Radio Times yesterday published its preview of the Doctor Who Christmas Special, 'The Next Doctor' complete with a gorgeous fold open cover of the two Davids, Tennant and Morrissey, Dervla Kirwan as the villainous Miss. Hartigan and a bunch of Cybermen, complete with new Cyberleader design. Here's the cover and some quick scans of the inside article.

Click on them to make 'em bigger. There are SPOILERS in the article.

I had my weekend planned. I went to the Lass O'Gowrie in Manchester to meet up with fellow ming-mongs to chew the fat over life, the universe and everything. Lovely time and much drink and laughs later I had dinner and settled down to a night in front of the box. I had also planned to do a double review of the last two episodes of Merlin. Unfortunately, some bastard little germs got the better of me and in a Garbo-esque 'I vant to be alone' mood I swanned off to bed after watching an episode of Coronation Street from 1984 in a flu-like haze.

Fortunately, I had this little tome to buck me up.It truly is a book at bedtime and a tonic for those trying to bear up whilst feeling under the weather. O'Grady has been a favourite of mine ever since I first clapped eyes on that monument to all drag characters, Lily Savage, back on the gay scene in the early 1990s. The clever thing about this book is that it isn't a kiss and tell showbiz document and is actually a supremely funny account of his childhood and teenage years. I also found it extremely moving too as the book ends on a cliffhanger. A girlfriend rings him up and announces she's having his baby on the day his father dies in hospital and his mother recovers from a near fatal heart attack. I absolutely empathise with his guilt, even though I'm not Catholic, over his father's death and his inability to deal with the event as a 19 year old boy. The tone of regret he feels for his selfishness towards his parents at the end of the book is heartfelt and one that I'm sure quite a few of us former, selfish teenagers can recognise after we'd led our long-suffering parents a merry dance.

'Just don't let me catch you wearing my clothes. Gay? Gay, me arse.'

The delight of this book is how he evokes family life in Birkenhead through some exceptional observations and recall of memory. The detail is remarkable - particularly in how he describes his array of aunts and cousins, his father and mother and the house and place of his birth. His mother leaps off the page, is a fully formed flesh and blood recollection and as Paul trails through his school days and wilder teenage years, leaving devastation in his wake, the narrative always circles back to his mother and what her response will be to his latest failure or triumph. From the amusing anecdotes about her National Health teeth, to the constant, and spectacular rows with the next door neighbour Rose Long and the ongoing class warfare with Eileen Henshaw at the local shop, his mum Molly always seems to get the last laugh. When he finally comes out to his mum after agonising about his sexuality, all she can say is, 'Just don't let me catch you wearing my clothes. Gay? Gay, me arse.'

I can totally understand his deification of his Aunty Chrissie because I had aunts of a similar ilk. Very glamourous, quick witted and intelligent women who could see through men and knew exactly how to deal with them. Chrissie comes out with some fabulous one liners and it's clear that the first glimmer of Lily's origins lie in Chrissie's attitude to the world, her no-nonsense approach and humour. She also shared a job that my own father had - a clippie on the buses. His description of her beauty regime is wonderfully observed and he describes how she multitasks putting on her war paint with deciding which horse to put a bet on whilst smoking like a chimney. Her methods of dealing with bus passengers caused one woman to remark of her, 'She's got a mouth like a bee's arse.'

Paul obviously had a short attention span as a child and he often describes how bored he got with school and the various jobs he had as a teenager that he could never hold down. His parents' hopes for an Oxford educated son are dashed when he fails the 11+ and ends up in a school not of their or his choosing. For a short period he even goes in for a spot of cat burglary much to the shame of his parents. There are accounts of the rather evil Brother's Of St. Anselms dishing out the leather strap for the most minor of misdemeanours. As a young fella, he gets a job at a run down hotel/restaurant in Surrey and one night 'borrows' a bottle from the bar and then is harshly treated by the management who take him to court for stealing. He come across as impulsive and naive as a child and this carries through to his attitude towards sexuality and his journey into adulthood. Bless him, much to the exasperation of parents, teachers and bosses alike he does try very hard to do his best. But there always seems to be something that eventually goes wrong, sometimes because he gets bored and sometimes just down to sheer bad luck. There's certainly a tension between his good fortune and what he expects he'll get as payback to take it all away.

His picture of the gay vice dens of the city is beautifully realised...

The really fascinating part of the book is when he finally meets Tony. Tony is the gay man that most of us of Paul's and my own generations would have killed to have around in our formative years. He's the guide to the twilight world of the homosexual that those of us of a certain age and inclination were crying out for in the early 1970s. Paul's adventures in the gay underground of Liverpool's nightclubs and bars are an eye opener on what the gay scene was like before the acceptance and commercialisation of the late 1980s and early 1990s. His picture of the gay vice dens of the city is beautifully realised, especially the activities with the sailors visiting the city when it was still a thriving port. It's a vanished history captured in lurid detail and the raucous stories of his employment in the Bear's Paw as Shanghai Lil, his encounters with a vast array of gay men, known and unknown, are to be relished.

The prose is full of witty descriptions and asides, flows very naturally and the odyssey of his youth is gripping, hilarious and sad. He's a remarkably good writer, superb at capturing the times and places and much of his working class upbringing and his experiences as a gay man certainly chimes with mine. It demonstrates that Paul is a complex, sometimes very cynical, always funny and warm individual. A real fighter in many respects in the way that he deals with many of the downsides of actually living your life. I suspect he's extremely grateful for what he has achieved and I bet his parents would be equally mortified and delighted in the way the little bugger turned out in the end. However, c'mon Paul, you've got to give us the second volume and pick the story up about your daughter, how Lily came into being and your relationship with Brendan Murphy because I'm damn sure it would make a very warm, humourous and heartfelt tale and you've clearly got the skill to write it. More please.

(Oh, and yes, you'll get your bloody Merlin reviews so just hang fire will ya...)

At My Mother's Knee...And Other Low Joints (Random House - EAN: 9780593059258 Hardback - Published 24th September 2008)

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BBCHD - 25th November 2008 - 9.00pm

Oh, look. They've got themselves a nice house to play happy families in. That's what I like to see, a healthy property market despite the virus credit crunch. And they go shopping! How lovely. There's always a silver lining to every apocalyptic cloud, isn't there. It it was me, I'd head straight for Scotland - the water and air would be clean and there'd be nobody around to worry about.

Anyway, if you're really that bothered about comparing the old with the new, this is essentially a revised version of 1975's Genesis episode from Series One. The whole scenario with Bob, the warehouse man, and Sarah, the thin, posh girl is a duplication of the Vic and Ann Tranter storyline from that episode. That had the utterly brilliant Myra Frances as Ann, a heartless bitch more interested in having a fur coat than helping poor old Vic with his broken leg. She was magnificent. It's a very powerful story and the remade version is nearly as good, despite Robyn Addison being somewhat weak in the role of Sarah. Still, she got the woman's naivety to a tee.

