BBC1 - 28th February 2008 - 9.00pm

"If that's fascist then Heil bloody Hitler!"

"It gave me a rash when I did that to mine"

Another superb episode that benefits from more concentration on plot and less 1980s gimmicks. I'm so glad they've made the Catherine Price character, played wonderfully by Amelia Bullimore, central to Alex's attempts to return to her waking state in 2008. The relationship between Alex and her mother is all about mutual trust and Alex discovers that those half-remembered glimpses between her mother and her godfather Ewan confirm their affair and that her insecurities about her mother are all too true. It's a good dynamic that propels the series forward and I'm now convinced that Catherine's involvement in breaking into the weapons establishment and the stolen 'Artemis' file is somehow going to lead us to the car bombing.

The plot itself is a not so subtle homage to Troy Kennedy Martin's 'Edge Of Darkness' - I mean if you are going to call the weapons establishment 'Edgehampton' and have a character called Kennedy and then name the areas of the Edgehampton facility after Tube stations in a similar way to the tunnels under the Northmoor complex in 'Edge Of Darkness' - well...if that's not an homage...I'm Gene Hunt's crocodile shoes. It was a good crib though and the scenes with Gene and Alex wandering through the maze of corridors and rifling through the files had a 'Prisoner'esque feel to them that was then capped by the meeting with bowler hatted spook from MI5 at the conclusion. Their clinch in the sealed archive room further delved into Gene's protectiveness of Alex and the scenes were superbly played between Hawes and Glenister. Her plaintive "I can't die can I....Can I?" was just heartbreaking. Lovely satin red bustier too.

Poor Alex was put through the wringer with lots of blurred, skewed visions of clowns, toy cupboards, flashes of the car bomb and noticeably a shot of Ewan running towards the explosion in an attempt to stop it? It was visually very arresting, almost dream like again and helps give the episode that necessary edge with a strange suggestion of childhood abuse or even a confirmation that Evan is in fact Alex's dad perhaps? And it was clear he knew a great deal more about Kennedy and the weapons establishment than he was letting on - is he plotting against the Prices perhaps?

The humour at the expense of a gang of Greenham Common agitators was rather cheeky with a lot of very un-PC brickbats flying about and Ray and Chris in their element. The best was Chris trying to get his head around feminist arguments with his refusal to get Shaz a Marathon on the grounds that doing so was somehow sexist, Ray and Chris practising their stealth stalking on Alex and Gene, and the rather funny, if uncomfortable, Good Cop/Bad Cop routine for the interrogation of Sara which is defused by Chris helping himself to a pink wafer biscuit as he consoles the guilty party. The humour was overall wonderfully timed within the script, felt natural (if anything in 1981 could be deemed as such) and helped to finally create a genuine ensemble playing.

This is certainly the best episode of the series so far and equals the good scripts for 'Life On Mars' and the acting and characterisation are now working well. The sub plots are nicely coming together and although we're still getting 'crime of the week' as the main plot these will work if they can script them as well as this and integrate them with the Evan / Alex/ Catherine sub-plots. The direction and writing on this by Catherine Morshead and Mark Greig respectively keeps all the elements working to their best. 'Ashes To Ashes' has finally arrived!

Episode Three review
Episode Two review
Episode One review

'Join Our Group And You Will Find
Harmony And Peace Of Mind'

- Happiness, Goldfrapp

ADDENDUM - 28th February 2008

The Deluxe version of the album is well worth getting as it contains a sweet little booklet of lyrics, postcards, poster, album credits and a special DVD which contains the promo for A&E, a Q&A and a short film. Having heard the album properly mastered now my opinion of it hasn't changed. In fact, I appreciate it even more. The strings and acoustic work are much more audible and there are lots of lovely twiddly electronic noodlings reinforcing the influence of artists such as Nick Drake, Kate Bush, Serge Gainsbourg as well as the psychedelia of XTC, The Strawbs and Pink Floyd. Recommend headphone listening to get all the nuances. Lyrically, many of the songs seem to talk about disastrous relationships, selling your soul for happiness and all consuming love. And the stunning string sections are conducted by that library music master Nick Ingman. A beautiful album.


OK. An exclusive for you. All the naysayers out there, you're talking rubbish. The new album from Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory is really just so lovely. For those of you expecting the oompha, oompha, stick it up your joompa glam-electro freak out of 'Supernature' will wonder what the heck is going on. But those of you who've been there since 'Felt Mountain' will quite willingly throw yourself into the big, warm bosom of 'Seventh Tree'.

What you also need to do, bearing the daft as a brush sonic experiments of 'Felt Mountain' in mind, is thrill to how this forms all sorts of connections to English pastoral psychedelia and folk. Then pop a few squashy, fat electronic noises and washes over the whole giddy extravaganza. Yep, let's go back to the barminess of 'Piper At The Gates Of Dawn', and to Hendrix's backwards tapes and really chill. And it fully materialises with stompy, smile on your face, surrealism on 'Happiness' with its breathy vocals, washes of synth, brass samples, sweet vocal harmonies. If that song doesn't make you want to go out and pick flowers on a bright spring day then you are irredeemable.

What also strikes you is that Alison's vocals are now right up front. It's a great pleasure to listen to them and they are quite rightly showcased on these songs. She's divine on 'Little Bird' and 'Clowns'. And I love that half way through 'Little Birds' it goes mad and plunges into a psychedelic wig-out. Alison is always in your ear with some delicious, treacly entreatments to drag you into the bursting, opening spring flower of the whole album. 'Bring it on, come along, on the road to somewhere' she tempts as Will pops in another great whirl of electronics. Her inflections are part Marc Bolan, part Nick Drake, especially on 'Eat Yourself' with its brittle acoustic guitars embraced by fat washes of synth and an achingly gorgeous string section.

'Some People' a proper ballad, tinted with great piano and strings, and a soaring chorus that cycles in and out of the song is intimate, saturated in atmosphere. It is far away from the cold, glacial, dance electronica of 'Supernature'. I actually think the single 'A&E' isn't the strongest track on the album but it does prepare you for the feel of it all. It's a fine, soulful performance but there's perhaps a bit too much of the confessional about it that just reminds me of all the other Tunstalls, Nashes and Co out there. It's very atypical for Goldfrapp that's for sure.

The highlight is the library music funk, Europop homage of 'Cologne Cerrone Houndini' with its breathy Marlene Dietrich vocals, string stabs, and tingling washes of synthetics that just evoke a has-been movie star hurtling down the autobahn in her limo, the sun glinting off her huge sunglasses. It's pure Goldfrapp, the rising riffs and Alison's yodelling chorus leaping right off 'Felt Mountain'. Bloody gorgeous.

'Caravan Girl' is a jolly romp of a song, bashing percussion, guitars and psychedelic synth washes, part Manic Street Preachers, part Blondie, but with atonal bits and bobs all chucked in and great backing vocals that go all choral at the end. Less distinctive perhaps than its fellow tracks but it fits in with the 'throw the window open and welcome the sunshine mood' that's dominating the album. 'Monster Love' with its backwards bits of synth treatments, rising and falling structure and the sitar-like riffs echo everything from the Beatles to John Foxx's original version of 'Endlessly'.

With this subtle and beautifully constructed work, they have, for me, connected to the English pastoral psychedelia of The Strawbs, Pink Floyd, XTC and the electronic noodlings of Eno and Fripp. It's a solid, thoughtful piece of work and a worthy redefinition of their musical aims. I don't have full access to the lyrical content of the songs so its themes can be only briefly considered. My intention is to add an addendum to this post to slightly expand on them.

Goldfrapp - Seventh Tree (Mute - LCDSTUMM280 - Released on February 25th 2008)

BBC3/BBCHD - 27th February 2008 - 10.00pm

‘Like Jesus but without the beard’

Oh, Torchwood...what are we going to do with you!

This is such a frustrating episode. Joseph Lidster hands the producers a good script, in the main well written (even though some of the narrative devices have been overused in many other shows) and through a combination of realisation, performances and rather daft ideas it withers on the vine. This should have had the nation rending its garments and crying at the sheer profoundity of it all. Personally I was unmoved and if a 'Doctor Who' episode can reduce me to tears then why can't a 'Torchwood' episode? There is still something wrong about the DNA of this series that prevents it from giving us fully dramatic and emotional catharsis at least once or twice a season. In my opinion, they spent the whole of Series One making all the characters so unsympathetic that the damage it has inflicted on the show is to make any attempt at emotional development a seriously difficult task. The producers have made an attempt to change this but the series still suffers from a group of characters that are still unlikeable.

