PARADOX 1.5

[SPOILERS] I'm treating the finale of Paradox as a bit of housekeeping, just to wrap-up my reviews of this five-part sci-fi drama, however belatedly. I really don't have much to say on the matter, truth be told. The show follows a clear formula every week, and appears to have already exploited all the obvious wrinkles available...

The story was a race against time to stop a classroom massacre, essentially, but it was a pretty toothless narrative for such a hot topic. Instead, the possibility that Flint (Tamzin Outhwaite) would be the shooter was supposed to be the big draw, but I never for one second believed circumstances would lead to her slaughtering innocents with a sub-machine gun. Did you? The finale also wrapped-up the serial rapist storyline that never felt deserving of such attention, although it was indeed a very dark moment when easygoing Callum suffocated the ginger miscreant with a plastic bag in an empty warehouse.

And hunky Dr. King finally detected a wormhole in space that might be the mechanism that someone's using to send back images of future disasters. He still hasn't considered the obvious possibility that it's their future selves doing so, oddly. He can't watch much sci-fi. Anyway, in the final moments, King lies shot on the floor of the classroom (but nobody watching at home cares, because life-or-death for him relies on whether or not the BBC give Paradox another series*, not the bullet.)

The denouement was supposed to leave us anxious for series 2, as we heard Flint's voice (assumedly from the future) beam down into King's lab. Okay, so now Prometheus II can transmit voices from the future. That should make things much easier for the team if someone can say "a bomb in the Trafford Centre goes off at four o'clock", so I'm not sure that's a worthwhile development. I'm betting any future audio will be garbled enough to stretch things out an hour: "bomb... centre... clock."

Overall, I've been kinder to Paradox than most critics were, mainly because there's the kernel of a decent idea here, the plots were fairly robust, and the last 10-minutes of every episode were good fun as everything snapped together. But the characters were terribly dull clichés (there just isn't time to develop them because every episode's so focused on the ticking clock investigation**), the dialogue has been consistently laughable, and I just don't buy into the setup with those terrible MoD civil servants at the observatory.

Plus, the show loved to teases us with the mystery of who or what is sending messages back in time, but audiences are so au fait with sci-fi these days that I doubt Paradox has an explanation that will astonish anyone with half a brain. I mean, it's not going to be God or aliens, so who else would want to send a bunch of Manchester cops crime scene photos to prevent catastrophes, but themselves?


24 December 2009
BBC1/BBC HD, 9pm

written by: Lizzie Mickery directed by: Omar Madha starring: Tamzin Outhwaite (DI Rebecca Flint), Emun Elliott (Christian King), Mark Bonnar (DS Ben Holt), Chike Okonkwo (DC Callum Gada), Sam Hazeldine (Matt Hughes), Emma Lowndes (Julie Hughes), Reece Noi (Carl), Connor Ryan (Dylan), Joe Doherty (Fred), Abigail Davies (Amelia James), Lorcan Cranitch (Simon Manning), Jonathan Slinger (Stuart Taylor), Katie Griffiths (Leah Holt), David Hall (Charlie Holt), Jamie Birtwistle (Jason Hedley), Michael Socha (Zac Hedley), Paul Warriner (Police Officer 1), Emma Ashton (Sylvia Broadbent), Jane Riley (Police Officer 2) & Pooky Quesnel (DCI Sarah Bower)

* I've heard that Paradox has a two-year story arc, so I'm willing to bet the BBC will bring it back. It doesn't look terribly expensive, to me. It's also interesting to remember that Paradox was initially supposed to air across five consecutive nights, which would have helped a few of the ongoing plot-threads feel better connected, but I'm glad the BBC opted for traditional scheduling.

** Which is one reason so many of the plots have a connection to the cops, or events threaten their lives in particular. Which isn't a bad idea. But it's still hard to care about the main characters, or their perfunctory families, because nobody really feels genuine.