...you've got a series of very volatile scenes in which no one is entirely safe

The standout performances are from Paterson Joseph as Greg, who is starting to peel away the layers to the character and reveal how morally ambiguous he might be in a tense situation; Max Beesley as the manipulative Tom, sizing up all of the regular characters and aiming for the weakest in the group; and Julie Graham as Abby, in way over her head yet trying her best to keep the group together. Throw in Anthony Flanagan, superb as Dexter, the newly, self-appointed gang boss seizing control of the local food supply and you've got a series of very volatile scenes in which no one is entirely safe.



They other key scene is the aftermath of Al and Najid's visit to the local newsagent. Al kills the owner by accident and goes through a rites of passage that opens up the character's flaws and failings. His breakdown is very moving and demonstrates beneath the swagger and bluster he's rather vulnerable. I appreciate that development after last week's opening episode, where I'd quite happily have slapped him. The relationship between Al and Najid is also proving to have some legs and I'm happy to have been proved wrong on that score, especially after that excruciating football match on the motorway scene last week.

...am I living in a parallel world or did his girlfriend look like an older Billie Piper?

On the surface this is all very competent and enjoyable drama but it isn't raising my eyebrows by doing anything radical. Its attempts at realism are quite laughable - where is the power coming from for the lights in the warehouse, for example. Would a food distribution point have its own generator? It's still a bit 'home counties disaster' and the casting is horribly biased towards younger actors. Where are all the old people! The original series did at least cross the generations with its regular characters. The whingeing Sarah has abandoned Bob with his broken leg to the hideous Dexter (and am I living in a parallel world or did his girlfriend look like an older Billie Piper? I did a double take, I tell ya) and joined the merry, dysfunctional band. We'll have to wait until next week to see how she fares but the trailer is promising to reintroduce Nikki Amuka Bird as politician Samantha Willis to deal with the thorny issues of law and order.

And I see our white suited, clipboard bearing scientist overlords get their obligatory five minutes at the end when a scavenging chav breaks into their underground car park. Hmmm, I'm still not convinced that suggesting the release of the virus was a deliberate ploy by the powers that be is such a good idea. It's all a bit State Of Play and smacks of a lack of confidence in the story proper - how people would survive in a world that returns to feudalism and the use of soft technologies (e.g. negotiation, bartering, management) to kick start a return to some form of civilisation. If the government is all nice and cosy in a well heated, well lit bunker then what's the point? There shouldn't be a government at all.

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ABC - 20th November 2008 - 10.00pm

The series just about survived by the skin of its teeth when ABC announced last week that they were effectively canceling Pushing Daisies, Eli Stone and Dirty Sexy Money. However, Life On Mars got a second chance, with an order for four more new episodes and a new time slot where it'll be behind Lost on Wednesdays at 10.00pm. It'll be back on screen on 28th January with the already completed episodes and the four additional ones. So this is my last review for the time being...

It's a bit worrying that they've already got round to adapting the final episode of the first UK series. This means they are going to have to get serious about telling new stories. Anyway, this is the one where Sam's father, Vic, gets embroiled in a crime syndicate. In the UK he's caught up in the murder of a bookie but here it hinges on a child kidnapping. That's the only change made here. The story is exactly the same: Sam thinks he knows his father but discovers that he is the one responsible for the actual crimes; he believes if he prevents Vic from leaving he'll somehow get back to 2008; and finally those fleeting images of someone in a red dress being chased through some woods turns out to be Annie trying to arrest Vic and trying to escape from his clutches.

...an inspired and creepy cliffhanger

But, strangely, it works really well and is a thoroughly enjoyable episode. I think what makes it worth watching is the very strong performance from Jason O'Mara as Sam, this is perhaps the very best he's been in the series and I think he's nailed this version of Sam. He's supported by an equally good (and sexy) Dean Winters as Vic Tyler who succeeds in making the character an unsympathetic, yet attractive, foil to Sam. The final confrontation, a superb scene in the woods, also seems to indicate that Vic believes that the man holding a gun on him is the adult version of his four year old son - which is rather surreal and strange. The ending to the UK story simply has Vic disappearing and Sam nursing his sorrows in the pub. Here, Vic coldbloodedly shoots Sam and escapes to perhaps appear again me thinks, prompting a brief flash-forward for Sam and then a peculiar, almost psychically inspired bit of detection based on Vic's comment about crossword puzzles that leads him to a deserted building and a telephone message asking him to look in the basement. It's an inspired and creepy cliffhanger and suggests that we're going to get some more clues as to the mythology of the show. But not until January.

...they need to make her less of an ice maiden and more sympathetic to Sam's plight

The other characters don't get a huge amount to do, Ray, Chris and Gene are very much in the background whilst the bonding between Sam and Vic is gradually escalated, in quite a homoerotic way that even registers with Vic at one point, and then twisted when Sam realises how deep Vic is embroiled in the kidnapping. The homoerotic flavour to the relationship is certainly there in the way that in one scene Sam clutches his father's leather jacket and positively has an orgasm as he sniffs the other man's aroma left on the clothing. This also plays on childhood memories, hinted at in the infantile connection to toys as symbolic objects (there's a soft toy rocket that looks like a dildo that figures prominently as a symbol of male potency and as an oedipal connection between Vic and Sam) as well as reuniting Sam with his mother Rose who seems to be in denial about Vic's real profession. In fact, Rose is symbolically paired, through the wearing of a red dress, with Annie and they are both victims of Vic's misogynistic attitudes. I'm still in two minds about Gretchen Mol as Annie. There continues to be a real lack of warmth in the character and they need to make her less of an ice maiden and more sympathetic to Sam's plight. The ending does indicate this is starting to happen as she comforts him in hospital but as we're now seven episodes in it does seem to be a very slow thaw that's taking place.

To be honest with you, and this might be provocative of me, this show could get by without the Gene Hunt character. Harvey is getting less and less to work with in order to make Gene the real foil for Sam and has been in the background in the last few episodes. If there is one thing they haven't succeeded in doing yet then it's making Gene much more abrasive, much more a representation of the policing methods that Sam would abhor. It's an essential ingredient that shapes Gene as the last sheriff in a lawless town. We're not seeing that very much in this version. However, as a mid-season finale this was a pretty good distillation of what makes this version such an enjoyable experience and left me wanting more, having enjoyed seeing Jason O'Mara quietly turn the episode to his advantage. Roll on January!

ABC Life On Mars site

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Part 1 / BBC1 - 24th November 2008 - 4.35pm
Part 2 / CBBC - 24th November 2008 - 5.15pm



Well, you would. Wouldn't you? You'd be tempted just like Sarah. To step back into the past to grab back a piece of your childhood or, as in Sarah's case, to find out if you had good or bad parents. The theme of parenthood and childhood has been particularly strong throughout this year's stories. From Maria and her dad leaving for Washington to Clyde dealing with his errant father, the bonds between adult and child have been explored in some depth. Now it's Sarah's turn, in perhaps one of the strongest, if not the strongest, scripts of the series to date. Gareth Roberts is obviously deeply attached to Sarah and it shows in his script in the way he carefully handles the still sensitive trauma of Sarah's dead parents and slowly unravels the mystery surrounding their fate. He does it without cheapening the idea and provides terrific emotional development for the character that the parent series rarely bothered about.