OK. Some good things. Burn Gorman was excellent and his portrayal of the 'broken' Owen was the best thing he's given us since the series began. My problem is that Owen is still such an audience intolerant character (and has been since day one) that any attempts to now change him and sentimentalise his situation unfortunately fails for me. Even here, when he's actually going through massive changes he's still thoroughly obnoxious to both Martha and Tosh. Granted, this is about coping with extreme situations and finding a glimmer of hope in the darkness, in your soul as it were, and lashing out is part and parcel of the experience. This is a story about how you can cope with the most terrible, awful situations, but only if there is the merest bit of hope left in your soul. It's a search for the smallest splinter of diamond in a very dark room.

The episode then dives into Bondian pastiche when we get to the raid on Richard Briers as the dying Parker. His lair and the subsequent raid on it by Owen change the tone of the episode briefly to a rather sub-super spy / Captain Scarlet homage. After the all the navel gazing, and some of that, annoyingly, is emotionally thin I have to say, it's amusing and ridiculous at the same time to see Owen talk down trigger happy security guards. However, the scenes with Parker and Owen are better and Briers is fine (I was half afraid he would suddenly put a glittery peaked cap on and start muttering about the Great Architect) and this seals the running theme between Owen, Parker and Maggie, the suicidal ex-bride. The loneliness of three people, all 'dead' variants, finding some kind of solace and hopefully a meaning to their lives/deaths and an attempt to move on is Lidster's main theme in the script. Parker wants to know that life is worthwhile and that death is not the end, the ex-bride and Owen just want enough hope to go on with. The alien device, the Pulse, is the weakest element here. Lidster struggles to cap the episode with an emblem of hope. A daft bit of visual effects isn't the way to do this. The light in the darkness is too literal a symbol here and I did feel that the final scenes seriously failed to provide enough reasons to prevent Owen from rotting in a hole and for the ex-bride Maggie to actually fling herself off the roof. The audience were probably expecting Owen to be cured and for the ex-bride to commit suicide and at least the episode avoided that resolution but what was put in its place wasn't good enough.

At its worst, this episode shunted all the other characters to one side, completely underused Martha again (which to me indicates that they really didn't know what to do with her once the decision was made to put her in the series) and then offered Owen a job as 'tea boy' when quite clearly anyone else's reaction to such a demotion would have been to tell them all to bugger off. Sure, Owen's supposed redundancy is a key part of the plot but having him as a comic stooge making coffee? Frankly, Jack's died that many times, it's a wonder he isn't impersonating a hat stand in the office (oh...sorry, this week he was!) going by the standard procedures outlined here. It was also inevitable that a situation would crop up where Owen's status as a dead man would be positives to add to the mission and again this was very obviously going to happen.

Not all the performances are good. John Barrowman unfortunately did his tailor's dummy impression again this week, Christine Bottomley, as the bride, carved herself a huge slice of ham and really tried much too hard to emote and the rest of Team Torchwood dithered in the background desperately doing concerned expressions. The danger of focusing on one character is that you ultimately give others little to do and they hang around like bad smells.

Don't get me wrong, this was much better than the attempt to tell exactly the same story tried out in last week's episode and Lidster writes very well but if you are going to examine how a dead person functions then ideas that the person has no breath, when clearly they have, are unconvincing uses of 'pseudo science' that undermine the story. It's trying to be clever but it then gives us a 'dead' man who can see, breathe and talk. I love the central premise and Lidster's attempt to articulate it but a further polish on the script, better use of Martha and the rest of the team, and a director who can marshal it all emotionally rather than fart about getting pretty pictures would have helped. What could have been a truly outstanding episode is let down by an ill-thought out conclusion, silly science, variable acting, over-fussy direction and some rather over-enthusiastic music scoring.

Now that we've had the loose 'Owen' trilogy, I would have preferred Owen to have remained properly dead at the end of this. As far as I'm concerned he's still a thoroughly unlikeable character and his supposed enlightenment hasn't convinced me at all. And what exactly are they going to do with this 'man of glass'? By the end of the series he'll be an animated set of bruises, broken bones and cuts. And he'll still be obnoxious. Have the producers really thought this out? Is it sustainable?

A decent Martha episode and then two weeks of naval gazing make Torchwood a very frustrating and schizophrenic programme. I thought by now I would not be in the situation I was in last year - hoping the next episode will be the one finally where they get it right - but I feel I'm still there. Never mind, I might be bothered to tune in for that Nerys Hughes comedy that's on next week...

Previous episode reviews:

Dead Man Walking
Reset
Adam
Meat
To The Last Man
Sleeper
Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang

The Lazarus Experiment
Originally transmitted 5th May 2007

With the sixth episode we are plunged back into Martha's world. A world of DNA experiments and mysterious men in black. Stephen Greenhorn takes the standard comic book cliches, invoking 'Spiderman' and 'The Hulk', pays homage to the venerable Nigel Kneale's 'Quatermass' and SF B movies such as 'The Fly' and then plugs it into the main themes now beginning to run through the series - what does it mean to be a human, is there hope in a callous age and can those blessed with the gift of immortality have real faith?

Richard Clark again shows how good he is with visual composition here with lots of tracking and overhead shots, a particularly stunning revolving shot (an homage to the 'Alien' films) as the CGI monster climbs the ceiling of the corridor, and some lovely bits and pieces glimpsing characters through arches and doorways in the cathedral. He gets a great deal out of the laboratory setting too, using reflections and back-lighting to great atmospheric effect. Another very handsome looking episode.

Book-ending the episode are two scenes between the Doctor and Martha, one where the Doctor simply feels it is time to let go and one where he finally understands that Martha doesn't wish to be left behind. In between these two points, we have a narrative in which Martha plays a significant role - being resourceful, using her skills and finally going back into the conflict to face the consequences and ultimately to the cathedral where she offers herself as bait to lure Lazarus to his destiny. I don't think the relationship between the Doctor and Martha is a carbon copy of the one he had with Rose. This is more about being an equal, facing the odds with intelligence but perhaps with a pinch of unresolved sexual tension. More Martha Peel to Doctor Steed, I think.

Underneath the monster runaround there's also a great deal more going on. Lazarus and his laboratory represent the scientific principle when it comes to extending life. To him it is a matter of DNA manipulation, patenting the idea and raking in the cash. The DNA manipulation machine is more or less Lazarus' electronic God. Aptly, when Lazarus takes his spin in the machine, he isn't resurrected and given new life but merely reduced to the function of the Grim Reaper itself, bringing death and destruction to himself, his wife and others. Rather than enhancing life, he subtracts and extinguishes it.

However, as Lazarus may see death as the end of the lane as far as the journey of life is concerned, the Doctor understands why the human span must end. Death to him is seen as a valuable experience for human-kind, one that he himself seems to crave here. He sees death as not just something the body must face but also as something the entire being must embrace. It's something he has been denied and where prolonged life is a curse in which mortals he has dearly known wither and die. Immortality is regret, sorrow and loneliness. Lazarus' transformation is an opening of Pandora's box in a literal sense when he uses the machine. 'Tonight, Matthew, I'm going to be Orpheus in the Underworld' - cue dry ice and a personification of the circle of existence, the self-devouring worm munching up mankind.

The final showdown in Southwark cathedral, superbly played between Gatiss and Tennant, reverses the cold, analysis of the flesh as seen in Lazlabs for the echoing magnificence of faith's cradle. Where the lab is maybe Alpha, the cathedral is Omega - a physical playing out of life's paradoxes, of beginning and ending - and the cathedral with its stained glass, vaulted roof and resonating sound is where Lazarus has a chance to empty himself of his ego, abandon hubris and rely on faith and hope to see him through to the end of his days. It's continuing a religious theme, centred on the transformation of mortal beings through ascension and faith, first intimated in 'Gridlock'.

So, kudos to The Mill once again for their CGI monster. Not bad at all, particularly in the scene where it's scuttling along the cathedral roof. This and Gatiss' very physical performance helped us to imagine the transformation scenes without actually having to spend lots of money showing them. The make up for Gatiss was exemplary and he found ways to work with it to create the character fully and to the extent that in the end we understood Lazarus' folly and sympathised with his failed desire in the sad coda of the death scene.

It was a good, slightly old fashioned monster romp, with even a 'reverse the polarity' nod thrown in to underline the Pertwee vibe, and it often veered into camp with Gatiss (very Julian Glover like) and Thelma Barlow deliciously crossing swords. Martha's family were fleshed out effectively and her mother Francine, played with seething suspicion by Adjoa Andoh, provided a pleasant flash back to the infamous Jackie Tyler slap and offered a tantalising glimpse of future betrayal perhaps. Tish Jones was effortlessly provided by Gugu Mbatha-Raw and I'd like to see more of Leo Jones played by the lovely Reggie Yates. They all provided the necessary grounding for the Martha character, an indication of future loyalties, without ending up being a re-hash of the Tyler clan.

Tennant and Agyeman were excellent, the interplay in Martha's flat a specific treat, knickers and all! And finally, Martha is welcomed as a fully paid-up crew member after a string of episodes that have drip-fed us the unresolved nature of their partnership. With more mentions of Saxon here I get the impression that events are going to move up a gear now.

