Series 4 looks set to be a cracking run for The Sarah Jane Adventures, with some very impressive guest appearances lined up and some highly intriguing episode titles (‘Death Of The Doctor’ and ‘Goodbye, Sarah Jane Smith’ both sounding particularly ominous). Joseph Lidster’s series opener ‘The Nightmare Man’ sees young hero Luke menaced by some terrifying nightmares – which would be scary enough even if, as a genetic construct, he has previously not even been capable of dreaming.
Make no mistake, this CBBC show is aimed squarely at the kids, complete with slapstick, green gloop and aliens that say ‘bum’. But equally, don’t be fooled into thinking that the show is childish. Luke’s nightmares are genuinely terrifying – mainly because they don’t concentrate on anything quite so mundane as The End Of The World™, but rather the very real fear that he’s unliked by his friends, unloved by his mum and not needed by anybody as he prepares to move away to university.
However, this being a children’s show, everything is painted with a much broader brush – this isn’t really designed for the older viewers or the Who-geeks – but still manages to have subtle intelligence and wit. This week’s villain, the titular Nightmare Man, is played by Julian Bleach (scoring a Whoniverse hat-trick following appearances as Doctor Who’s Davros and Torchwood’s The Ghostmaker), who struts and gurns across the screen like an old-style pantomime villain. This isn’t a criticism; there’s something gloriously old-fashioned about watching a cackling baddie in hastily applied face paint creep in the shadows. To the core audience, he’s a hissing, slurping ghost, and to the older viewers he’s an unholy cross between Grimaldi and Doctor Caligari.
Despite the title, this series is really more about Sarah Jane’s young friends – they’re the point of connection for the young audience, after all – and all hold themselves well, particularly Rani, clearly pitched as a Sarah Jane in waiting. It wouldn’t be too surprising if, depending on how the parent series develops in the next couple of years, we see Anjili Mohindra as a guest passenger in a certain blue box for at least a couple of episodes.
That said, although she’s occasionally pushed to the background of her own series, this is still very much Sarah Jane’s show. We don’t want to go on too much about this, since it’s not really the aim of the programme, but it is refreshing to see a show aimed at children in which the lead character is a woman in her fifties. However, the show itself doesn’t get too preoccupied by this, so neither will we (if only because we still can’t quite believe that Elisabeth Sladen is in fact 62).
In short, this is a brash, confident beginning to what promises to be a fun series (even the occasionally-grating K9 is developing a wry, sly sense of humour) that will keep the children enthralled and convince the older viewers that they really do still make kids TV like they used to.
Airs at 5.15pm on Monday 11th October 2010 and Tuesday 12th October 2010 on CBBC.