That chap with no eyes, bad teeth and a big hood and a reputation for laughing maniacally.

When a time fissure opens and disgorges a child from 1951 and from the village of Foxgrove, Sarah's tempted to go back and see just what Barbara and Eddie Smith were really like. And I suppose, like any of us presented with such an enticement, she goes through denial, excitement and then the suspicion that it's all a trap. And like all good scripts. the audience is already ahead of her and knows that this is a return match with the Trickster. That chap with no eyes, bad teeth and a big hood and a reputation for laughing maniacally. And much as the lady doth protest, 'I'm strong enough to say no', immediately we see the camera pan across a vivid pink 1950s style outfit, those dissolves of her zhushing her hair and putting on her slap, we know she's been reeled in. She's going back. Yeah, it's just like the classic Carole King song, 'Goin' Back' - full of warmth, anticipation, fear and a sense that she's attempting to reconcile thinking young and growing older and realising perhaps it isn't such a sin to do so. It's a lovely sequence, blessed with a fantastic score from Sam Watts and a Lis Sladen performance that might leave you with a lump in your throat as she sneaks out of the house in childlike eagerness for a date with destiny. What's the point in being grown up, if you can't be childish sometimes?

Tommy Knight's performance, especially his chemistry with Lis, is great too and I love their mutual mockery over the pink outfit she wears to go back in time. Their discussion on the ramifications of meddling with your own past gives a little nod to the Blinovitch Limitation Effect as well as Luke recognising his own normalcy in the excitement of the opportunity. Ever mindful, Sarah also understands that if it is a trap she'll have a chance to find out whilst giving herself an excuse to be self-indulgent. Again, more lovely character moments powering the script along. Fortunately, Roberts knows which side his bread is buttered with the Sarah and Luke relationship and doesn't leave Luke separated from Sarah, depositing him back in 1951 with her when the fissure collapses.

Roberts' script is chock full of these abandonment issues and he recognises that without our even being aware, they can wreak havoc with social and family life.

Whilst Sarah and Luke explore Foxgrove in warm sepia tints and as a land of milk and honey, Clyde and Rani give us a quick flashback to last year's Whatever Happened To Sarah Jane Smith to re-acquaint us with the alien puzzle box and the Graske. These aren't gratuitous references and genuinely feed in as proper elements of the plot. The period detail for Foxglove is used well with costumes and vehicles adding just the right touches to embellish Sarah's lines about the emergence of Britain from post war austerity. Then there's that great double take as Sarah hears a voice calling her and Graeme Harper crash zooms the camera onto her face as she stares directly at her mother cradling her younger self. It's at this point that we can see how cunning the Trickster's plan is as the sin of temptation really gets hold and Sarah thinks of a way to find out why her parents abandoned her in 1951. Roberts' script is chock full of these abandonment issues and he recognises that without our even being aware, they can wreak havoc with social and family life. These feelings, and especially fears of being left behind, are incredibly strong motivators both within and outside of relationships.

There's a typically humourous Luke response to guessing how many gobstoppers are in a jar and the fun continues when Sarah introduces herself as Victoria Beckham and Luke becomes David in a proper laugh out loud moment. The flipside of this is a growing tension as Luke spots the strange schoolboy, Oscar, who came through the fissure earlier and Sarah, worryingly, starts to get obsessed about Barbara and Eddie. Lis and Rosanna Lavelle as Barbara are very natural in their scenes together and Rosanna is especially good when she recounts how Eddie courted Barbara with little notes. Notes that will later be significant; much like the newspaper that Luke shows Sarah. It's then that both she and us, the audience, realise that things are going to go very wrong as she contemplates changing a fixed point in time. Blimey, she even name drops the miners of Peladon as she works herself up into a selfish, emotional outburst. It's quite powerful stuff to see Sarah throwing a wobbly like this and then gambling with the nature of time and trying to play the game of life to win her 'reward'. She's positively unhinged! Didn't seeing Sutekh's alternate 1980 teach her anything?

The best episode this year.

Meanwhle, back in the present Clyde and Rani are confronted by the creepy Oscar and the trap is finally sprung with Robert Madge as Oscar doing a nice line in Harry Potter malevolence. He changes into the pixie like Graske and gives chase, with Graeme Harper then pulling off a magnificent double whammy of a cliffhanger where Clyde and Rani are plunged into an alternate, desolate Greenford and Sarah and Luke end up beneath the ruins of Big Ben. What is it with Big Ben? It's a much abused monument these days. We're left with the Trickster ranting away in triumph as Sarah gets her reward for buggering up the timelines. There's really very little to fault this and it's played well by the ensemble cast, with Lis outstanding here, aided by a script full of emotional power and big ideas and Harper's penchant for giving us powerful visuals.The best episode this year.

Off to CBBC with you! And Part Two. Now, here's where it all starts to get rather over familiar and somewhat predictable. It's clear that the ontological paradox of Sarah meeting her long dead parents only to be the catalyst for their demise smacks rather too much of Father's Day from Doctor Who Series One. Gareth Roberts even puts a similar TARDIS/police box gag in plain sight to seal the deal so I hope he's offered 50% of his fee to Paul Cornell. Despite all the similarities to Cornell's script, it's still a highly enjoyable episode.

...a bit of a stretch of Gareth Roberts to suggest Sarah is this moaning, selfish cow who doesn't give a fig about the web of time

The big problem I have with this episode, and it's a pivotal moment in the story, is how easily Barbara and Eddie accept that this mature woman in bright pink with a young teenage boy in tow is actually their daughter, Sarah Jane. Neither Rosanna nor Christopher Pizzey, playing Eddie, totally convinced me with their otherwise fine performances and the script doesn't help either. It's a very weak scene, never mind a weak point in the web of time, that forces the characters to jump to certain conclusions, 'It's all my fault', cries Sarah Jane. Yes, love, and if you hadn't been so uncharacteristically selfish to the point of stupidity you wouldn't have to kill your own parents now, would you. It's again a bit of a stretch of Gareth Roberts to suggest Sarah is this moaning, selfish cow who doesn't give a fig about the web of time until she's devastated the Earth. But then, it's an extremely emotional situation. People do the craziest of things. And, naturally, Sarah's not going to kill her parents as, predictably, they're going to volunteer to go to their own deaths.

Despite coming across as a remake of Father's Day and potentially sullying that episode's own emotional power, I liked the scenes with Rani's mum in the slave encampment. It provides a very different aspect to the normally cheery Gita and Mina Anwar's performance is very edgy and disturbing when she explains the fate of the last humans. Clyde, like Sarah Jane back in 1951, is determined that there is another way to restore the time lines and it's a nice little parallel for the separated parties as well as an opportunity for Clyde and Rani to be ahead of the game after Gita's explanation about Sarah's parents. When Rani challenges the Graske, claiming he's just as much a slave of the Trickster as the humans are to him, we get a lovely bit of back history, complete with flashback, into how he was roped into working for the big fella with no eyes. It almost raises some sympathy for the Graske in its own way. And Rani's little kiss for Clyde as she ventures alone back into the past is a sweet coda to an intriguing scene where again the emphasis is on underlining the major theme of ordinary people selflessly saving the universe.