I was raised on horror films. Back in the halcyon days of the BBC2 'Horror Double Bill' or ITV's 'Appointment With Fear' (complete with continuity announcer doing spooky, echoing introductions) teenage boys with fervent imaginations would be introduced to the delights of Universal monsters, Hammer blood and busoms and, if we were really lucky, some of the greatest British horror films of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Films like Michael Reeves 'Witchfinder General', Robin Hardy's 'The Wicker Man' or Piers Haggard's 'Blood On Satan's Claw'. British horror was changing at the time and these films, amongst many others, ushered in a frankness about sexuality and violence and made an attempt to inject realism into what had become tired, formulaic Gothic adaptations. There was a whiff of the exploitation movie about them that echoed the then liberalisation of cinema but coupled with a rediscovered love for the English landscape. Both 'Witchfinder' and 'Satan's Claw' are as much about the pastoral Romanticism of the English countryside and its defilement by anarchistic forces as they are about gore, occultism and boobs.

What also makes these later explorations of British horror so powerful are their respective scores. Paul Ferris' score for 'Witchfinder' is really quite beautiful and now deserves a full release on CD, Paul Giovanni's extraordinary songs and score for 'The Wicker Man' have been issued in a wonderful CD set from Silva Screen, I believe, and now it is the turn of Marc Wilkinson's evocative music for 'Blood On Satan's Claw'. Thanks to the efforts of Jonny Trunk and Trunk Records the original masters of the music have been tracked down, spruced up and released for the first time on CD.

The CD consists of 26 short cues, all very consistent melodically and harmonically. The whole soundtrack is infused by English folk song simplicity - a series of descending and ascending scales and dextrous variations on a lullaby musical motif - that once heard is never forgotten. What gives the soundtrack its peculiar and vivacious quality is the use of the Ondes Martenot and the the cimbalom in amongst the orchestra. The Ondes Martenot is a very early electronic instrument and provides the weird swoops, whirls and tones that permeate the music. The cimbalom, an East European instrument, like a piano, but played with various types of mallet, offers resonant, heavy tonalities. As Wilkinson explains in the sleeve notes: "It is sometimes associated with the devil, thereabouts. The descending chromatic scale which features throughout the music omits the perfect fifth (the only true consonant in the chromatic scale) and therefor highlight the diminished fifth, which ever since the middle ages in Europe has been known as the Devil's Interval!! The principal melody (which sounds like an English folk song, but is not) was added later by me because the producer considered that the music was too austere."

It is a mesmeric soundtrack that is both threatening and inviting, full of warm melodies that are countered with the odd, surreal, disonant tones of the Ondes Martenot. The melody line will stay with you and the atmosphere the soundtrack generates marks it out as an absorbing piece of music in its own right. The fact that it then married to a stunning British horror flick that lures you in with its unease, its heady and intoxicating brew of the rural landscape, corrupted innocence and sexual hypocrisy is simply the icing on the cake. Beautifully presented, with a good set of liner notes, which is OK if you're fond of the ladies as you'll appreciate the plethora of boobs on show (no full length nudity of the gorgeous Barry Andrews here, alas), and well worth the hard work from Trunk Records in finally issuing this. Essential.

Now, can we get the Paul Ferris music for 'Witchfinder' released please?

Blood On Satan's Claw OST - Marc Wilkinson (Trunk Records JBH023CD - Released 15th October 2007)

Sample tracks here: Trunk Records

New press release from BBC Four that covers their 'Curse Of Comedy' drama season. This of course includes David Walliams as Frankie Howerd in 'Rather You Than Me', Ken Stott and Maxine Peake in 'Hancock And Joan' , Phil Davis and Jason Isaacs in 'The Curse Of Steptoe'. Looking good! Get those telly boxes ready...

Linky to the full press release with more images:

BBC Four Press Release PDF

BBC 1 - 21st February 2008 - 9.00pm

"Who's your mother, Marianne Faithfull?"

An interesting episode simply because it clears away a great deal of the deliberate spoofing of the 1980s and pithy one-liners in favour of characterisation and plot. In an apt reflection of today's headlines (the conviction of Steve Wright which almost made the BBC pull this episode) it tries to discuss the very sensitive subject matter of prostitution and rape. To try and do this from both a 2008 and '1981' context with the contradictory policing styles of Gene and Alex, the complex attitudes towards women and the sex industry of both eras...well that's asking a lot from a drama that has so far tended to veer off into slapstick and pastiche in either an avoidance of such weighty matters or in relying on thin plotting.

Writer Julie Rutterford only partially manages to get the complexity of such issues across, which in the frame of a series such as this, is actually a welcome change. It also gives us a chance to get below the skin of Ray and Chris in particular and features a very subdued, melancholic Gene, almost similar in tone to the very despondent Jack Regan in the final series of 'The Sweeney'. It is clear that Gene is getting grief from the fifth floor and is disillusioned with the sort of modern day policing he's being asked to buy into. Glenister is playing this as brooding and reflective and yet still manages to make Gene sympathetic. His relationship with Alex is changing too and he's becoming very protective of her.

Keeley Hawes improves each week and in this episode manages to make Alex both sexy and vulnerable as well as seriously concerned for the women working in the sex industry. This does open up issues about how women are depicted, how their sexuality is manipulated and exploited and it does become contentious - we see Alex as a sultry Cat Woman at the fancy dress party, we see her drunk and seducing a red-braces wearing yuppie, flirting with a younger Evan White (Molly's godfather) and see how power constantly changes hands between male and female characters. It shows Alex as resourceful and reckless, both complicit to and rejecting of the way women behave with men. The theme of equality is not clear cut. Alex gives Gene a thumping but how would she feel if he turned round and returned the favour? And she's constantly undermined by Gene, Ray and Chris but then exhibits traits that prevent you from sympathising with her fate. The fancy dress party is emblematic of the polarity between male and female roles - it's about stereotypes, I suppose, and whether you conform to these or simply wear them as a disguise.

These human flaws bring both a greater emotional depth to Gene and Alex and a requirement of us to accept Alex's indiscretions. This does however triumphantly open up misogynistic characters like Ray and Chris. Dean Andrews performance as Ray is superb and his scene with rape victim Nina is a fine piece of acting and shows another side to a man who previously had been pretending to be that uber-male symbol James Bond. That he failed to be that icon and ended up flooring party goers who kept insisting he was a waiter actually uncovers a rather sensitive side to our Ray which is then revealed in the conversation with Nina. It's difficult to accept Ray as a man who actually, deep down, cares and I hope that this is the beginning of a development that we'll see more of. Otherwise it's simply tokenistic.

From discussions I've had, it's also clear that religious themes and symbols are a big part of this series. Here, we have a rapist with instructions from the Bible but also observe the comment that Gene makes as he walks past the crucifix 'Where were you when she needed you?' - is he simply referring to the rape victim or to Alex? Alex also admits that she's 'lapsed' - does that indicate she had a strict Catholic upbringing? In the glimpses we see of the past where young Alex is left on her own by her mother there is a banner behind her mother proclaiming 'God Is Love'. And is Gene some sort of protecting angel? It would seem to be a subtext that is expanding as the series progresses.

Another curious thing that should be flagged up is that in this series many scenes are taking place without Alex being present (the scene between Ray and Nina here springs to mind) whereas in 'Life On Mars' John Simm was in every scene or at least observing every scene as Sam Tyler as a result of his coma induced version of 1973. The makers of the series have either learned that this is too exhausting for an actor to cope with and also restricts the way narrative can be presented or they have one huge surprise up their sleeves that will put all of the 1981 narrative into perspective. It's interesting how the dynamics are so different here.

So with this third episode we do get the low comedy capers - the gnomes and the boat party - but also an effort to try and deal with powerful issues, still troubling us here in 2008, and an attempt to work through the male and female roles in the series. How much will this affect the rest of the series is something we'll have to wait and see. I thought this was an absorbing episode, but flawed because these issues need a 'Cracker' or a 'Prime Suspect' framework to enable further opening out of the issues of morality and 'Ashes To Ashes' is neither of those programmes. It's welcome that writers like Rutterford are working on the series and can unpack some of this and provide good character development but the imbalance in tone in this episode around such an emotive subject is something the makers need to be more observant about. I think it can deal with weighter matters but the danger is that it'll tip the series over into something too dark or its flippancy will simply diffuse the issue. The latter did seem to be in operation at this stage.

MUSIC PRIMER - Episode 3 (not a full review this week. But at least a list for you to be getting on with)


The Ruts - Staring at the Rude Boys
Joe Jackson - Different for Girls
Brian Ferry - Let's Stick Together
Roxy Music - Over You
Bucks Fizz - Making Your Mind Up
Modern Romance - Ay-Ay-Ay-Ay-Moosey
Duran Duran - Planet Earth
Altered Images - Happy Birthday
Buzzcocks - Autonomy
The Beat - Doors of My Heart

Episode Two review
Episode One review

BBC3/BBCHD - 20th February 2008 - 10.00pm

'I've searched "I shall roam the Earth and my hunger shall know no bounds" but I keep getting redirected to Weight Watchers'.

