So finally it's arrived. And despite having already seen it I had to watch it again.
First things first, if there were any differences between the leaked version, and that which aired on Saturday, they were beyond me. Maybe a bit of post-processing, that's all.
Secondly, it's pretty poor that we managed to get brief excerpts of Graham Norton and the Strictly Dance Fever programme leaking through to the tense opening of this massively hyped new series (if you don't live in the UK then you won't realise that this series has been promoted seemingly after every programme this week, with poster sites, a Radio Times front cover, and both main stars showing up on Jonathan Ross and Parkinson).
As I said before, both leads are great, and the dialogue's very knowing coming as it does from Russel T Davies. Sorry if all of this sounds like every other review you've read of Dr Who over the last weekend, but it's true. I was a big fan of Dr Who, and own one or two DVDs to prove it. So it's good to report that it's actually really rather impressive what they've managed to pull off. This is a drama series that's not a soap and that goes out before 9pm. Think about it. There aren't any others apart from children's programming.
So it has a light touch, and I'm sure will confront some of the issues that good episodes of Dr Who have done in the past. As always, the opening episode is one of the toughest to write since you've got the problem of half the audience knowing exactly where we are (basically the over 30s), and the other half needing a primer to get up to speed. You don't want to alienate either of these groups.
The fact that this first episode reportedly got around 10 million viewers would suggest that they've done so very successfully, although let's be cautionary given the monumental hype it's received so far.
But overall a great start to a new future of science fiction on British television. And we've got live Quatermass to look forward to this weekend!
Posted by adambowie at March 29, 2005 10:32 PM