That group hug between parents and daughter is very moving and you've a heart of stone if you don't get just a little moist at that scene...

More laugh out loud moments in the village hall when Rani arrives, 'Yes, hello, ethnic person in the '50s' (which will satisfy or annoy certain pedants who moan on about these things endlessly) and Georgie Glen, fabulous as Mrs.King, steals the scene, as Rani departs, with her comment, 'What on earth was she wearing? Can that really be the fashion in the Punjab?' Wonderful comic timing there. And as disjointed as the reasoning may be behind Barbara's eventual realisation of who this mad Victoria Beckham really is, it doesn't detract from the properly heart-wrenching scene where Sarah's parents accept they must sacrifice themselves to save their child and correct the time line. That group hug between parents and daughter is very moving and you've a heart of stone if you don't get just a little moist at that scene. And that little moment where the screen wipes back from monochrome into warm sepia is a bit of visual icing on the cake from the always reliable Graeme Harper.



Unfortunately, the demise of the Trickster looks more like a citizen's arrest of the local drunk than the defeat of a time meddling mastermind. I was hoping for much more from the Trickster than just another man in black trounced by humans volunteering to sacrifice themselves. His brigade made Donna turn left, for heaven's sake! He can't just blow up in a puff of smoke after being shouted at. Well, never mind. The bittersweet conclusion just about makes up for it and thankfully provides some closure on Sarah's abandonment issues and a perspective for Clyde and Rani about the joys and sadness that come with a life spent defending the Earth. The note on the back of the photograph of Sarah's parents is a poignant and fitting final shot. The episode might blatantly recycle many of the tropes of the parent series when it comes to the noble art of self-sacrifice but I enjoyed it and accepted that a certain amount of rehashing of concepts were going on in the story. It's saved by its performances, some great visual flourishes - notably the high camera angles and the depiction of a devastated Earth using nothing more than extras, a quarry and some smoke effects - and carefully timed one-liners. Not as good as the first part but as a whole it is the strongest story of the series so far.

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BBC2 - 22nd November 2008 - 9.10pm

My word, this had a lot to pack in, didn't it. Not only was Philip Martin's film chock full of period cossies and gorgeous looking landscapes but it was also struggling, over 90 minutes, to fit in a whole wealth of subject matter. It explores the personal and professional lives of Albert Einstein, before becoming science icon of the 20th Century, and Arthur Eddington, a British astronomer now relegated to a mere footnote in the whole development of the general theory of relativity. Add in World War 1 with its anti-German and anti-Jew prejudices and its terrible legacy upon whole generations both in Germany and Britain, the pacifism of both Eddington and Einstein and then Eddington's expedition to prove or disprove Einstein's theory...and you've got a lot to take in. And without Eddington going to Africa in 1919, Einstein's idea that light is bent by curved space would have been left to gather dust for several more years.

Both of them share a number of deeply emotional scenes that whilst seemingly discuss one theme also have the ability to reverberate with our own knowledge of the War and its aftermath.

Peter Moffat's script crams all this in plus Eddington's repressed homosexuality and Einstein's infidelity. It's a flawed but thoroughly enjoyable film with two incredible central performances from David Tennant as Eddington and Andy Serkis as Einstein. Serkis is somewhat over ripe in his delivery of the lines, his Mittel European accent wandering off course on a few occasions but it is still a charming characterisation that manages to capture Einstein's rage against his German benefactors, his self-destructive work ethic as well as a crumpled Chaplinesque attractiveness. Tennant is really wonderful. His Eddington is full of stoic British pride but wrestles internally with his faith (he was a Quaker and therefore a conscientious objector) and his homosexuality. Both of them share a number of deeply emotional scenes that whilst seemingly discuss one theme also have the ability to reverberate with our own knowledge of the War and its aftermath.



When Einstein is recruited by the German military in Berlin he is disgusted to discover that his scientist peers have merely been spending their time developing chlorine gas. As Serkis gazes over the poisoned bodies of the pigeons used in the test, questioning what it is all for, we are reminded not only of the appalling loss of life at Ypres but also, ominously, of the gas chambers to come and ultimately the thousands that would die at Hiroshima. Likewise, there is an extremely moving sequence where Eddington misses saying farewell to his friend William Marston on the troop train and madly cycles along side the train to get a final glimpse of him but doesn't go fast enough to achieve it. This sets off all sorts of resonances with the discussions about time slowing down the faster you go and is picked up later in an emotional scene where Eddington confesses his feelings for William to his sister Winnie, clutching the pocket watch given to him by Marston. Later, the watch also records the cease of hostilities on the front. Similarly, explanations of Einstein's theories of relativity are placed within the human drama. We get that lovely scene with Einstein and his sons sailing the boat whilst neglecting his wife and the rather stock in trade use of the tablecloth, lump of bread and whirling apple to illustrate the idea that space is curved.

Sumpter gives us a man who carefully plays Einstein and then discards him once he proves to be of no use to the German war machine.

But it is the human stories that are told in parallel that are the most interesting. The First World War and all its ugliness is present and correct. Eddington defends a German family as their business is attacked by British thugs and then by taking them in is both spat on and presented with the white feather of cowardice by a baying mob. Tennant is again superb in these scenes, boiling with indignation under the surface and yet outwardly stoic in the face of such prejudice. Einstein is seen as stubborn too and refuses to follow the call to sign up to a letter of his fellow scientists who are supporting the German war machine and is gradually cut off from the university in Berlin. Serkis too shows what immense courage Einstein had in the face of fascism and there is some brilliant interplay between Serkis and an exceptional Donald Sumpter, playing Max Planck. Sumpter gives us a man who carefully plays Einstein and then discards him once he proves to be of no use to the German war machine. Apparently, both Einstein and Eddington faced imprisonment for their anti-war stance but the film doesn't even mention this.



Jim Broadbent is also excellent as Eddington's bullish opponent, Sir Oliver Lodge, at the Cambridge Observatory. There is a scene where Lodge attacks Eddington's sympathy for Einstein's theories after losing a son in the gas attack at Ypres, accusing him of not really understanding what it is to lose a loved one and for a moment you honestly wish that Eddington would respond and acknowledge that he'd already lost his love, William Marston, to the attack. It's an electric scene between the two actors. And of course, the whole notion of Einstein threatening to debunk Newtonian principles (British science) with his theories of relativity (German science) are again a further parallel in an exploration of the ethics of war.