I didn't quite know what to make of this one. It certainly isn't a particularly bad episode but it doesn't reach the heights of 'Reset' or 'To The Last Man'. I'm not a great fan of the Owen character either and so when it appeared that this would form the centre of a trilogy of sorts about him I was a bit underwhelmed.

There were a couple of annoying things about this episode. Why bring Martha back so triumphantly in 'Reset' just to under-use her in this and turn her into an old age pensioner? It just seems a criminal waste of a good character and performance to have her sidelined through this and then miraculously recover at the end. And considering that much of the episode makes pointed observations about there being 'nothing' once you've expired and that Heaven, Hell and Death are merely constructs that we have faith in, we then get a very literal representation of Death that seems to have jumped off a Tarot card. The two concepts just don't seem to work and it felt very cliched in the end. Literal representations of devils, Death and demons only work if they subvert the kitsch imagery and become something new in the process.

This also extends to the fact that 'Torchwood' is now so well known, in Cardiff hospitals it seems, that it has become the least secret organisation in the world. As a nurse or a doctor I would certainly have been asking who the hell these odd people were chasing round a hospital, then getting it evacuated and having a wrestling match with a big cloud of smoke and a skeleton in the foyer.

The first half of this episode is unsettling and strange and I like the idea of a character being brought back from the dead as a 'changed' man. When it avoided the obvious images of the Grim Reaper it came across as an interesting debate about what exactly constitutes the 'afterlife' and the scenes in the black void, with Owen possessed, were creepy, even though writer Matt Jones did pretty much the same thing in 'The Satan Pit' for 'Doctor Who'. Burn Gorman did impress me with his performance, even though I'm no fan of his character Owen, and his very human response to his apparent 'death' makes this work. My problem lies in part of Team Torchwood's raison d'etre. Aren't they dealing with aliens and alien technology? Why then start shifting the series into the realms of magic, occult and superstition? I'd have been fine if the entity that possesses Owen had turned out to be just that, an alien entity. The fact that it actually turns out to be Death and the Mill run up a CGI Grim Reaper a la 'The Frighteners' to underline it as a mythical symbol just reduced this, in the second half, to a rather daft bit of nonsense. The wrestling between Owen and the Grim Reaper was the nadir of the story and I was tempted to shout 'Easy, Easy, Easy' as Owen went for two falls and a submission. It didn't at all support the coda of 'facing death' as symbolised by the child with leukemia.

And could someone explain just why the Weevils were behaving the way they were? I know it might have something to do with the Weevil bite that Owen received in Series 1 but the writer never really explains this. And good as it was to see the episode forge a connection with last year's series by bringing back the magic glove, it did strike me that anyone who hadn't seen those episodes would have been very confused at what was going on.

The personal journey that Owen takes is interesting and the concept of making him, in effect, a zombie adds an bold dynamic to the series but Matt Jones' script doesn't quite explain what is going on. Despite this, the character moments for Owen and Jack are the highlight here, particularly with them in the police cell in which the discussion about mortality and death is appropriate to the characters and the episode.

That said, the lighting and direction were moody and effective and there was further evidence that Ben Foster is fast becoming an extraordinary composer with his great score for this. The hospital scenes with their prowling cameras and subdued lighting worked very well, as did the distorted views of Owen and the void. An episode with a strange, unfocused plot, some interesting themes about death and mortality which are then squandered by reverting to the Dennis Wheatley bumper book of fun occult cliches and some dodgy CGI but still with good character development for Owen.

Now anyone want to take bets that Owen will stop being a zombie and become a flesh and blood mortal again and have a wubbly love life with Tosh? My thinking is - either kill the annoying sod off for good or leave him as a zombie and continue the arc beyond next week's episode.

Previous episode reviews:

Reset
Adam
Meat
To The Last Man
Sleeper
Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang

Season 14 - November 1976

‘We must adjust the truth’

Indeed, Borusa, I think you’ve got a point there.

On original transmission, 'The Deadly Assassin' upset an awful lot of people. The BBC tut-tutted about Hinchcliffe’s free-wheeling attitude towards the show and its production, Mary Whitehouse slagged off David Maloney for his editorial choice of freeze-framing the Doctor’s apparent drowning and the ‘fan’ opinion was split down the middle. The Holmes/Hinchcliffe supposed debunking of the Time Lords didn’t go down well at all. The story is a huge turning point for the series both in terms of the central character and his background as well as for the way the series will be perceived from hereon in. Over time the story has been revisited and opinion has been revised to regard ‘Assassin’ as something of a classic, I understand.

Well, I’m here to tell you it isn’t anything of the sort in my opinion. I think the naysayers of the time did have a point and one could argue that the new series attitude towards the Time Lords has been influenced by what ‘Assassin’ did to the original format and its subsequent effect on the series. More of that in a moment, friends.

OK. The Doctor gets the call from Gallifrey, has a vision of the President’s assassination and ends up back on his home planet embroiled in a plot by the Master to (tick boxes now) humiliate the Doctor, destroy Gallifrey, the Time Lords and a hundred other odd planets AND get his regeneration mojo back. That’s a tall order for four episodes and much as it tries, it really overreaches and falls flat.

Holmes’ script has often been seen as the series version of 'The Manchurian Candidate' – which it is to an extent – but it’s also interesting to note that it also re-enacts the Kennedy assassination and takes a number of pot-shots at the departing Harold Wilson and his own infamous honours list. The retiring President even holds aloft his resignation honours list and quips ‘They won’t like some of the names in here’. Right on, Harold. Ostensibly, as a version of the Kennedy assassination, the Doctor is the patsy in the story – the Lee Harvey Oswald to the Master’s Jack Ruby. There is also a strange visual and narrative nod to 'The Wizard Of Oz' here too – but a sort of anti-Oz where the Emerald City is a decaying mess, not a beacon of hope, run by dusty old men who are interested only in keeping a version of history alive that suits them and the extent of their vision of the world. No room for parlour games, sleight of hand or the merest hint of change and no Dorothy to muck things up. It’s the donnish, cloistered world of old universities versus the exploding world of the mid-70s where Punk challenged the fixed bastions of post war Englishness – in the monarchy (the Queen and the Jubilee), the media and the government.

Did Punk and its own inspiration, the Situationist movement, ever influence Doctor Who? With ‘Assassin’ I think Holmes was trying to open the door slightly on what he perceived as going on in 1976. The story could stand as a complete encapsulation for the way the programme was challenging viewers’ assumptions, annoying society’s self-appointed moral protectors and the massive cultural shift beyond the BBC’s borders in which it was made. Is the Panopticon the White City headquarters of the BBC? Are the Doctor and the Master ‘punk’ revolutionaries storming the barricades of Gallifrey – one standing for humanistic evolution and the other for anarchistic chaos, both aware of the Time Lords/BBC’s ritualistic, self-deception about themselves in the same way that the Punks of ‘76 were aware that British society was pretty much in the same state? The trouble is that despite the Doctor’s heroic triumph and the Master’s destructive interference, nothing on Gallifrey actually changes. It remains in stasis, with these incidents brushed under the carpet where the truth has been adjusted. It all happens in a bubble. And Punk itself was made acceptable and swallowed by the capitalist machine. The BBC capitulated to Whitehouse, shifted Hinchcliffe sideways, and emasculated the series from that moment on.

And that in itself is the problem with ‘Assassin’. It exposes the Time Lords as a bunch of daft old men clinging onto their power with their dressing up and their anachronistic rituals (bit like the State Opening of Parliament) and it leaves them there at the end of the story just as they were. However, the format rule book has been re-written, whether that was the intention or not, and our vision of Gallifrey and the Time Lords will ultimately be tainted by further return visits that chip away at the essential ‘magic’ of the format. You reduce the mystery of the character’s origins and you also reduce the mystery of the character himself. I doubt Holmes ever foresaw the soap antics of ‘Gallifrey Street’ that peppered 'The Invasion Of Time', 'The Five Doctors' and 'Arc Of Infinity'. He took the idea as far as it could go at the time and I assume it was always intended as a one off. Little did he realise that he’d basically given ‘fans’ a self-perpetuating, continuity riddled back story of Gallifrey with diminishing returns. Tick the boxes as you go – Rassilon gets his first mention, the Panopticon, the Matrix, Chancellors, Castellans…blah…blah…blah. From this point on, the mill of the Doctor’s origins and continuity will get heavier and heavier as the series progresses. And any attempt at risk taking with the series starts to evaporate too. No wonder Russell T. Davies got rid. Could you image trying to reintroduce a back story as dead-weight and cumbersome as this back into the new series? Don’t go there Russell.

