Sea of Souls
Sea of Souls was one of those programmes that kind of snuck out when it was on before. Starring the incomparable Bill Patterson, it's set in the X-Files department of a Glasgow University. So that's why they have their own parliament then?
The first series came and went without making much of a splash, so it was quite surprising to find it returning for a second series with nearly an entirely new cast. As before it's keeping its structure with two part stories, this time around spread over Saturday and Sunday nights. I tend to think that this is a mistake, with a greater available audience on Sundays, many of whom will be shut out of a story that kicked off on Saturday night.
The first story was really two stories and concerned a haunted house and the disappearance of a young man. To be honest, I'd have preferred two seperate stories rather than this kind of main-story and sub-story structure. And even with two stories, it felt like there was a lot of padding going on with a full 120 minutes to fill. You get the feeling that production partner, Sony Pictures International, won't have any trouble snipping ten minutes for international sales. It's worth noting that this is the same production partner that BBC Scotland had for Rockface, the disappointing mountain rescue drama that got shunted into a Sunday afternoon slot for burning off the second series episodes.
Sometimes you get the feeling that the BBC isn't meeting its regional quota of dramas, hence the recommissioning of this series, but then at least they do give a series such as this a chance to breathe. It's not actually that bad, and although by no means being unmissable, it's passable Saturday night entertainment. I'd guess that Dr Who going to take its place in the schedules when it finishes its run. With a large inherited audience from the lottery and Casualty, it's bound to do reasonably well (6.3m on Sat and 5.6m on Sunday according to this).
Posted by adambowie at January 10, 2005 12:53 PM