It's compelling, emotional and revealing and looks ravishing, with Hungarian locations standing in for Berlin, as well as some beautiful, lush English landscapes, high production values and attention to detail. It's overtly popularist in the way it handles the science bits but then it's more about the faith of the two scientists and their personal struggles rather than a detailed analysis of their methods. Thankfully, you've also got Tennant and Serkis giving superb performances too. The script does try and pack in too much, with a tendency to having a rather staccato approach to connecting scenes and under-development of some of the peripheral characters (Anton Lesser, a stunningly brilliant character actor, here playing Fritz Haber, barely gets a handful of scenes). There is also slightly too much emphasis on the use of the incidental music too. But, overall it is superb, unmissable television.

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BBCHD - 23rd November 2008 - 9.00pm

Why? Why re-make a dystopian science fiction series originally transmitted in 1975 now only remembered by audiences of a certain age? Well, you can apply the same question to most re-makes, I expect. Indeed, what prompted the resurrection of a certain Time Lord four years ago. First and foremost, the original must have been good, in fact, so good that the BBC went after the rights to make it. Yes, the original 38 episodes are good. Then, the themes and issues must still be relevant. Of course, bird flu, anyone? Survivors is rightly enshrined within the British SF dystopian tradition but its themes have since been revisited by a number of films and television, such as The Last Train, 28 Days Later, even the recent Dead Set. So, the main concern is whether 'creator and writer' Adrian Hodges (I would argue that he isn't strictly the 'creator' of Survivors, because the last time I checked Terry Nation was) can recreate the characters and iconic moments of the original and make the story relevant for a modern audience.

Graham is far better here than she was in Bonekickers but that may well be down to a half decent script and direction.

He sort of succeeds. If you were paying attention to the end titles you'll have noticed that in fact the series is based on the Terry Nation book of Survivors and not the series as such. The book adapts a number of the original first series episodes and then veers off into a completely different story that isn't related to the series at all and that has the survivors of an epidemic buggering off to France. So, is Hodges just going to provide us with a version of the book? It'll be a short series then. OK, enough picking over the intentions. What we do get with this 90 minute opener is a slickly produced and directed thriller. Characters are slowly developed as the narrative weaves their destiny towards a crossing of paths in the last half hour. The main focus is on Julie Graham as Abby Grant, how she survives the virus and then goes on a quest for her son, Peter. Graham is far better here than she was in Bonekickers but that may well be down to a half decent script and direction. The discovery of her dead husband David, which follows the original series' opener, is a distinctly unsettling sequence and Graham captures well the sheer overwhelming bewilderment of one person left isolated in a suburbia that is little more than a charnel house.

Hodges has a few surprises up his sleeve; he kills off Jenny (an effortlessly good turn from Freema Agyeman), a character which lasted through all the original 38 episodes, transfering much of the character's function to a new creation, Anya Raczynski and he completely reconfigures Tom Price, a Welsh vagrant in the original, but here a devious killer on the loose from prison. Zoe Tapper puts in an equally good performance as Dr. Raczynski (rather too convenient a profession for one of the main characters to have, I'd venture) and again she underlines the traumatic hopelessness that any survivors of such an epidemic would face. Max Beesley is all oily malevolence as Price and will no doubt manipulate his fellow survivors to his own ends. The only other character to make it into the new series is Greg Preston. In the original, he was an engineer, but here he just seems to be the strong, silent type who reluctantly gets dragged in to Abby's vision of a 'new world'. Paterson Joseph, a very strong contender for the role of the 11th Doctor Who, gives us brooding intensity and dispassionate practicality. If he can capture Greg's brusqueness from the original then he'll have nailed the part.

Is Hodges going to spin the story out into some dull and predictable government conspiracy?

Where the acting and writing fell down for me was in the relationship between Al Sadiq, a bit of a thankless role for Phillip Rhys, and young Muslim Najid (Chahak Patel). I just didn't buy the set up with Al. A wealthy man about town who sticks around whilst a plague rages on his doorstep? And then strikes up a relationship with a young lad and actually only seems to care about the kind of car he drives down streets littered with decomposing bodies? I can understand it's necessary to have characters like this, who are entirely selfish, to provide a different experience of the virus that collides with the idealism of Abby. But the whole sequence of them playing football on a deserted motorway whilst a godawful pop song plays over it is a severe miscalculation and defuses all the tension of the drama to that point. I'm also not entirely sure about the series vision of the epidemic either. Deserted motorways and roads? Surely, it would be a scene of utter chaos? Traffic jams of the dead, a vista of crashed and abandoned cars and plague ridden bodies would be more likely. Instead, it felt as if someone had had a bit of tidy up and left everything looking rather spotless. But the worst aspect of this opening episode was that very silly coda with the two white suited laboratory boffins entering some underground bunker that's lit up like a Christmas tree and peopled by other boffins all peering into scientific equipment and no doubt ready to regale us with some clipboard acting. I smell a rat. Is Hodges going to spin the story out into some dull and predictable government conspiracy?

Finally, much as I appreciate the effort that director John Alexander put into this - some arresting camera angles - I did feel that this was perhaps too slick and by clearly being so of its time that the glossiness instantly puts a distance between the audience and the subject matter. A grittier approach might have properly put the wind up the average viewer and I was hoping for something more along the lines of the very stark and depressing BBC drama-documentary Smallpox 2002: Silent Weapon. Instead, I hear that Hodges wants to focus on the hope and humanity within the format of the series and doesn't want to make it too grim. Now, that is depressing. The themes of the original were never really science fiction at all and it was a very dark scenario even without today's added concerns over the environment, government and media spin. We suckle ever more at the teat of government and media, comfortably numb in our complacency and selfishness and the story should be about the lack of hope because, let's face it, 30 years after the original Survivors, we're in an even deeper mess than we predicted. Hodges has got his work cut out for him.



It's not a bad start and it's entertaining and thought provoking in its own way but it's a comfortable scare and shies away from the true horror of what a city would be like stuffed with rotting bodies, plagues of rats, and hideous diseases. Dead Set, whilst a playful satire on Big Brother and zombie flicks, was much grimmer than this, often deeply unsettling, and that endng with boffins milling about in their underground lab suggests a hope born out of science rather than genuine survival instincts which is far too optimistic and convenient a solution to contemplate for tackling a virus that wipes out 90% of the population.

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BBC1 - 15th November 2008 - 7.20pm

Yes, I'm late again with the Merlin review. Apologies. In fact if it wasn't for some good folks in Bristol allowing me the use of their internet and kitchen table you wouldn't be getting this today. Many thanks to them.

We know he's a goner because a) he's pretty enough to challenge Arthur in the yummy stakes and b)we've never met him before.

Anyway, without much ado let's crack on. It does seem as if things are on the up with this series. It still has a shocking disregard for its female characters but the last few episodes have been a great improvement in engaging storytelling. Nimueh pops up in the pre-titles gabbling some incantation, I wondered when she'd be back, and resurrects a dead knight in some dastardly plot against Uther (again). Just as Arthur is made Prince or something and given a lovely tiara, said Black Knight crashes the party (through a window in Girl In The Fireplace stylee but without the comedy wink) and before we know it an Arthurian red-shirt has picked his glove up and accepted a duel to the death. We know he's a goner because a) he's pretty enough to challenge Arthur in the yummy stakes and b)we've never met him before.