It’s actually not that well directed/made either. The story progresses on some bizarre turns of logic, lurches from coincidence to coincidence and Maloney tries to keep it all on an even keel but it feels like a jigsaw puzzle where someone has desperately tried to bang the wrong pieces into the wrong holes on occasion just because they sort of fit. Compare this to how Maloney handles ‘Genesis Of The Daleks’ and you’ll notice the difference. There is a lot of Time Lord technobabble that is simply made up on the spot to handily get the Doctor out of trouble. And the climax, with the fight between the Doctor and the Master should feel completely mythic but doesn’t, either through the ill thought out way of showing the Eye of Harmony opening (compare with the TV movie. They didn’t quite get it right either but it at least felt powerful) with its wobbly cameras and polystyrene wreckage. It feels like the drama is draining away before our eyes and after a bit of wrestling, the Master falls down a crevice in the floor and that’s your lot. It never really gets going in order to conclude the epic struggle the story is trying to tell. A shame as the script is witty and literate.

Visually, I like the sense of a mouldy, crumbling Panopticon with Roger Murray Leach’s glittering green walls and the dark, dank catacombs of the Master’s lair. And if we’re talking visual tour de force then episodes two and three and the battle in the Matrix really do stand out. I’m still not sure what those episodes actually mean. They are chock full of symbols. Obviously, we’re talking about perceived realities and fictions here and it seems to be an attempt to put the companion-less Doctor through a thoroughly violent and disturbing catharsis to determine his moral fibre and exorcise a number of demons. The Matrix sequence is also perhaps Holmes’ very perverse way of summing up the Doctor’s role in the format per se. It’s an hallucinatory series of escapes and cliffhangers (some virtually are) that reiterate the show’s perception of the heroic with knobs on. It’s littered with images of conflict (men in gas masks again), a nod to Hitchcock’s 'North By Northwest' bi-plane attack, owes a huge debt to John Boorman’s 'Hell In The Pacific' for the jungle combat scenes and plugs into 1976’s re-evaluation of the war and its symbolic meaning (Punk’s useage of the swastika is part of that). It’s the Doctor as sole audience identification figure - could you image a companion in the middle of any of this? – and in that measure it begins the slow slide into the parodic ‘Tom addresses the camera’ type performance too. Baker is very good and even when he’s being flung into this hyper-heroic context his performance suggests a hero who has an internal struggle to be THIS heroic. It’s as much about what the Doctor is and isn’t as a hero. He visibly bleeds, gets injured, tired and wet. Our normal perception of him is the opposite – an intellectual moral compass who doesn’t use violence for its own sake.

I like the story because it does attempt to be mythic and grand, it has some very wonderful lines and the performances are generally pretty good. However, Peter Pratt as the Master was basically fighting a losing battle. He has none of the charm of Delgado and I think this just makes him ‘villain of the week’ rather than the true symbol of evil that the story screams out for and Maloney should be delivering. Overall, it fails because it makes the mythic and epic seem terribly perfunctory and matter of fact and its narrative effects dissipate and vanish at the end of four episodes. A satirical political Gothic folly of a story that’s nice to watch but it doesn’t do the show any favours as such.

Changing and stretching the format for four episodes is one thing, but didn’t they realise that the nature of the series itself was also changed and the Doctor’s inherent mystery reduced? No, they were too busy signing Louise Jameson and making ‘The Face Of Evil’ to understand the real consequences. It all comes back to haunt us and them later.


THE DEADLY ASSASSIN BBC Video VHS (BBCV 4645 Cert PG - deleted)

More 4 - Tuesday 19th February 2008 - 10.00pm

I feel I have 'known' Derek Jarman for a very long time. His maverick creativity crashed into my life in the early 1980s when I saw a double bill of 'Jubilee' and 'The Tempest'. His iconoclastic work set me off on a path to understand more about this glittering jewel of a man. And so began a deeply felt empathy for him, personally, and his works, taking in his myriad books, films and garden until his untimely death in 1994. He was not only the latest in a long line of British artists and filmmakers who for me are intrinsically British (the twilight of Empire seemed to be written into his DNA) but he was also an artist who deliberately and unapologetically fanned life back into the dying embers of that very elusive concept - 'Englishness'.

For some time now, and like some of his erstwhile British bedfellows (especially Michael Powell and the maker of this documentary Isaac Julien), his pioneering adventures in cinema have faded into the background and no one has emerged to take up this particular stance and to communicate it in such a passionate way. Yes, we still have British directors making so-called British films but I can't get a sense of a director who is also interested in the abstract, visual pleasures of cinema as well as its intellectual and political dimensions. As Tilda Swinton passionately points out in her eulogy during Isaac Julien's vivid documentary portrait, market forces more or less decide what gets made and for whom these days.

I didn't always agree with Derek's politics or indeed some of his artistic decisions but whatever his stance or argument it was his passion most of all that shone through. He describes his early sex-life as 'frozen' until he was 22 as a result of scarring childhood experiences and offers that most of his relationships were platonic rather than rampantly sexual. This gentle man just seems personally at odds with the post 1970s era that he matured in but he would defend anyone's right to have relationships that eclipsed the platonic and were purely physical. He was an inspiration to me as an artist, a filmmaker, a writer, a gardener and an activist. A truly Renaissance man in a time when they were rapidly going out of fashion.

Julien's documentary beautifully fuses together Jarman's home movies (looking very Powell like in their saturated colour and war-time atmosphere), many clips from the vivacious Super 8s (such as 'Bankside'), sequences from TV interviews and his films and weaves into them a one-on-one interview conducted by Colin McCabe in 1990, I believe, as well as tantalising glimpses of Jarman's archive. I could happily spend days leafing through all those huge scrapbooks of his.

I was very emotional after watching this. Though I never met the man (I was only aware of him personally through a mutal friend, Roger Cook) I've always felt he was a kindred spirit as an artist, a writer and certainly in the way that he connected with the gay cultural experience much later in life than his contemporaries which therefore provided him with wisdom that was often direct and uncompromising. Julien captures Jarman in the twilight of his years before the ravages of AIDS took him away from us. Even in the grip of the disease he was ebullient, defiant and so very public at a time when many sufferers would rather die in silence. The films, especially 'Sebastiane', 'Jubilee', 'Caravaggio', 'The Last Of England' (which contains his entire philosophy on the state of England) 'The Garden' and 'Blue'(a stunningly personal AIDS memoir) are the pinnacle of his cinematic legacy but we should not forget his public stance about homosexuality and AIDS in politically repressive times and the sheer delight of that garden in Dungeness. Julien manages to capture it all as part of an alternative history of Britain between the 1960s and the 1990s that is also moving and elegant.

If you don't know about Derek's work then watch the season of films on More 4 ('Blue', 'Sebastiane' and 'Caravaggio') and go and take a look at the retrospective exhibition that accompanies this documentary which is on at the Serpentine from February 23rd 2008, curated by Julien. Crowning this tribute to Derek is the launch of the Film London and More4 Jarman Award, in partnership with the Serpentine Gallery and 3 Minute Wonder. This is to be an annual prize inspired by Jarman. Let's hope that it allows the emergence to take place of those film makers operating at the fringes of visual culture and who have something relevant to say.

Serpentine Gallery - Jarman Retrospective

Hello, again. Did you enjoy that second episode? Liked the music? Welcome to the second of my music primers for the series. I've got three albums for you and honourable mentions for eight songs. Lets kick off with...

VISAGE
Visage
(Polydor 1980)

Quite possibly one of my favourite electro-pop albums from this period. The single 'Fade To Grey', which ushered in the New Romantic era, is performed 'live' in the episode, at the Blitz, by original front-man Steve Strange. It sums up many of the obsessions of the early New Romantic sound; European backdrop (here we have lyrics in French, and also Ultravox called their album 'Vienna' and shot their video there), themes of isolation and alienation, international travel, the Cold War. All this is carried by energetic, inventive and most importantly, dance orientated, synth-pop. The band comprised members of Ultravox (Ure and Currie), ex-members of Magazine (Formula and Adamson), legendary Siouxsie guitarist John McGeogh and input from drummer Rusty Egan and Numan band members Chris Payne and Ced Sharpley. It's got a slightly erratic feel to it, a bit hand-made and rough around the edges that gives it a necessary edge, but it's full of smashing synthesiser swoops and screeches, powerful drum and bass lines (the drum crash sound from 'Fade To Grey' is nicked from Bowie's 'Low' album) and nifty guitar breaks. There are also a number of tracks that certainly could be described as proto-ambient too, particularly 'The Steps', and atmosphere is powerfully evoked on 'Mind Of A Toy' and 'Malpasso Man' (an electro homage to Morricone). What you get is a 'manifesto' for future pop on one album (much like The Human League's 'Dare' album) and tracks such as 'Visa-Age' have influenced recent bands such as Ladytron. Tragic Bowie casualties they may be but this is a wonderful slice of pure electronic dance-pop that has rarely been equaled. Essential.