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PARADOX 1.4

[SPOILERS] Here's my problem with Paradox: I don't care about the victims. We get perfunctory scenes of people wandering towards catastrophe as Flint's (Tamzin Outhwaite) team struggle to prevent their deaths, but no matter how many cute daughters or babies they include as emotional shorthand, you don't really care if the Indian window cleaner falls to his death, or the black single mum suffocates in a fire. Over a whole hour, the victims hardly receive the depth of the average Casualty patient, pre-A&E. That said, this penultimate episode was the sci-fi drama's strongest hour yet, mainly because writer Mark Greig (Life On Mars) introduced some fun kinks to the formula...

Firstly, one of last week's photos (of a hair salon's window) didn't affect the outcome of the mission in any way, so Gada (Chike Okonkwo) believes the serial rapist who escaped charges is destined to attack the salon's owner. This was a good way of making the show feel less episodic and more serialized, plus it gave Gada something to do under his own steam. Secondly, it turned out that this week's photos were predicting two simultaneous disasters, involving arson and a window cleaner's faulty harness clip, meaning Flint was forced to make a life-or-death decision because she couldn't save both. Paradox's climaxes have been consistently good, but this was undoubtedly the best because of that added torment.

And the presence of those MoD civil servants even started to come in useful, as they helped Flint's team evade problems at work, and Christian (Emun Elliott) is now experimenting to try and detect a wormhole that his satellite is using to send its images back from the future. He's still not considered the fact he's the only sending them back through time, though, because he clearly doesn't read much science-fiction. Still, there was a better reason to get him out of his observatory, if only to run around Manchester with a laptop trying to match a blurred photo with a building.

Overall, I don't think Paradox is as bad as many critics are claiming. It's certainly not great, but the basic premise is good fun and the stories build a decent amount of pace and drama. I wish the potential victims were more engaging as characters, but the format of the show doesn't leave much room to spend time with them, and it's so focused on plot that there's not much time available to develop any of the leads beyond baseline personalities. Also, maybe the show needs to leave the accidents behind more often and start persuing disasters where the villains can take centre-stage over the unmindful victims -- because it would be more interesting to follow the final hours of a terrorist/murderer as Flint's gang solve their puzzle.


15 December 2009
BBC1/BBC HD, 9pm

written by: Mark Greig directed by: Omar Madha starring: Tamzin Outhwaite (DI Rebecca Flint), Emun Elliott (Christian King), Mark Bonnar (DS Ben Holt), Chike Okonkwo (DC Callum Gada), Sacha Dhawan (Jaz Roy), Sohm Kapila (Neeta Roy), Anna Jobarteh (Dionne Hudson), Danielle Henry (Kaila Hudson), Adam Shaw (Derek), Ray Emmet Brown (Graham Hudson), Jason Furnival (Station Manager Sampson), Lorcan Cranitch (Simon Manning), Abigail Davies (Amelia James), Daniel Ryan (Martin Bennett), Emma Pilson (Lorrayne), Judy Flynn (Mrs Wright), Andi Osho (Sonia), Grant Masters (Tony Gooding), Paul Brennen (SOCA Agent), Nick Malinowski (Ciaran), Sebastian Shaw (Shop Assistant), Jonathan Slinger (Stuart Taylor) & Steven Radford (Fire Fighter)

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PARADOX 1.3

[SPOILERS] I don't have much to say about Paradox's third episode. The show is such a tightly-wound formula that there's not much going on beyond the plot. The team receive eight images of a future crime, they slowly decipher them as we watch the victims/culprits going about their day pre-"event", and eventually the team get enough information to prevent the crime occurring at (literally) the last second. Wash, rinse, repeat.

The show tries to weave in a few other elements -- like when Rebecca (Tamzin Outhwaite) theorized that their efforts to prevent the future is what creates it, or seeing Holt (Mark Bonnar) grapple with the news he was fated to die last time, but his possible demise was kept secret from him -- but it's not quite enough. In the latter's case, it just felt odd that a plot-strand from last week was being chewed on, although at least Bonnar's character reacts more genuinely to events than anyone else. Outhwaite's on stern cop autopilot, and Emun Elliott's morose scientist is still being enigmatic for the sake of it.