Men, they're so stubborn. Gaius gets a telling off and Merlin gets put in his place by Arthur.

Bish, bash, bosh and said Sir Owain (a fetching Kyle Redmond-Jones) gets the pointy end of the Knight's sword but not before Gaius and Merlin figure out that the Knight is actually a dead man walking. The fight scenes are tighter and rougher than before and it is genuinely upsetting when Owain buys it. Not least for Morgana who inexplicably offers him, a total stranger in our eyes, a token of her affection. My word, this woman's fickle! After another knight gets kebabed, it's Arthur, inevitably, that takes up the challenge. After confirming their theory, Merlin and Gaius try to warn both Arthur and Uther. Men, they're so stubborn. Gaius gets a telling off and Merlin gets put in his place by Arthur.

Nimueh at last gets a chance to tell us why she's been seeking revenge, which ties up a number of plot strands from the beginning of the series and simultaneously rewrites the myth again. Where Geoffrey of Monmouth's narrative describes Arthur's conception as the result of a subterfuge by Uther, courtesy of Merlin's magic, to impregnate his enemy's wife Igerna here it's Nimueh who uses magic on Uther's barren, and now dead, wife to bring about the birth of Arthur. Playing fast and loose with the mythology again perhaps but it does give us a decent enough reason why Uther has a bee in his bonnet about the use of magic.

Stick that up your cloak, you filthy sorceress!

The upshot of this is that Merlin gets the dragon to burnish a sword that will then be powerful enough the slay the undead knight. Hello, Excalibur! Goodness, two great big origin stories in one episode - Arthur's birth and the creation of Excalibur. We are being spoiled. However, things don't go according to plan when Uther stands in for Arthur in the duel, Gaius drugs Arthur to prevent him from fighting and Uther wields Excalibur, which is meant only for Arthur's hands. The ensuing fight scene is tense and exhilarating, so much better than anything we've seen this series so far, and there is a genuine sense that Uther might cop it even if he does use Excalibur. This is exactly the level this series needs to be operating at and it's taken what seems like forever to get here. Suffice it say, Arthur does not rescue Uther, which the audience were probably predicting, but instead remains trapped in his room. Uther kicks ass and dispatches the wraith in fine style much to the chagrin of the observing Nimueh. Stick that up your cloak, you filthy sorceress!



I didn't think Julian Jones had it in him as a scriptwriter but he plays a blinder here, mixing furious combat, eye popping effects and a commitment to exploring the emotional bonds between Uther and Arthur, Merlin and Gaius as well as embedding the series with its own version of the mythology. It naturally ends with Merlin having to throw Excalibur into a lake after the dragon throws a wobbly over Uther having used the weapon rather than Arthur. Again, this is all very male-centric and is to the detriment of the female characters and that's an imbalance that seriously needs sorting out, particularly with poor Gwen who seems nothing more than someone's drudge in this series, than Arthur's potential concubine. And, yes, it takes huge liberties with the mythology but if they can keep producing episodes as exciting as this then it's worth taking those liberties in my book.

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BBC's Children In Need 2008 ran a competition for 400 lucky winners to gain access to the Upper Boat studios in Cardiff and a special tour of the Doctor Who, Torchwood and Sarah Jane Adventures sets. Here's a nice little clip that will make you green with envy at all the fun had by kids and adults alike on the day.



Thanks to BBC and You Tube. You can donate here BBC Children In Need

ABC - 13th November 2008 - 10.00pm

Have you noticed that the word 'dead' has been popping up in the episode titles with increasing frequency? Are the producers trying to tell us something? Anyway, this is another story that borrows heavily from the UK series. Namely, Episode 6 of the first series. In the original, the hostage situation takes place in a newspaper office but in a bit of cleverness by the U.S production team, the action is switched to a hospital and its psychiatric wing. Why clever? Narratively and thematically, it works some wonders. It opens up the debate about whether Sam is mad or dead, concentrating on the schizophrenic aspects of his character and the real/unreal zone of his existence in 1973. There's also a riff on two major films of the period, the hostage situation is straight out of Dog Day Afternoon, and the treatment of the mentally ill has some of the disturbing echoes of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.

...the contrived ways of getting Lisa Bonet into an episode were starting to grate

This still carries the major plot point that has future Sam's life support switching off at the same time as the hostage's deadline of 2.00pm and suggests that somehow they are connected. What I also quite liked was the way that future Sam's dilemma is framed within one of the many cheesy soap-operas of the time. Sam observes Maya through the frame of television and there is a sense of closure to their relationship when she decides that the pressure of waiting for Sam to come back from his coma is too much for her. In a way, it's a relief, as the contrived ways of getting Lisa Bonet into an episode are starting to grate. The male gaze (Sam's) shifts back and forth from the prophecy of television to the reality of Annie standing in a bar and consequently raises doubts in his mind about what is real and what isn't...

As another exercise in reformatting the UK series it does throw up very sharply the differences in tone between the two versions. In the UK series Sam is a paranoid, vulnerable hero who is desperate to get back to the future. That doesn't chime in the US series. Sam seems to oscillate between thoroughly enjoying himself in 1973 and not exactly busting a gut to get back to 2008. Whereas the UK series slots brilliantly into the themes of paranoia and alienation that constitute much of British science fiction, here there's a distinct lack of concern from Sam. There have been attempts to reflect the American political milieu with Vietnam, racial unrest and the emergence of gay identities but these are bits of window dressing that don't reflect on how Sam is a character embedded in the alienation and psychosis of 2008, which is a key element to what the UK series is about. And Gene Hunt represents the unfettered ego, the freedom that Sam desires. Here, he's just a slightly grumpy, old cop.

In the UK version, Gene's working methods are central to the plots. In this episode, Gene barely registers at all.

It's almost as if the US producers are quite afraid to risk making Sam unappealing and have their hands tied over Gene's penchant for shock tactics. Much as Jason O'Mara and Harvey Keitel struggle to make their characters psychologically relevant, the writers can only go so far. It may also be down to the lack of time too. They're running 45 minute episodes as opposed to hour long versions. This means that sub-plots and running gags get curtailed or resolved ineffectually at the last minute. It all gets a bit toothless when it tries to establish both Gene and Sam as authority figures, pussy foots around with the relationship between Annie and Sam and ditches the 'Greek chorus' of Nelson, which they briefly had in the form of Windy for a few episodes but have now seemingly forgotten what to do with her. In the UK version, Gene's working methods are central to the plots. In this episode, Gene barely registers at all.

I suspect that this the difficulty in attempting to remake the original scripts. The sooner they run out of the original plots the better, in my opinion. They can then refashion the series to their own whims and we might get somewhere with character development and exploring pertinent themes. At the moment we have a slightly frothy, entertaining drama, occasionally touching base with the psychological tropes of the original but then holding back from doing anything mildly provocative.

