WRITER: Steven Moffat DIRECTOR: Neil Mackinnon
CAST: James Nesbitt (Dr Tom Jackman/Mr Hyde), Gina Bellman (Claire Jackman), Michelle Ryan (Katherine Reimer), Denis Lawson (Peter Syme), Paterson Joseph (Benjamin), Meera Syal (Miranda Callender) & Malcolm Storry (Colonel Hart)
Dr Jackman attempts to suppress Hyde and learns more about the motivation of the organization hunting him...After Episode 2's embarassing stumble with its lion-fighting oddity, things rapidly improve in Episode 3, as Jackman begins to psychologically battle with his dark side...
Writer Steven Moffat manages to give a visual signature to Jackman and Hyde's "battle of the brain", with their fight for dominance effecting electrical lighting. In one particularly creepy scene, Jackman simply sits alone in a train station, light bulbs flickering above him, as a curious young boy cautiously approaches...
James Nesbitt seems to be settling into his Hyde role now, reigning in some of the sillier mannerisms he displayed previously. There's no awful posing with lions, you'll be pleased to know. Instead, Hyde suddenly gets an injection of icy malice (with shades), tempered nicely by the suggestion he's similarly in love with Jackman wife Claire...
Gina Bellman, playing Claire Jackman, has been asked to play a pretty bog-standard clueless wife, but here she gets a chance to break out of that mould and really shine. Claire isn't the wallflower we've been led to believe, it seems; instead, she's capable of holding her own against Hyde's vitriol and punishes her husband's alter-ego, both verbally and physically!
Structurally, Episode 3 is quite different to previous installments, in that it's essentially a sequence of flashbacks that help us understand why Jackman is found lying under a tree, near a country mansion, wearing a blood-stained shirt and cliutching a key, in the opening scene.
It makes for an interesting plot-device, despite being undoubtedly used to disguise Episode 3's relative simple narrative. Also performing the same trick as Gina Bellman, the wonderful Denis Lawson also steps up a gear as Peter Syme, now revealed as being in cahoots with villain Benjamin (Pateson Joseph; still chewing scenes while everyone else plays it straight, to distracting effect.)
For once, James Nesbitt delivers the goods when it comes to Hyde's supposed bloodlust, too. Sure, he's stamped on a teenager, frightened his assistant, killed a lion and thrown a bodyguard through a pub window... but he often seems all mouth and no trousers... until now. Episode 3 sees Hyde turning sadistic in one scenes (an unseen torture), and a late sequence with Hyde foiling a team of armed guards, just by frightening them, is wonderfully done.
There are also definite signs Jekyll has a deeper backstory than you might have originally expected. Is orphan Jackman a clone of the 19th-Century Henry Jekyll? I guess we'll have to wait and see.. but Moffat certainly seems to be leading audiences down some interesting avenues.
Episode 3 is a step in the right direction for this interesting and entertaining serial. It's engaging, goofy fun, both satisfyingly mysterious and pleasantly creepy. There are a few annoyances along the way, such as: why does Hyde torture a naked man but take the time to light candles around the room? Is he that bothered about creating a "mood"? Or, why don't hospital staff recognise Jackman as the sadist who dumped a dying man on them in his Hyde persona? The two are near-identical -- so shouldn't his face be plastered all over the news?
Despite many quibbles, Jekyll is proving to be one of the more resolutely enjoyable fantasy dramas of recent years, nicely performed by Nesbitt, Bellman and Lawson, in particular.