The big surprise of this episode was the reveal that the Prometheus II satellite is responsible for taking at least one of this week's photos, but it's exasperating that nobody's considered the obvious answer to the mystery: that the images have been sent back in time, via the satellite, by themselves. I fully expect them to discover a "wormhole" in space during the finale, through which they beam the images they've collected back in time -- don't you?

Anyway, this episode was concerned with stopping a serial rapist strike again, and there was mild fun in seeing the team's images take shape in the real world (as usual), but not much else to get excited about. Even the last 10 minutes, which have been handled in a fairly gripping way before now, just felt anticlimactic to me -- although I appreciated the twist that there was no evidence to convict the rapist, so he was allowed to go free. It raises the issue that the team could start stopping crimes before anything's been set in motion -- which keeps any victims safe and ignorant, but also means villains can't be arrested and will probably just commit their crime at another time and place. So far, the show has avoided this by only having Flint's team fit the puzzle pieces together in the dying seconds, but maybe it needs to start exploring the downside to knowing the future.


8 December 2009
BBC1/BBC HD, 9pm

written by: Lizzie Mickery directed by: Simon Cellan Jones starring: Tamzin Outhwaite (DI Rebecca Flint), Emun Elliott (Dr. Christian King), Mark Bonnar (DS Ben Holt), Chike Okonkwo (DC Callum Gada), Kenny Doughty (Gerry Mortimer), Lucy Gaskell (Katie), Lorcan Cranitch (Simon Manning), Abigail Davies (Amelia James), Kevin Harvey (Russell), Jonathan Slinger (Stuart Taylor), Alicya Eyo (Jean Fellowes), Andi Osho (Sonia), Benedict Power (Josh), Zoie Kennedy (Paula Wilby), Glenn Cunningham (Receptionist) & Adam Foster (DC Rob Ritchie)

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PARADOX 1.2

[SPOILERS] I'm not sure Paradox is conducive to weekly reviews, as episodes are almost exclusively plot-driven and there's not much opportunity to explore the thinly-drawn characters. This is just an hour spent watching four people solve a life-or-death puzzle against the clock; decent entertainment if the puzzle's worth the effort, but there's not much to say beyond that.

In episode 2, the Prometheus II satellite has downloaded another eight images of an impending disaster -- including a manhole cover, a pigeon, a drowned teenager, a dirty car registration plate, and the dead body of DS Holt (Mark Bonnar) himself! The MoD authorities decide to keep Holt's image a secret, and DI Flint's (Tamzin Outhwaite) team are called back to solve this latest mystery. And so begins another episode of reverse-Casualty, pretty much. It helps that there's fun to be had in seeing how the disaster comes together, even if the audience are given more information because we actually spend some time with the key players headed for catastrophe (here, an asthmatic child-abductor and pigeon fancier.)

The thing is, so much time and energy is spent on the plot there's not much time for anything else. You can't get invested in the characters (the investigative team or the victims) because neither get much screentime that isn’t focused on the fact there's a ticking clock of doom hanging over their heads. 24 deals with a similar problem by only having one overall threat to tackle over a whole year, so it has opportunities to spend on developing the people involved in the situation. In fact, I had originally assumed Paradox was going to cover one big disaster told over five episodes, which may have been a better way to go. Instead, each hour is entirely consumed by preventing that week's terrible future, so don't expect much acting beyond stern faces, skeptical rants, and unnecessary brooding or bickering.

