The truth may be out there, but we can't find it

Jordan Collier (Billy Campbell) Lily Moore (Laura Allen) and Richard Tyler (Mahershalhashbaz Ali) from The 4400.

Anyone who saw the pilot mini-series of The 4400 in February might have been wondering whether the series had been abducted by aliens. But no, here it is, the aliens have returned the characters and last night (9.30, TV3) some of the 4400 were back on Earth.

The 4400 are humans who were "taken" over the past 60 years and dropped back on Earth, not a day older but quite possibly quite a lot weirder.

And, for one, quite a lot fatter. "I wasn't pregnant when I was abducted, I was when I came back," said one female abductee. So, weird, but not too weird. At least the pregnant one is a woman.

Those aliens, if they are aliens, obviously don't hold with mucking around with the human reproductive system.

So far, so good. We have evidence of not just alien probing, which always gets everyone very excited, but of alien sex. Excellent.

Or possibly excellent. Because those aliens are starting to sound suspiciously not like aliens and more like things called future humans. We'll have to wait and see just how strange these beings are.

They obviously have a plan because the 4400 have been "seeded back into the timeline" - for what purpose remains about as clear as those UFO pictures on the internet.

We all know what would happen if somebody really had been abducted: they would write a book which would become a best seller.

And they would set up a centre for the investigation of abductions. They'd become rich and famous and be invited on every telly talk show.

This is what one of the abductees, Jordan Collier, has done. He has set up the Centre, a place for the abductees to gather but also where non-abductees with abductee envy can go "to unlock the 4400 within".

In the grand American tradition of snake oil selling, Collier also has a fellow abductee with mysterious healing powers on board. We knew this because a kid with tubes up his nose was cured of leukemia.

There was no sign that he had been cured other than a shot of himwith tubes out of his nose, but "this is a miracle" said the mother.

There is also a baby with mysterious powers. The kid, the product of a marriage between a black man and a white woman, shattered glass windows when a racist religious nutter appeared. What a handy trick.

This family is on the run - for some reason which has so far escaped me entirely - from the two agents investigating the 4400, and Jordan Collier.

Meanwhile, in a loony bin, a nutter called Tess was maniacally sketching strange buildings and a tower. Then the staff and inmates began building the tower. Agents left to guard the tower then helped to build the tower.

Tess maintained she was sent home by mistake, that she needs to get back to where she was taken. She's not mad: everyone else in the bin is. Oh, that old line.

The whole thing's mad. And, really, I have no idea what was going on except that it's something very odd. As is telly's ongoing fascination with the idea that the truth, or aliens, or something, is out there.