ORCHESTRAL MANOEUVRES IN THE DARK
Architecture & Morality
(Virgin/Din-Disc 1981)

Their master-work is the last output from the classic OMD line-up. An amazing album, again tapping into the 'Eurocentrism' of music in the early 1980s but also continuing with some of their own obsessions; the industrial landscape and the legacies of the atomic age. Full of very memorable songs with hooky melodies and grandstanding choruses, it's a mix of highly experimental, almost psychedelic sounds, atmospheric synthetics and bold production. 'New Stone Age',which opens the album, is sonically challenging and pretty atypical but does hint at the frankly very strange noises of the follow up to this, 'Dazzle Ships' and is discordant, exciting and surprising. Much of the album is then dreamy synth-pop, typically 'Souvenir' which plays as Alex and Daniel share a dance at Blitz, or gorgeously atmospheric stuff like 'Sealand' or 'Georgia', with its squalling radio samples and majestic melodies. It's a tad sentimental and often sounds more prog-rock than synth-pop but it's coherent, superbly produced, full of ideas of what pop could do at the time. Essential.

HEAVEN 17
Penthouse And Pavement
(Virgin 1981)

A sign of many things to come in pop music in the 1980s. Rather than go for the often detached and cold 'European' feel of other bands, former Human League-ers Ian Craig Marsh and Martyn Ware set out an alternative manifesto that involves singer Glen Gregory and the huge influence of R&B and funk. Hence, you get many songs pointing the finger at Thatcherite politics, the Cold War, extremism and US foreign policy whilst also enticing you to shake your booty. This political funk is probably best encapsulated by the quite superb and very left-wing '(We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang' which should have been a monster hit but was scuppered by a BBC ban, I believe. 'Groove Thang' plays over the hilarious lift sequence where Alex catches Daniel bonking a woman, who I assume, is his secretary. The album is full of funky pop hooks and grooves, signaling the more soulful direction that many so-called New Romantic bands would go in, especially Spandau Ballet. Whilst the music is pure dance-pop the lyrics and themes are still very political and the album can be best described as a pot shot at Thatcherite Yuppies and globalisation which is split over two distinct sides 'pavement' or 'penthouse'. The stand out tracks for me are 'Groove Thang', 'Let's All Make A Bomb' and 'The Height Of The Fighting'.

HONOURABLE MENTIONS

Tenpole Tudor - 'Swords Of a 1000 Men': Plays whilst Gene and Alex are in the Quattro and head for the pile of cardboard boxes.('Eddie, Old Bob, Dick And Gary' album (Stiff 1981)

Imagination - 'Body Talk': Can be heard during Alex and Gene's first meeting with Daniel Moore. (1981)

The Flying Lizards- 'Money': Seminal slice of left-field pop that plays whilst Alex and Daniel go for a spin in the DeLorean. (Virgin 1979)

The Pop Group - 'We Are All Prostitutes': Fine post-punk agit-prop that plays after Alex reads the lyrics out during her interrogation and Gene claims Barry Manilow covered it. (Rough Trade 1980)

Dexys Midnight Runners - 'Geno': Kevin Rowland's finest hour is used twice; once in the snooker hall and during the Met's mooning to Alex at the end of the episode. ('Searching For The Young Soul Rebels' album, EMI 1980)
Dexys Midnight Runners - 'Show Me': Opens the street party sequence.(1981)

Jon & Vangelis - 'I Hear You Now': Fabulous synth pop used during Gene and Alex's drunken conversation in Luigi's. (From the 'Short Stories' album 1980)

DISHONOURABLE MENTION

Chas 'N' Dave - 'Gertcha': Used at the street party and gets away with it because we see Gene trying to cop a feel of the blonde during the conga.

Episode One review
Episode Two review

BBC1 - 14th February 2008 - 9.00pm

"Welcome to Blitz"
"Thanks, George"

Ah, Blitz. Steve Strange. Ah, bless.

And with one hefty stroke, all lingering doubts have now evaporated about 'Ashes'. Last week, I wasn't sure about the 'Miami Vice' pastiche and the slapstick moments and felt it didn't quite get the tone right. This week, I'm now pretty sure that whilst they are going for low comedy, and that isn't to its detriment at all because this episode was extremely funny, there is also some very, very clever stuff being layered in here that gives the story a darker edge.

In the second episode we finally get into the stride of this series and Keeley Hawes steps up to the mark and gives a confident and memorable performance. Yes, Alex is supposed to be irritating with her knowingness of her situation but this arrogance is starting to get undercut by her real doubts about her sanity, her judgement and her skills. Hawes gamely juggles all of this meta-textuality confusion for the character ( 'Morning, imaginary constructs'), the love-hate relationship with her mother, the nightmares and the pithy one-liners with great skill here and is definitely becoming more appealing in the role. Her interaction with "Gene" is much more assured in this episode and hints at a developing 'will they - won't they' frisson. And of course, Glenister is superb as Gene and is less of a caricature and more like his old self here, completely epitomised in the snooker hall sequence with its riff on 'The Long Good Friday'.

Many viewers are still complaining that there are a lot of inaccuracies if the year is 1981 (the Delorean, PacMan mugs, Presto shopping bags etc). I think we should assume that this is a version of 1981 in Alex's head. This series is not about time travel, we must be clear from the outset, and is about the state of someone's subconscious either in a coma or close to death. As I argued previously, our memories of a period will not match exactly what we originally experienced of 1981. Alex's world is a folk memory construct that then allows for all the idiosyncracies, the joyful surrealism and the seediness of an era that signaled a complete sea-change in British life. So, I suggest you all roll with the punches and just enjoy the show.

There is so much to like about this episode, from the in-joke about Gene driving through a load of cardboard boxes (or not), the bum-stamping initiation ceremony in the Met that leads to the 'right on' discussion with Alex's mother, the deep joy of the scene at Blitz with the real Steve Strange on stage performing 'Fade To Grey' and Chris being revealed as a New Romantic, the snooker interrogation scene that gives a new meaning to the saying 'potting the ball', the sad irony of the Charles and Di wedding, the terrifying notion that Alex put the idea of becoming a suicide bomber into a young man's head, the 'Escape To Victory' joke and an exploding dog. What is not to like?

Ashley Pharoah's script was layered, packed with smart lines, great character moments and introduced what I would hope is a developing storyline - Alex's relationship with her mother and how she might prevent her death as a way of getting back to the present (e.g regaining consciousness). I think that's a novel twist on some of the ideas that were briefly touched upon in the parent series 'Life On Mars' but that here suggests it is to be a deeper part of the narrative. Amelia Bullimore was excellent as the straight laced Caroline Price and I hope we see more of her. Granted, the plot isn't exactly complex again, but it certainly had a bit more meat on its bones that the first episode. Considering it commented on the Docklands development disenfranchising the local populace, cocked a snook at the Thatcherite vision of England as Arcadia, got a bit of police procedural in there and an examination of terrorism, doing it with tons of drama and wit, then that's a pretty packed bit of writing.

Add to this Jonny Campbell's dream-like direction, a superb selection of songs on the soundtrack meshing with very appropriate incidental music and a wonderfully arch opening title sequence and I do believe we have a winner. Get your theories at the ready, readers, as I do believe you're going to need them. Class this as 'appointment to view'.

Episode One review

BBC3/BBCHD - 13th February 2008 - 10.00pm

And riding over the hill, like the much needed cavalry, is Martha Jones! Freema Agyeman, bless you.

She walks in and dominates the episode, practically stealing it from the rest of the cast. And she's given very good, logical character progression for Martha. We get a super-confident, intelligent woman at the top of her game and if the idea was to show up how the rest of Team Torchwood spend an awful amount of time staring at their navels and wringing their hands then this paid off very well indeed. Martha simply raised the game.

I was probably expecting a lot more from J.C Wilsher's script, as Wilsher's 'Between The Lines' is so well written, but this was solid story telling, tightly plotted, with a fun riff on things Bondian (the contact lens cameras), an homage to 'Alien' (the bursting stomach) and by extension to 'The Ark In Space' and full of witty and natural dialogue and characterisation. You see, this is how it should work, and this felt like the same show but raised to a level it should be attaining each week. Blimey, Team Torchwood even looked like they knew what they were doing here and they were actually enjoying themselves for once!

Some lovely, witty scenes are littered throughout a fairly average story. Martha's interaction with each of the team, the mentions of Christopher Isherwood, the red UNIT cap gags ("So, Jack asked me if I could get you a UNIT cap to wear..." - "Did he? Well, red is my color"), subtle mentions of the parent series ("Lets say we were under the same doctor" and a dig at Saxon "I had a bad experience with a politician recently, I tend not to listen to them") and Ianto's sex life with Jack ("Innovative. Bordering on the avant-garde") are all flowing from that appearance of a familar face and its connection to 'Doctor Who'. There seemed to be a real sense of joy.