ABC Life On Mars site

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BBC1 - 8th November 2008 - 7.20pm

Lord, it's taken me a week to review this. In the scramble over new trailers for Watchmen and Star Trek, Children In Need Doctor Who previews and dozens of other things poor old Merlin got lost in the fray. I finally sat down and watched it last night. And I was in two minds whether to bother.

...it cops out in actually suggesting anything untoward such as incest has produced the child

D'you know? I'm glad I did. This was actually a good episode. Not perfect by any means but certainly not the weakest. And I put that down to the performances. This is essentially an origin story for Mordred. Now, if you know your legend then Mordred was the illegitimate son of Arthur and Morgana who would then eventually betray the King in battle. In the 'Medieval High School Musical' tradition of this series, which has been playing fast and loose with the legend, the whole incest sub-plot has been avoided and they've plonked for making Mordred a Druid child with magical powers. The episode does lay it on thick about establishing a very powerful bond between Morgana and Mordred but it cops out in actually suggesting anything untoward such as incest has produced the child.

Anyway, Mordred and his father, I presume, are out doing a bit of shopping in Camelot when Uther's goons show up and attempt to kill them. Uther's got a thing against the Druids, it seems and they must be eradicated. He's turning into a horrible, right wing old git isn't he? Mordred, injured, is rescued by Merlin after they have a bit of a telepathic natter. Basically, the story then sallies back and forth between Morgana's protection of the boy in blatant betrayal of Uther, her abuse of Arthur, and Merlin's second thoughts about helping Mordred. Knock me down, but betrayal seems to be the main theme here.

...the dragon gets its knickers in a twist is pretty good too and indicates that there is a real threat from Mordred

Katie McGrath! Finally, after seven episodes, she actually shows us what Morgana is all about. She's pretty darn good in this, has purpose and resourcefulness and her scenes with Anthony Head are quietly impressive. Head is wonderful again, spitting fire and thumping tables with great aplomb. Colin Morgan is improving here, looking very photogenic, and also adding some much needed self-doubt to his character. The relationship between him and Morgana is fleshed out too. Love that highly symbolic bit where the mirror shatters and he sees that distorted image of Morgana and Mordred. The whole sequence where the dragon gets its knickers in a twist is good too and indicates that there is a real threat from Mordred if Merlin interferes and as a result Merlin eventually gets his own, 'Have I the right...' moral dilemma.



The casualties in the story are the characters of Arthur and Gwen. Arthur just ends up looking like a berk and the whole magic business with Merlin making the keys float around his head reduces the character to nothing but a comedy stoodge. With this, and his capacity to get mesmerised by the latest in a line of female sorcerers, he's turning into a muscle bound thicko where he should be brave, honourable and sympathetic. Poor Gwen. She just wanders in from time to time, wrings her hands, and then frowns. And that's it. She's little more than a walk on and is in serious need of an episode which properly explores her character.

So cute it bloody hurts.

Whilst this is good at developing the Merlin and Morgana double act, there are some downright cheesy moments that take the edge off what was promising to be a much darker tale. The whole animated boots sequence is straight out of Disney again and it is there simply to show the special effects off, as Arthur is so stupid he wouldn't have actually seen the boots in the first place. Same again for the sequence with the keys. So cute it bloody hurts. The story heavily signposts that Mordred will have something to do with the fates of Arthur and Merlin but if this series doesn't get recommissioned it'll all be for nothing. Fortunately, the writing and acting here makes you care enough to want to see the storyline played out. They just need to speed it up, get shut of Uther and establish the court of Arthur. However, I fear they'll just dawdle along giving us lots of ineffectual teenage romantic interludes, escapades with female sorcerers and Gwen will run away to the next castle to get a better deal.

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Part 1 / BBC1 - 10th November 2008 - 4.35pm
Part 2 / CBBC - 10th November 2008 - 5.15pm



As soon as Sarah Jane fesses up she's off to investigate some dirty dealings in the NHS and leaves the kids to twiddle their thumbs you know this is going to be a break for Lis Sladen (an urgent appointment to check on that portrait she has hidden in her own attic) and there is the dawning realisation that the younger actors are going to have to carry this on their own. Whilst I don't think the result initially makes for compelling viewing, I do think that both Daniel Anthony and Anjii Mohindra gave it all they've got to keep it working. It does suffer from the reductionist principle of having no Sarah Jane and, whilst she's away, no Mr.Smith too. Laudable as it is to let the series be carried by the younger members of the cast, Part 1 doesn't really succeed as a story. Where we get a Doctor-lite episode of the parent series we do usually get a very strong script to support it and to date I would argue that Love And Monsters, Blink and Turn Left are very strong stories that operate purely because of the Doctor's absence within them and not in spite of it.

...it gets mired by over sincerity and suffers as consequence of a straining budget

Joseph Lidster quite rightly focuses in on Clyde Langer. We haven't seen his family or explored his home background yet and it's perfectly logical to do so. I love that we get to meet his mum and are given a goodly amount of background detail. Maria, Luke and Rani have had their moments in the sun, now it's time for Clyde. I just wish the story that teases out these details in Part 1 wasn't such crushingly, annoyingly 'worthy children's television'. The beauty of The Sarah Jane Adventures is that it is capable of telling engaging narratives for both children and adults and as much as this tries to be honest about the consequences of absentee fathers it gets mired by over sincerity and suffers as consequence of a straining budget. No threat to the universe this week, can't afford one. Just Clyde understanding why his father is such an obnoxious git. Match this with a subtext about drug addiction, the overweening use of power and a strong opening about peer pressure in school and you'd think this was onto a winner.



Lidster introduces us to Clyde's famly via Luke having to sleep over whilst SJ goes on a bug-hunt in Tarminster. It's done very naturally and I did like Jocelyn Jee Esien as Clyde's mum and the interplay between her and Daniel is well done and she's actually a bit of a revelation. The sweet friendship between Luke and Clyde is also brought to the fore here and pointedly in the scene where Clyde offers to teach Luke how to draw, demonstrating a father-son relationship which is all about mentoring that's in contrast to what becomes Paul Langer's destructive effect on Clyde. The first episode basically uses a number of characters to establish what the alien pendant does, first with Jacob, then Rani, and how it affects the user. This then narrows down to the reappearance of Clyde's absent father, Paul. The pendant then becomes the MacGuffin - the way the story will expose Paul as a weak father and reveal to Clyde why he shirked his responsibilities to his new born son. Good on paper but the actual first episode is more or less a soap opera rather than a fantasy adventure story. It's little more than a CBBC version of Eastenders and the alien pendant is the only fantastical element in the story.

Don't get me wrong, I think Daniel Anthony steals the show with his performance and Gary Beadle is rather good as the shifty Paul. Clyde's hostility is well placed as Paul comes across as selfish and uncaring and yet we don't exactly get a hint as to why he's suddenly popped up in Clyde's life after five years. But this also shows up the problem with Series 2 where we've had large scale adventure stories that have mainly ignored any character development for Sarah and her young friends and now we have the series going in the opposite direction - lots of character development but to the detriment of telling a very exciting story. Much as I love Clyde I don't want the entire narrative weighed down by the anger he feels towards his father. Even good soaps won't allow huge character arcs to dominate over outlandish plotting.



