C24

So in the world of television this week I have... actually, I haven't had much of a chance to watch much TV because I've been working too much on my own television drama script that was due to be handed in yesterday. I got it in and then had to catch a train, so the iPlayer and I haven't seen each other in a while.

However, there is comedy.

It's good to see RUSSELL HOWARD and his GOOD NEWS are back, they're a welcome return to the line-up for the next eight or so weeks. Russell has always been an odd one, his humour is somewhere between a political activist and a hyperactive ten-year-old, but it certainly works in its own context. Ever since he left Mock The Week (which has been somewhat up in the air ever since the departure of Frankie Boyle), I feel Russ has been in flux.

New BBC Four comedy with Hugh Bonneville, Jessica Hynes and the soothing tones of David Tennant, TWENTY TWELVE, deals with the semi-corporate semi-government office bollocks of the buildup to the 2012 London Olympics and I for one am watching avidly. Also new on BBC Three is WHITE VAN MAN. I initially thought this would be rubbish, but after having given the first episdoe a go... I'm sure I'll watch the next one when it's online.

I also gave BECOMING HUMAN a go, and only got to watch the first 15 minutes before my connection screwed up. So is it just repeating Being Human, but with younger people? If so, I'm not sure what the point is...

SILK is still enjoyable to me. However, as promised:

OUTCASTS.

Oh, you could have been so much more. You definately should have been so much more. Now normally when something's good, praise goes to the Director, and when something's bad, hate gets levelled at the Writer. That's just the way of things, I don't much like it, since I'm a writer, but that's how it is. In this case, however, I'm all for following that example.

Ben Richards.

In the last few years, Richards has been working on stuff that has always dissapointed me. He headed up both this and an ITV show called THE FIXER, after his stint on SPOOKS. He continues to occasionally work on Spooks and that's probably his best work, even though I'm not an avid watcher, I probably should be at some point. The Fixer was based around a man released from prison in order to be a Government sanctioned Hitman that nobody talked about. I mean, how do you screw up a show about a Government sanctioned Hitman? Make it sodding boring, that's how. The show never captured its true potential, despite a great cast and a great premise, it was always lacking in the story department.

And now Outcasts. Humans are living on a 'Goldilocks' planet (somewhere that's 'just right' enough to support human life), and have set up what they hope to be an idyllic little colony, but naturally things are going awry. Why else would it be the focus of a television show. It's a very 'white/beige' show, with all the backdrops being set against quite pale landscape, which contrasts reasonably well with the dark greys and browns of the settlement of Forthaven and the drab, practical-looking costumes of our protagonists. The coloured sections on the guns are a bit weird, however. We start off with the arrival of a new transport ship from Earth who's captain is sending out the signal of:

'Is that a human voice out there?'

Well, that sounds like a decent way to open a science fiction series, but since there are no aliens in the sphere of human knowledge at the start of the series, it does make you wonder why the hell Richards thought that would be an unambiguous opening line. The first episode then goes on to introduce us to a slew of characters that we'll never see again, including the best actor they had, Battlestar Galactica's Jamie Bamber. I mean, what's the point of getting Apollo in, giving him the most interesting part in the whole series, then offing him at the end of the first episode? The rest of the cast are... adequate to poor in terms of performance, with points for Liam Cunningham.

The character of Julius Berger, played by the show's only American (Eric Mabius), was woefully poorly written, flitting between over-hammed up religious icon to ultra-cloak-and-dagger political damp cloth, all the while never quite escaping the shadow of Battlestar Galactica's Giaus Baltar, someone who pulled it off a great deal better.

Naturally, there's plenty of things in this series that made it feel like it was just trying to emulate BSG, as well as a host of other, more successful science-fiction dramas, but at the end of it, this show did nothing to break away from their shadow. Outcasts could have been good, but it simply wasn't, it just wasn't given the chance to be good.

And that bothers me. It's science-fiction, the most important of all genres. And more importantly it's British science-fiction that doesn't revolve around an eccentric vagabond in a time travelling blue box. Surely we should make an effort to establish British sci-fi that isn't Doctor Who? Surely we should try harder than this? But apparently not, not as long as Ben Richards has his way.

Next time I bitch about: SILK.