‘Dramarama: Spooky’ DVD review
At some point during the 1980s, Thames Television created an episode of children’s anthology series Dramarama that was so disturbing that we can still vaguely remember it to this day.
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At some point during the 1980s, Thames Television created an episode of children’s anthology series Dramarama that was so disturbing that we can still vaguely remember it to this day.
Sometimes, it’s the simplest things that are the most disturbing; and the single most grisly scene so far in Torchwood: Miracle Day is as uncomplicated as it is grimly effective.
‘Torchwood’s gone,’ Rex tells Vera in the fifth instalment of Miracle Day. ‘It’s just a name, these days.’ Yet for a number of reasons, this is perhaps the most Torchwoodian episode of the series yet.
It would be easy to decry the idea of creating an updated version of 1972’s ‘Day of the Daleks’ with modern CGI as a doomed attempt to polish a turd – too easy, in fact.
In 1931, a young Jewish prosecutor at the central criminal court decided to force Adolf Hitler to appear as a witness at the trial of some brownshirt brutes accused of murdering innocent civilians.
‘Torchwood located,’ C. Thomas Howell’s nameless assassin announces at the beginning of ‘Escape to L.A.’ – and although, of course, he’s talking about the newly-formed team, he could equally be referring to the show itself.
Three instalments in and the new series of Torchwood is already suffering from homesickness. Miracle Day has become more mundane than miraculous.
You could guarantee the existence of Doctor Who in the seventies, come strikes, droughts, changes of government or comedians defecting to ITV. And usually, like ‘The Sun Makers’, it was pretty damn good.
‘The next six hours is going to be filled with boredom, followed by monotony,’ CIA agent Rex Matheson remarks at the beginning as he boards a transatlantic flight with the manacled members of Torchwood in tow, but the subsequent episode is anything but dull.
Nobody ever said that cop shows had to be realistic to be effective. Okay, they did, and in some cases they were almost certainly right, but the maxim doesn’t apply to BBC One’s Luther.