TellyViews

The second of Steven Spielberg's sci fi series this year is by far the better of the 2.  There's still a bit too much sappy family stuff but there's plenty of action and tension.  It also looks pretty good where Falling Skies looked like a slightly dirty school (because it was stuck in a dirty school).

New series, new credits, new universe...

At the end of series 3, a permanent bridge was built between the 2 universes of Fringe and this episode started to explore the possibilities that opens up.  A criminologist from 'over here' was taken on a trip to 'over there' to profile a serial killer - who just happened to be his double.  Some typical Fringe style icky science involving drilling into brains and freezing them to extract memories led to the moral of the story: some people are so important that their influence will linger even if they are erased from memory - or even existence.  This paves the way for the return of Peter who has vanished from the universes but is appearing to Walter and now speaking too.

I'm still not sure what this programme is about.  As far a I can make out the main character is Sue Sylvester, a successful cheerleading coach at an Ohio high school.  She is straight talking and very funny with political ambitions.

Against Sue there is a group of hideously self obsessed schoolkids who have formed a Glee club.  This seems to involve breaking into song at inappropriate times, like during lunch, which annoys the other kids so much that they often feel compelled to throw drinks in their faces.  The Glee club is led by Mr Schuster, a washed up wannabe musical theatre star who seems to abandoned his day job of teaching Spanish.

Sue's mission this series is to get elected to some political office or other so that she can save the school from being financially drained by the Glee club's lavish performances of popular songs (mostly sung in an over the top musical theatre style).  The glee club is actually pretty poor, routinely getting beaten in regional and national competitions by far superior groups from other schools.

Everyone thought it would be a ganger Doctor; or time would be changed; or it would be robot duplicate.  In the end, it was the robot, but with the Doctor inside.  But not before time was changed.  That caused a parallel timeline to engulf the Earth and all sorts of weirdness to break out.  A bit like last year's finale then.

All of history happening at once was an interesting idea and allowed some decent cameos from famous people and some old friends such as Churchill and Dickens.  Much better than the days where they would cram in someone from EastEnders.

2 British drama series.  Both with an American style gloss, fast paced and action packed. Both suffering from the loss of Richard Armitage who has been killed off in each series.  Both going out at 9pm on Sunday.  This week they even shared the same actor as the villain.

So which one is better?  Well, in its prime Spooks would have wiped the floor with Strike Back - tense, action packed, well acted and usually bang up to date.  But the latest series of Spooks is far from its best.  Most of the competent spooks have been killed off or turned traitor (or both).  There's only 6 episodes this series instead of 10 (Strike Back has gone the other way).  The budget has been slashed and it looks like it now has the same budget as Doctors or other daytime dramas where everything happens in cheap locations like houses and offices.

Strike Back on the other hand is making the most of foreign locations and is filmed in HD.  The plots are simpler but at least they make sense.  The most recent Spooks storylines are unrealistic and full of plot holes.

Spooks has always operated on a 1 in, 1 out basis. Adam for Tom, Fiona for Zoe, Zaf for Danny etc. So when Calum  came in at the start of this series, it looked bad for Tariq who himself replaced Malcolm a couple of series ago. Sure enough, a case of Chekov's umbrella has seen him join the ranks of ex-agents.

So far, all series of new Doctor Who have started with single part stories and ended with a big 2 part finale. This year has been different, starting with a 2 part story in which we see a future Doctor die.  Therefore the finale is only 1 part and we get a comedy episode to lead into it. And it was a funny episode, showing how good James Cordon can be.  The Doctor's farewell tour and the whole plot of knowing he is soon to die is very similar to the 2009 specials however.

The first series of Strike Back was quite good, so can this new series match it?

On first glance this series has little in common with the first - there are no characters carrying through apart from a brief cameo where the main character gets his brains blown out. The name of the organisation is the same however - Section 20 - and the format is the same: several loosely connected 2 part stories featuring gun battles in South Africa or places that South Africa can stand in for.

The new main character is called Stonebridge and he is played by Leontes from Camelot, which may be a career ending double. Like Camelot this series is shown on a US cable channel and therefore features lots of gratuitous nude scenes.  

The first episode started with some clunky scene setting to introduce the new characters and plot but soon settled into a decent hotel under siege story reminiscent of something Spooks or 24 might do. The second part then had a plot twist on top of a plot twist.

The second 2 parter was a heist story with a bit of undercover work where pretty much everyone ended up dead.

So, this is the beginning of the end for Spooks.  After killing off all the main characters the final series looks like it is going to focus on Harry, the one constant over the last decade.  Last year's female recruit Beth has been unceremoniously decommissioned and replaced with a new female spy who takes on the team leader role.  Dimitri has more hair and there's a new computer tech who seems a bit unlikable and possibly means that Tariq is going to meet an untimely end soon.

BBC cutbacks mean that this is a short series, back down to 6 episodes (the lowest since series 1) and it isn't in HD either.  Still the BBC needs to spend 40% of the budget on EastEnders, 40% on Strictly and the other 20% on Bargain Hunt, Homes under the Hammer and Cash in the Attic.

Anyway, all the usual sorts of things happen - some double crossing, some techy bits, a drinks reception where a foreign dignitary nearly gets killed etc.  After last year's Chinese enemy it is back to Russians again and of course there's another dodgy CIA head.

So... that was Miracle Day. Where Children of Earth was 5 hours of great TV spread over 5 nights, Miracle Day was 5 hours of plot spread out over 10 weeks.  Whole sections of the story went nowhere and the whole premise seemed to change half way through from nobody can die to people can become category 1 and incinerated.  A whole section of plot in the middle about closing down the death camps became pointless when a quick "2 months later" caption revealed that they had been reopened.

This show has been on for donkey's years and used to be a very serious sporting quiz.  However, nowadays it has a comedian guest, Phil Tufnell as a judge, a picture board* and a quickfire guess the sportsman round at the end.  In other words, it has turned into They Think Its All Over!

New Zealand 41, Tonga 10 - well that was predictable!