ITV has unveiled the first pic of Da Vinci’s Demons star Tom Bateman in Jekyll and Hyde. Created by The Fast Show writer Charlie Higson and inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, the ten-part drama will feature “spooky creatures, ghouls, zombies, werewolves and vampires” in 1930s London. > … >
Tom Bateman, Richard E Grant and Natalie Gumede will lead the cast of Jekyll & Hyde, ITV’s new action adventure series. From The Fast Show writer Charlie Higson and inspired by The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, the ten-part drama will feature “spooky creatures, ghouls, zombies, werewolves and … >
The second of Series 5’s three two-part tales opens with a jinxed Native American totem pole and an unusual rainstorm over London: a downpour of trout.
BBC Two’s recent The Shadow Line is a serial sodden with blood: seven hours of claret-splattered, frequently flamboyant, occasionally preposterous and completely compulsive television.
A complete and unexpurgated knowledge of the truth is what DI Jonah Gabriel (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and the viewers who have followed his exploits through every twist and bloodstained turn of this expansive, intricately-plotted thriller deserve; and happily, it’s precisely what they get.
After several weeks of soul-searching and self-doubt, DI Jonah Gabriel (Chiwetel Ejiofor) finally establishes which side of the line he was on before being shot in the head – and who his real enemies are.
Over the course of its first four episodes, The Shadow Line has matured from an overwrought, rather confused melodrama plagued with florid verbosity into one of the BBC’s best thrillers in a very long time. In the fifth instalment, it gets even better.
BBC Two’s increasingly fascinating police drama reaches and passes its halfway stage in this episode, yet neither DI Jonah Gabriel (Chiwetel Ejiofor) nor Joseph Bede (Christopher Eccleston) appear much closer to accomplishing their respective goals than they were in the hours after the death of gangster Harvey Wratten.
Like the drugs at the heart of the late Harvey Wratton’s empire, The Shadow Line has become addictive in a slow, almost sneaky manner. After an unhurried, take-it-or-leave it start, it has insidiously built up to the point where now, three episodes in, it has become impossible to break free of its grip.
The principal problem with The Shadow Line is its identity crisis. At times, it’s a fascinating noir-ish thriller; at others, it feels like an unwieldy Shakespearian melodrama that has somehow lost its way en route to the RSC and found itself on the telly instead.