in no way guarantees that the series will maintain all the strengths of its pilot, or that audiences will care enough to return each week to witness Bohm and son weave ever more wondrous webs of human connection around the globe. Even if one accepts the theories and possibilities that Jake’s gift grants those around him, there comes a point at which the ripple effect of his actions must be subject to constrictions and boundaries. Lacking a concrete definition of Jake’s condition means the writers can be free to explain away all kinds of twists and U-turns in the story without rooting them in absolute plausibility.

Those who remember what “Heroes” devolved into about, oh, one and a half seasons into its four-year run know what a huge problem that could be.  To borrow from Jake’s way of seeing the universe, this is a series that demands there be a distinct pattern leading us to a specific end point. From what we have seen of Kring’s previous work, he has not demonstrated great success in mapping out his various endgames.

For the time being, it’s enough that “Touch” gets off to a a strong start, and to hope that everything that works so well in the premiere consistently connects through future episodes.