WRITER: Chris Lang DIRECTOR: Jamie Payne
CAST: Douglas Henshall (Prof Nick Cutter), Hannah Spearritt (Abby Maitland), James Murray (Stephen Hart), Andrew-Lee Potts (Connor Temple), Juliet Aubrey (Helen Cutter), Lucy Brown (Claudia Brown), Mark Wakeling (Capt Tom Ryan), Ike Hamilton (Andy), Mat Curtis (Jeff) & Adam G. Goodwin (Medic)
After a golfer is attacked by a winged creature, the team arrive and find an anomaly in the sky...This is a very depressing show to review now. It's so stuck in a rut after just five episodes I could probably reprint an earlier review and just change a few details. Needless to say, instead of an anomaly in a forest, or underground, or underwater, we have one in the air.
Therefore, a flying prehistoric creature (Pteranodon) is the prime suspect this week, so cue 45-minutes of the hapless team running around a series of impressive CGI effects.
The cast can be split into two camps: there's the harmless enough boneheads (Connor, Abby, Stephen) and the annoyingly smug clever-clogs (Nick, Claudia, Lester –- although he's absent this week, thankfully).
I'm sure it's weird acting to thin air ever week, particularly when the scripts are almost entirely focused on post-production visuals, but that's really no excuse. Hannah Spearritt and Andrew-Lee Potts are the only ones having fun, leaving everyone else to stumble through with overly serious expressions.
In Episode 5 there's a predictable clinch for Nick and Claudia, which is all very well, although the sudden appearance of Helen Cutter to save the day left a nasty taste in my mouth. The writers better have a good explanation for this woman's bizarre ability and apparent control of anomalies, as there's little evidence of this so far. At the moment she's just a quick and easy way for the writers to themselves out of narrative dead ends.
Overall, this was faintly watchable thanks to the fantastic visuals (again), but it was entirely predictable and excruciatingly formulaic. But, after five episodes, did you really expect anything different from this show?