And then you do ask yourself why Clyde would tell his long absent father about his exploits with Sarah Jane? Of course, he's trying to show off to his father as any boy would but I found it a little incredible that he would expose the gang in such a short space of time and so easily. It's a stretch and it's clear that Lidster had to get Clyde and his dad into Sarah's house and in contact with the pendant. Clunky and not very convincing. Mind you, I did chuckle at Paul's line , 'OK, is this some kind of trading card thing?' when Clyde reveals that he's saved the Earth on numerous occasions. Of course the big clue about Paul is his reaction to all the artefacts in Sarah's attic. He just wants to acquire it or flog it and it signposts how he exploits the alien pendant too. The build up to the cliffhanger, centring around Rani's father doing push-ups, Rani's suspicion that Paul has the pendant and Luke getting cross because Clyde has given him access to the attic is hardly the stuff of scary, fantasy adventure is it? However, it is saved by the horrible realisation that Paul has used the pendant to make Clyde forget who Rani and Luke are. A very uncomfortable moment in the plot - tense because we witness a father remodelling his son in his own image and bewildering that Clyde would actually go so far as to defend and then side with a parent who has had little positive influence on his life. It does make Clyde out as rather gullible and, to be blunt, stupid.

I tried very hard to like this first episode and there is much to admire about it. The performances are uniformly good, particularly Daniel Anthony, but, for me, it doesn't sit comfortably as good storytelling within the format of The Sarah Jane Adventures. Many might argue that this is the sort of drama that kids should be watching in the context of a science fiction series. For me, it's too domestic, too much mired within soap conventions. The second episode might very well change that but it looks like it already has a particular course mapped out - knocking Paul Langer off his pedestal.

...choosing a 'logical' family over a 'biological' family and often that choice can be cruelest to your parents and siblings

Off we go to CBBC to continue the story. I have to say that this second part improves on the first instalment. Clyde and Paul, under the influence of the alien pendant, go off on a day of wish fulfillment around town, persuading car dealers to part with expensive cars, shops to give them clothes (and possibly whores to give them sex if we were in Torchwood). Meanwhile, Rani's dad threatens to die from exhaustion (as if we care) but at least he'll be in the Guinness Book Of Records for his push-ups. Rani and Luke only have one resort - to call Sarah Jane. Which is of course the way this episode opens up the theme of relying on your surrogate family. It reminds me of Armistead Maupin's notion of choosing a 'logical' family over a 'biological' family and often that the choice can be cruelest to your parents and siblings. Mind you, Sarah's a bit busy chasing a rather ineffectual CGI bug (the comedy eyes are like something out of Looney Tunes) in a hospital in a sly bit of commentary about MRSA no doubt. So it's down to a surprise cameo from Maria and her dad, Alan, to show, in one short sub-plot, how much they've been missed from the series and how Rani's family need developing, particularly Rani's dad, Haresh who, so far, does seem to be coming across as a right plonker.



Maria and Alan's appearance also helps build up the story proper and they give us the information about the pendant that we need, cutting back and forth in an effective structure which was something that in Part 1 was lacking. The scene in which Paul brainwashes the car dealer into giving them the sports car underlines a couple of rather uncomfortable associations to the character, which although we read as partly due to the influence of the pendant, suggest he's a criminal and that these actions are somehow also coded as part of his black identity. It's somewhat insensitive of the programme that it makes these associations, even if unconsciously. Yes, you could argue that the pendant leaves Paul with no choice but the story has already established him as an absentee father who walked out on his family so he's already codified as a negative stereotype.

It's an interesting comment on the 21st Century obsession with the celebration of consumerism...

With the the help of Alan and the UNIT database the pendant is identified as belonging to the Berserkers, who were bad tempered Norse warriors, but not quite for the purposes of this story. Here they're just super bad alien soldiers who recruit warriors through the pendants. Maria does come over as Mrs. Exposition here but it's still good to see her and Alan in a substantial sub-plot. And fortunately we've got the UNIT tracking system to find Clyde. Meanwhile, Clyde and Paul are engulfed in a 'shopping spree' during a well edited sequence that's intercut with Luke and Rani dashing off for help. This seems to suggest the Berserkers wanted nothing more than to go mad with consumer frenzy and fill their materialist boots to overflowing. It's an interesting comment on the 21st Century obsession with the celebration of consumerism that, among other things, drive families into tremendous debt. What the episode is saying is this frenetic pursuit of things and power is not simply about the incitement of a passion for power and possessions, its sheer emptiness and waste, but also the fragmentation and dispersion of the mind in its focus on these numerous, ultimately unimportant acquisitions. In such a state, there can be no spiritual health and no proper sanity, much less a real flourishing of an individual or a family.

So, Carla to the rescue and a final showdown at the marina. Crucially, Clyde is still questioning Paul as they hurtle to this last scene and hasn't had any nagging doubts satisfied by their consumerist frenzy or dampened by the power of the pendant. The scene where Clyde confronts Paul with his disappointment in his father is superbly written and played. And Paul again shirks his responsibilities to Clyde and would rather that complex emotions and feelings be forgotten, urging Clyde to reject the very self-doubt, anger and rejection that makes him what he is. Ultimately, it leads to Paul demanding that Clyde forget about Carla, his mum. This works very powerfully here because the escapist plot, with its car chase, sat navs, Maria and Alan is all pulling together with the emotional core of the story. It's ceased being Neighbours and is firmly back in Sarah Jane territory. The marina location also helps push up the scale of the story in Part 2, whereas in Part 1 we were more or less confined to Clyde and Sarah's houses.

Sarah is the one female figure that Clyde hasn't been forced to reject so naturally she's the Earth mother who resolves the situation...

Paul demands, 'We just need a boat' and it looks like consumerism is killing him when in fact it turns out that he's just running away from his responsibilities as a father again. Cue Sarah Jane in her little mack, finally coming to the rescue. Interesting that this has also been about gender domination too with Paul making Clyde reject the major female figures in the story and yet all of them, Carla, Maria, Rani and Sarah logically reassert this principle in the story. And Sarah is the one female figure that Clyde hasn't been forced to reject so naturally she's the Earth mother who resolves the situation with a bit of one-to-one therapy. The whole sequence at the marina is a satisfactory ending to the story with Clyde instilling the sense of fatherhood, somewhat idealised for sure, back into Paul. But even Paul knows his own nature and that's revealed when he confesses to Clyde about running away from his pregnant girlfriend. It seems he can't change his nature but Clyde, in rejecting his father, does suggest to Paul that there is a second chance at being a father open to him.

Part 1 only just about works when you've seen Part 2. It suggests a bit of structural shifting about might have made that first episode narratively more exciting and less confined to the 'soap' locations of bedrooms, kitchens, driveways and schools. Part 2 is significantly the better episode, much more exciting, very powerful emotionally and the story as a whole has a stunning performance at its centre from Daniel Anthony.

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