Spoilers. "Smitten", written by Merlin scribe Howard Overman, clearly has a better understanding of what ingredients should go into telefantasy like Demons, but its good intentions and a smattering of decent ideas are let down by the usual problems: misfiring execution, limp chemistry between the leads, undercooked relationships, and unintentional laughs...Here, we’re finally given a look at Luke's (Christian Cooke) life beyond his call-to-arms as Galvin's (Philip Glenister) apprentice, with the arrival of an attractive blonde girl called Alice (Laura Aikman) at the college canteen. Luke's smooth moves initially don't penetrate Alice's frosty veneer, but after rescuing her from a gang of bullying teenage boys (by demonstrating his kung fu to the obligatory pop song), it's not long before he's charmed his way into Alice's affections and they start to date.
Of course, Galvin and Mina (Zoë Tapper) come to suspect Alice isn't all she seems, with news that a half-life harbouring a vendetta against the Van Helsing family is in town hoping to kill Luke, and can take the form of a human woman. Is Alice actually a shape-changing, fire-breathing harpie creature? What do you think?
The good news is that, for once, each act built to an effective climax that just about managed to kept your interest through each advert break. It was also a good idea to show us more of Luke's social life -- even if the brief college scenes were lifeless, his only friend appears to be the very irritating Ruby (Holliday Grainger), and his mother has one again vanished. "Smitten" would have worked far better if Alice's character had been introduced earlier in the series, or if Ruby had perhaps been unmasked as a villainous half-life instead.
As a standalone story, there just wasn't the time to make us believe in this hurried Luke/Alice romance, so Luke's protestations over the idea his new girlfriend might be a winged creature just didn't click. I had vague hope for a relatively clever, if not unexpected twist (like Galvin being proven wrong about Alice's true identity) but that disappeared once Alice started swapping drinks spiked with poison to catch her out.
The finale set-piece was once again a painful anticlimax, particularly because it involved Luke facing off against a piece of blurry CGI, successfully "smiting" the monster rather easily again. It would have been better to keep things on a human level, as the intention to make us feel sorry about Luke killing his girlfriend just didn't materialize. Why couldn't Alice have transformed into a humanoid beast, with a few prosthetics; something that could actually act and speak to Luke at the end?
Overall, as a penultimate episode, this didn't set anything up for next week's finale, and it's very difficult to imagine ITV bothering to make another series. For every half-decent idea a writer manages to cough up (sometimes by accident), it's all undone by sloppy direction and stilted performances. There are occasional flashes of a better show struggling to get out, though: I liked the Harry Potter-style dwarf called Luggs (Michael Walter) that Galvin and Mina visited for information, and Galvin's atmosphere-bursting comment after an argument with Luke: "well, this is intense." But these are brief glints of moonlight on a dark ocean of mediocrity.
31 January 2009
ITV1, 7.45pm
Writer: Howard Overman
Director: Matthew Evans
Cast: Philip Glenister (Galvin), Christian Cooke (Luke), Zoë Tapper (Mina), Holliday Grainger (Ruby), Laura Aikman (Alice), Sara Stewart (Prof. Lambert), Michael Walter (Luggs), Daniel Anthony (Ashley), Ed Coleman (Boris) & Alan Tripney (Neighbour)