That said, a couple of niggles to observe. The rather obvious 'show a gun in the first act and you'll end up using it in the final act' cliche was really unnecessary. You knew as soon as Martha picked up the alien device and Owen told her he hadn't worked out how it worked that it would eventually get them out of a predicament. And later, in the hospital where the female victim dies and releases the parasites, the lack of intervention by two fully qualified doctors, in the same room, to save a woman going into arrest was just very poor. The denoument was also too similar to 'Meat' and it seems 'Torchwood' has now cornered the market in mercy killing of exploited aliens. Oh, and director Ashley Way should ditch those awful animated dissolves he's used here to bridge scenes. His direction is good enough not to require these comic book flourishes.

And the other guest star, Alan Dale, acquitted himself well as the nasty Professor Copley and his exploitation of not only the alien creatures but also of the human test subjects and the morality of clinical trials is a subject straight out of the headlines. Copley got his deserved comeuppance unlike many of the money grabbing pharmaceutical companies you could point to.

The conclusion, and look away now if you haven't seen this one....where Owen is shot dead, apparently, was certainly a twist I wasn't expecting. But, there's a big clue with next week's episode title - 'Dead Man Walking' and I have a feeling he'll be resurrected in some fashion. I wonder if he'll remember that he did in fact promise Tosh a date. Poor old Tosh. Fancy having your date get shot and then resurrected! But the interplay between both characters was worth it.

So, Martha's three episode run with 'Torchwood' begins by lifting the series out of an uneven run and I would certainly suggest that Wilsher be allowed further involvement in the series as the characterisation in this script alone shows an immediate understanding of the strengths of the format. I'm actually looking forward to the next episode...

BBC2/BBCHD - 13th February 2007 - 9.00pm

"I don't look like a rodent, do I?"

Ok, let's get the comparisons out of the way...yes, it rips off the 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' episode 'Conundrum' and 'Superstar' from 'Buffy'. Anyone with a mere passing interest in cult telly will have spotted that.

And it doesn't matter because the same ideas get recycled through most SF and fantasy shows at some point and what is important is that if 'Torchwood' is going to use these ideas that it does it with a bit of cleverness and conviction. In 'Adam, this is hampered by uneven performances and gimmicky direction. Which is a shame as this idea, of an impostor hiding in plain sight as a member of the team and readjusting all their memories in order to survive, is pretty robust. In this instance, though, Cath Tregenna's script only manages to develop this in an ellipitical half-hearted fashion. To ensure that Adam seemingly fits into the format the producers could have had actor Bryan Dick do the voice-over and have put the actor's name in the opening credits alongside the rest just for starters in their attempt to catch the viewers off guard.

There are a couple of problems here and some of them are inevitable as a result of the episode's format and storyline. As soon as we're in on the concept that Adam is an alien memory thief then it is a very safe bet to assume that the second act of the episode will be about how the whole thing is resolved and 'Torchwood' status quo is again achieved. So, whilst the dramatic potential of Tosh becoming a sexy, cynical Owen, Owen turning into a geek, Jack exposing his childhood and Ianto becoming a mass murderer is exciting we are nevertheless just simply given one big prick tease of an episode. Yes, we get revelations about each of the character's psychological hang-ups (Tosh is lonely, Owen has parental issues, Gwen is in love with Jack etc)but the rest of the interior journeys they all go on are created and manipulated by Adam and the impression here is that much of them are forced upon the victim rather than being lodged in their subconscious. So, out come the ubiquitous amnesia pills and everyone can forget their brief alternate lives. But the writer leaves a flaw in the mix - no one asks Rhys to swallow the pill. Rhys will no doubt be freaked out by Gwen's sudden return to her usual state of being Welsh harridan of the week and he will also be asking what happened to their new team member Adam. Did the writer simply forget about Rhys?

Despite the fact that the amnesia pills eventually appear, the best scenes are certainly Ianto's 'retconning' as a murderer and Tosh's surge of sexual confidence. Both actors are very good here and the episode gives Gareth David-Lloyd a chance to shine. But, sadly, it's a cul-de-sac of character development in the end and I suspect that very little of it will be picked up by other writers in later episodes. John Barrowman swings between overplaying and phoning in a performance and unless there is some further significance in the traumas of Jack's childhood, then again the scenes on the Boeshane Peninsula are mere titillation for 'Doctor Who' fans. I suspect Captain John's revelation of Gray's existence will pay dividends in the finale. The worst casualty here is Bryan Dick. His scenery chewing must have left Upper Boat with a massive repair bill to the Hub. His playing needed to be far subtler than this and at one point I thought he was going to twirl an imaginary moustache. Slice of ham, anyone? And it isn't at all clear what exactly he does with Jack's memories at the end. By the conclusion, I was feeling as confused as John Barrowman with the box of sand throwing up all sorts of questions about the validity of Adam's manipulated memories.

What saves the episode is the scene where Jack gets his team to slough off their new skins and put back on their old clothes. Despite the round table revelations, it is at last a hint that somehow we might finally get to like some of these people and that Jack does actually care about each of them. It had the right tone for once and wasn't overplayed by any of the leads and clearly stated that, yes, warts and all, these guys are 'Torchwood' and you either love 'em or hate 'em.

And what was with the twitchy cameras? Pointless bits of focus pulling cropped up with abandon throughout this. It's a drama not a bloody documentary. In something like 'Battlestar Galactica' it's acceptable because for the exterior sequences the impression is that there is a documentary film maker capturing all the space battles and losing focus and whip pans are all part of the language of reportage. 'Torchwood' isn't reportage. This hints at a director who isn't confident about the material and has taken to fiddling with it visually in order to make it interesting. In the end it adds a distracting surface to the episode.

It's better than last week's episode by a degree. But the tone is still ping-ponging all over the place, performances seem to crash and burn on a regular basis and writers keep bunging in long scenes of exposition and leave sub-plots hanging in the air. Someone needs to sort it out...


Previous episode reviews:

Meat
To The Last Man
Sleeper
Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang

In celebration of the return of the Gene Genie to our telly boxes I intend to provide a quick little music primer for those of you watching the series and wanting to know where some of the tracks came from. We start this week with four albums and a couple of honourable mentions:

ULTRAVOX
Vienna
(Chrysalis 1980)

A new line up for a new album in 1980. After the departure of John Foxx, band members Billy Currie, Chris Cross and Warren Cann continued with the band but with Midge Ure installed as lead vocalist. 'Vienna' moves away from the clinical synthetics of the Foxx albums and becomes a merging of pioneering electronics and rock. Currie's electronic treatments (the violins and guitars are particularly mutated and to the fore) echo much of his participation in Gary Numan's touring band and provide that signature sound of his - screeching synths sounding like howling guitars - whilst Ure infuses some life into the vocals and adds his own pop sensibilities to the mix. Produced by Conny Plank, the influences from bands such as Neu! and Kraftwerk permeate the sound. The single 'Vienna', as heard in the first episode of 'Ashes To Ashes'. is one of the highlights of this album and cemented their popularity and is used in the episode for the sequence where Alex wakes up in 1981 and wanders through the party on the boat and it was also used extensively on the 40 second trailer for the series. Other stand out tracks are 'Sleepwalk', 'Mr. X' (with some nightmarish vocals from Warren Cann and a nod to John Foxx himself) and 'Waiting' with its squal of guitars and synths. Essential.

DURAN DURAN
Duran Duran
(EMI Tritec 1981)

'Careless Memories' is used briefly to introduce the arrival of Gene in the Quattro and a lengthier section was played over Chris and Shaz getting caught by the villains on the stake out. The track was one of the singles from Duran Duran's first album, now rather neglected as a song in the set-list on their tours (they were excellent live, by the way) but, none the less, a classic slice of the Birmingham band's 'Second British Invasion' output. It's also a great little album with some fine songs beyond the obvious singles with the standouts being 'Night Boat', 'To The Shore' and 'Friends Of Mine' which indicate a very mature songwriting team. Produced by Colin Thurston, it includes synth, sci-fi, pop-rock anthems such as 'Planet Earth', 'Anyone Out There' and the cheeky 'Girls On Film'. They were, at the time, all New Romantic, frilly shirts, bouffant hairdos and make up and the sound is clearly influenced by the art-pop of Blondie, Bowie and Roxy Music. This still sounds fresh and uplifting and one of my favourite tracks is the less obvious instrumental 'Tel Aviv' which is a stunning mix of strident strings and swirling synthesisers that encapsulates and signifies their later obsessions with 'travelogue pop' that would result in their acclaimed videos for the massive follow up album 'Rio'.