Still, this was better than last week's premiere, mainly because the threat was less predictable and everyone acted fairly logically as they tried to prevent the future. It also helped that part of the threat was the life of Holt himself, even if he was kept in the dark about that fact. The combination of swelling pace and a thumping soundtrack did a great job of making the last ten minutes tense and exciting, too. But there are some general concerns that tarnish successes; from the fact it makes little sense Flint's team are on their own (when the validity of the photos has been proven), the pointlessness of those hard-faced MoD civil servants (seriously, what are they there for?), the team's sometimes irritating frostiness around each other, and King's penchant for skulking around and being cryptic about his theories.

Overall, there are only three episodes left, so it's no big commitment to stick with Paradox till the end. It doesn't bore me, which is the main thing. But this episode has already lost 1 million viewers (down to 2.94m from 4.13m), so it's clearly boring other people.


1 December 2009
BBC1/BBC HD, 9pm

written by: Lizzie Mickery directed by: Simon Cellan Jones starring: Tamzin Outhwaite (DI Rebecca Flint), Emun Elliott (Dr. Christian King), Mark Bonnar (DS Ben Holt), Chike Okonkwo (DC Callum Gada), Lee Worswick (Jack Barclay), Hannah Godfrey (Michelle Barclay), David Crellin (Don Barclay), Jennifer Hennessy (Shelley Barclay), Abigail Davies (Amelia James), Lorcan Cranitch (Simon Manning), Adam Foster (DC Rob Ritchie), Chris Finch (Danny Simpson), Asha Kingsley (WPC), Dominic Gately (Fireman) & Justine Adams (Woman)

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PARADOX 1.1

[SPOILERS] A kind of precognitive Casualty, sci-fi thriller Paradox got off to a solid if unexceptional start. It's another BBC genre show that doesn't offer too much outright originality, but is just content to put a humdrum fantastical twist on a police procedural. This can sometimes lead to great things (Ultraviolet, Life On Mars), but it can also lead to Crime Traveller. There's evidence that Paradox has the potential to blossom into something fun, though, and this first episode was punctuated by a laudably bleak ending and built itself a compelling tailwind...

Dr. Christian King (Emun Elliot) is another unlikely TV science geek who'd look more at home in a Gillette commercial, currently monitoring solar flare activity in a den of computers. While at work, his company's satellite "Prometheus II" apparently steals the fire of future-knowledge from the Gods, by downloading a stream of random images to King's video-wall. The inappropriately-named atheist believes that these fuzzy pictures predict the future when he notices one snap features a mobile phone displaying a time 18 hours hence. A faulty, damaged phone -- yes? No, it's a photo from the future, okay?

A little peculiarly, King asks for a police officer with "imagination" to come and take a look at his bizarre find. So, stern DI Rebecca Flint (Tamzin Outhwaite) finds herself in his lab and, after hearing his theory, suspects the quirky scientist is a sociopath playing a game. Flint's colleagues, irascible Scot DS Ben Holt (Mark Bonnar) and fresh-faced DC Callum Gada (Chike Okonkwo), are called in to assist her, and both likewise believe Dr. King has just faked the photos (that appear to show glimpses of a railway bridge catastrophe) and is taking perverse pleasure in seeing them try and make sense of clues to the whereabouts of a bomb he'll detonate. Of course, when Flint starts to investigate the photographic evidence and treat his theory seriously, she slowly comes to realize the images do indeed seem to predict a confluence of disastrous events.

The minor subplots follow the predestined victims/culprit of the unfolding tragedy, going about their lives blissfully unaware they're chess pieces being pushed into position by the hand of Fate. For the audience, we take dark glee in noticing how possessions featured in King's photos (a driver's license, a backpack and Frisbee, a Blackberry phone, etc.) turn up in these stories, and watch as Flint and her team try to comprehend the images, extrapolate events to come, and try to alter their outcome to save the day.

Paradox's concept works fine. It should do because it's just a tweaked version of Minority Report, and the possibilities are clear and obvious for plentiful stories. This episode did a solid job of setting everything up, and it actually became quite gripping in the second half when the team were racing around trying to second-guess events without arousing suspicion or coming across as insane -- although I have to wonder why they didn't just ask the businessman on the doomed train to pull the emergency stop button before the carriages reached the bridge.

