So he's back. The Doctor is IN! And what an opening to the series, I mean, I cannot quite believe just how good this show has been since Moffat and Smith took over. DOCTOR WHO is back on our screens and we have 13 episodes of pure genius to look forward to. I'll have to collect my thoughts on the good Doctor at some point in the future, but for now let's just say I'm nibbling my fingernails in barely contained girlish excitement.
In other news, intriguing new crime thriller series THE SHADOW LINE has just cropped up, boasting an impressive cast of Chiwitel Ejiofor, Christopher Eccleston and Rafe Spall. The premise is very good and the show certainly takes its time, poring over every detail that's available to us. I won't lie, I almost lost interest a few times due to the ponderous nature of the opening few scenes, but I stuck with it and it was worth it.
Anything else been on?
Actually, I haven't really had that much time to watch stuff lately, it's been busy. So since I only really like to talk about series fully when they're finished, I think I'll take my cue from what I did last time and find something else from my DVD shelf to pick at. What could it be...
JEKYLL.
So, one of the other offerings from Steven Moffat to prove just how much of a frickin' genius he is, JEKYLL is a modern re-telling and pseudo-sequel to The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde. Our central protagonist, Dr. Jackman (played by James Nesbitt in the role of a lifetime, one that I doubt any other living human could do any better in), is haunted by missing time in his life, strange occurances and the feeling that his body does not belong to himself all the time.
This beautifully sinister and expertly crafted series lasted a full six episodes, featured genuinely terrifying implications and acting beyond compare. There's a fair amount of ridiculousness that goes with it as well, there's a mega-corporation that believes Hyde is the next stage in human evolution and is hell-bent on dissecting him, decent British actors with stupid American accents and some truly dodgy cloning for one of the sub-plots. The last episode was also a little messy.
But it just doesn't matter.
For those of you who are aware of my movie reviews, I tend not to actually talk that much about things that I actually really like. This is definately one of those things, since I truly, truly liked what they did with Jekyll. Yeah, some of the elements were a bit weird, yeah, some of the episode storylines were a bit convoluted, but at the same time... they really, really worked all together as a series and I can only recommend it over and over again to anyone stupid enough to listen to me.
My hope would be that Moffat's other recent re-imagining of classic literature, SHERLOCK, would follow the same kind of formula (be both a follow on from the classics yet a fresh story in its own right) and that they could somehow tie-in the two series for some kind of cross-over, but that's just the mega-nerd in me talking. Ah Moffat... what will you do for me next?
Next time: THE SCHEME
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