style="overflow: hidden; color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; border: medium none;">The Leftovers employs a bold premise with a hint of drollness: in a Rapture-like occurrence, a segment of humanity has vanished at a stroke, although there is no pattern to the missing. Atheists and Christians, cads and paragons, children and old people alike have disappeared in the “Sudden Departure”. “According to the Food Network,” we’re told, “the small world of superstar chefs had been disproportionately hard hit.” To my way of thinking, any vetting mechanism that singled out both Vladimir Putin and the Pope was definitely not selecting the benevolent.