The performances were okay, but nothing special. Outhwaite only has one character in her -- the sexy, authoritative, working class cop (see: Red Cap, The Fixer) -- but she copes well in that comfort zone. Elliot was more interesting than I was expecting as King, mainly because his character was written to behave suspiciously throughout, and while that tactic to elicit uncertainty didn't work (as there was never any doubt he was telling the truth), it nevertheless offered something a bit different in how the cops dealt with King. Of course, all that insecurity will disappear now King's photo album's been proven right, so I hope future episodes have something else up their sleeves or else he'll quickly become redundant. After all, he's just the guy with access to the satellite link, so it'll be interesting to see how they utilize him hereon in. Will he just sit back and watch Flint's team run around like headless chickens, offering the occasional insight into a cryptic photo, or will he be needed out in the field sometimes?

The guest cast all had less complexity than the average patient wheeled into Holby City, but this was perhaps because episode 1 had less time or need to dedicate to them. Now the exposition's been dealt with, the guest stars will hopefully get more dimensions than "sleep-deprived gas tanker driver" and "stressed executive", as otherwise they're just hapless stooges in a grizzly game of determinism. A Crimewatch reconstruction told in reverse, you might say.

Overall, Paradox offers nothing very new -- a more unique example of characters fighting the future is FlashForward, which admittedly has its own flaws to deal with -- but there's certainly promise in he show if it manages to unlock its 24-meets-Minority Report potential. Or it could just become a reverse-engineered series of crimes that a bunch of underwritten characters try to piece together. But on the evidence of this first part, it's worth sticking with for now.


24 November 2009
BBC1/BBC HD, 9pm

written by: Lizzie Mickery directed by: Simon Cellan Jones starring: Tamzin Outhwaite (DI Rebecca Flint), Emun Elliott (Dr Christian King), Mark Bonnar (DS Ben Holt), Chike Okonkwo (DC Callum Gada), Pooky Quesnel (DCI Sarah Bower), Lorcan Cranitch (Simon Manning), Abigail Davies (Amelia James), Neil Fitzmaurice (Lister Wells), Clare Kerrigan (Kirsty Harmsley), Kevin Doyle (Harry Phelps), Fiona Dolman (Lauren Phelps), Peter Wells (Patterson James) & Kate Miles (Clare)

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Coming Soon: Paradox

Paradox is a five-part sci-fi drama headed for BBC1 in November, starring Tamzin Outhwaite (The Fixer) as DI Rebecca Flint and Emun Elliot (Feel The Force) as Dr. Christian King, a scientist who receives strange images from space that predict a disaster they have 18 hours to prevent...

Created by Lizzie Mickery (Messiah, The State Within), Paradox sounds like 24-meets-FlashForward to me. But unlike those shows, it's telling a complete story in a brisk five episodes, so there should be fewer issues with pace. I'm assuming a new batch of images will also beam down in the finale, to set up a sequel if Paradox proves a hit with audiences.

There was a time when a new British sci-fi series would have me readying myself for disappointment*, but these days it's a very different story. Torchwood, Doctor Who, Life On Mars, Primeval (at a pinch), all show that UK sci-fi is on good form, and while Paradox's premise doesn't sound that original ("can you change the future?" issues are passé now), it sounds promising. As there are only five episodes (will the Beeb show them daily, a la Children Of Earth?), I'm expecting more cohesion and plotting than you tend to find in US equivalents, too. American shows always have to withhold information and find ways to keep their concepts going over years if possible -- which can work if done well (Lost), but is a dangerous game.

Paradox will be directed by Simon Cellan (Generation Kill) and Omah Madha (Law & Order UK). You can read more details and peruse some quotes from the crew at the BBC press office.


* I'm thinking primarily of dire '90s output like Crime Traveller and The Vanishing Man, which both took hoary old sci-fi chestnuts and retold them in a bland way.

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