DAVID BOWIE
'Scary Monsters...And Super Creeps'
(RCA 1980)

Quite simply...the pinnacle of Bowie's achievements to that point in his career. Every subsequent Bowie album has had to measure up to this and he's probably very tired of hack journalists repeating the 'best album since 'Scary Monsters' line ever since. It is a superb piece of work and the 'Ashes To Ashes' single from it is obviously at the centre of the series conception. Alex and the gunman Layton both quote the chorus/chant of the song...'I'm happy, hope you're happy too' and a portion of the song is played over Alex's nightmare which ends with the discovery of the clown in the wardrobe. The iconic pierrot clown figure, as originally played by Bowie in David Mallet's stunning promotional video, appears throughout the series, signifying a 'death' figure. The album, which also contains the singles 'Fashion' and 'Scary Monsters', is a blistering assault of densely layered, funk-rock disco full of dark lyrics, harsh observations and a primal release of built up angst. He hurls various brickbats at the inequalities of the world, acknowledges the difficulty of being an ageing 'pop star' and works out the remaining psychoses of his recuperation from the cocaine binges of the mid-70s. It's aggressive, troubling and strange, with layers of guitar, synths, instrumental and vocal treatments, and yet manages to straddle both rock and pop in a very inventive way. Stand out tracks include, 'Teenage Wildlife', where he basically tells the likes of Numan, Strange and the rest of the New Romantic bandwagon to sod off, the bittersweet 'Because You're Young' and the political 'Scream Like A Baby'. It signaled the end of his relationship with RCA, the end of a long period of experimentation with sounds and compositional forms and gave us a hint of the commercial thrust of his follow up albums and career. Gloriously and uniquely David Bowie. Really, if you haven't got this in your collection by now then you shouldn't consider yourself alive!

TUBEWAY ARMY
'Replicas'
(Beggars Banquet 1979)

Ah....the pretender to the throne. A huge 'Bowie casualty', as he and many, many others would be labeled in the 1980s, beginning as Tubeway Army and later becoming a solo artist, Numan took the innovative sonic experiments of Bowie's Berlin albums, 'Low' and '"Heroes"', pinched a great deal of the synth art-rock stance from Ultravox's 'Systems Of Romance' and the robotic rhythms of Kraftwerk's 'Man Machine' and melded them into this minimal, post-punk, dark zone of sci-fi lullabies. Like Foxx, he grabbed onto the themes of isolation and alienation, took cues from Burroughs, Dick and Ballard and then swathed them in a rather inviting synthesiser rock sound. The iconic status of 'Are Friends Electric?' is not in dispute and plays over the scene where Alex searches in the equipment room for radios. It's ironic that Chris describes the room as 'Tomorrow's World' as that is pretty much how Numan's music was often seen at the time. The music of the future. Numan isn't one of the New Romantics at this stage as he fits more into the post-punk era where experimental sounds and the merging of disco and punk took place. Stand out tracks include the surreal futurism of 'Down In The Park' and 'Praying To The Aliens'. A great album that hints at the astute refinements to come in the later 'Pleasure Principle' and 'Telekon' albums.

HONOURABLE MENTIONS:

The Passions - 'I'm In Love With A German Film Star': This evocative song plays over the scene where Alex arrives at the wine bar for 'lunch'. Released as a single in 1981.

The Stranglers - 'No More Heroes': Plays over the speedboat entrapment of Layton. From the 1977 album of the same name.

The Clash - 'I Fought The Law': Can be heard as Alex and Gene drive towards the docks. From the 1979 US issue of 'The Clash' album.

Roxy Music - 'Same Old Scene': This plays as Alex resignedly sits at the bar and Gene pours her a drink. From the 1980 'Flesh + Blood' album.

"Female superiors shouldn't look shaggable...they should look like a cross between Betty Turpin and the HMS Ark Royal"

It's a difficult one. 'Life On Mars' is a very hard act to follow and the makers, in deciding to provide us with a sequel, could quite easily have just dished up more of the same. And trying to do that whilst remaining loyal to nitpicking fans who pull apart everything from incorrect number plates and anachronistic music is also a tall order.

The first episode of the sequel - 'Ashes To Ashes' - is thoroughly entertaining on its own terms and that is the key statement because the air will be filled with the gnashing and wailing of 'Mars' fans who will simply hate this series with every fibre of their collective beings. I think that the bridging between the two shows is planted as an olive branch to those fans but it doesn't mean the show has to conform itself to the same parametres. There are issues with how incoming character Alex Drake could possibly imagine Gene Hunt and his cohorts in such detail simply from reading and listening to Sam Tyler's reports and it is sad to learn that Sam has apparently died in a bank raid (but intriguingly they never found his body) as both of these observations simultaneously open up and close down the potential for a darker narrative development. But never mind that, Drake has her own demons to wrestle with - namely a vengeful looking pierrot clown that's leapt out of the 'Ashes To Ashes' video, a raddled drug dealer who seems to be her link between 1981 and 2008, visions of her daughter chatting to Zippy and George and the stark chequer board lighting of the Met's offices, Gene's choice of footware and Ray's bubble perm. That's enough for us to be getting on with I think.

The 2008 sequences, evoking an inverted silver metropolis of weird angles and surfaces, is suitably now and the 1981 sequences are drenched in sunlight, sans the Dome developments, and humourously riff on such 80s source material as 'Miami Vice'. Nitpickers are already glibly having a go at the fact that this isn't accurate enough for 1981 (said number plates are an issue apparently) but who gives a sod about that. It's '1981' in Alex's head as she remembers it and that should allow for all sorts of shifts in her '1981' reality because you can bet your ass that anyone entering that reality wouldn't accurately know precisely which records were in the chart of that time or what number plates looked like. Listen, they got 'Vienna' and 'Shaddapa You Face' in context in the programme and that's good enough for me. The sequence where Alex wakes up on the boat, now in '1981', was very cleverly done. As 'Vienna' boomed onto the soundtrack, director Jonny Campbell's homework pays off and Alex's bewildered wandering through the crowd on the boat is pretty much shot for shot the same as the party scene in the 'Vienna' pop video. Hey, it's my era. And I now demand further homages to those wonderful 80s pop videos.

My only reticence in giving this first episode a whopping approval rating is that Keeley Hawes is trying a little bit too hard as the feisty foil to Phil Glenister's Gene. She overplayed it slightly for me and that's a symptom of ensuring that she stands in great contrast to the cultural edifice that is Gene Hunt. However, she's very good at getting the humanism behind the bolshie exterior and is right on the nail in communicating her loss and dislocation in this alien version of '1981'. It's the confrontations with Gene that just need a bit more control and with that she'll pretty much get the tone perfect. I have also been assured that her insistence on wearing a tiny red leather skirt and stockings is a highlight of the episode for those of a heterosexual male persuasion.

Gene's arrival is fairly late into the proceedings and is handled beautifully, all swirling dust from a skidding car, crocodile shoes, big hero shot and pithy one liners. The Manc Lion is back. Some have complained that Gene has been reduced to a comedy caricature in this but I would say they're being ungenerous in expecting the first episode to give you a complete character arc. We know his marriage has ended and he's dealing with 'Southern ponces' in London and he's aware of what is happening in policing enough to be in fear of his job (rather like Jack Regan's experience in the conclusion to 'The Sweeney'). Isn't that also enough to be getting on with? There are darker edges to the character here that no doubt will develop as we go along.

If Keeley Hawes' performance is a barometer of the tone of the episode then it's safe to say that this spiraled from edgy, surreal psycho-drama to outright slapstick within the span of 40 minutes. The surreal visions of Zippy and George and the Bowie clown were replaced by a rather silly bit of Keystone Kops meets 'Miami Vice' in the conclusion where we get Chris dancing madly to dodge machine gun fire, a commandeered speed boat crashing onto the scene to the sound of The Stranglers when perhaps Harold Faltermeyer or even the theme from The A Team might have been more appropriate (the Faltermeyer would probably not please the anally retentive fans as it's from 1984). It is comic excess that off balances the grittier tone but it's an appropriately depressing denoument for Alex because the arrest of the man she thought would sort out her vision of '1981' has no effect on her predicament. She realises that her knowledge of Sam Tyler's own 1973 psychosis does not give her an advantage after all.

Despite the uneven tone, this has a great deal of potential and is highly entertaining with some very surreal and dark moments lightened by Gene's non PC wisecracks. Add in the nostalgia factor of wine bars, yuppies, cars and, in particular, a clever use of pop music to an interesting story arc and the series should be able to step out of the shadow of its much loved parent. It will be interesting to see how they develop Alex's psychosis and I'm sure that the creators will be careful simply not to replicate the achievements of 'Life On Mars'. I suspect they have a different game plan in store for Alex and we've only just seen the first glimmerings of that. As long as 'Ashes To Ashes" keeps surprising me then I will feel that creators Matthew Graham and Ashley Pharoah were justified in making a sequel to their original series.