The story was a race against time to stop a classroom massacre, essentially, but it was a pretty toothless narrative for such a hot topic. Instead, the possibility that Flint (Tamzin Outhwaite) would be the shooter was supposed to be the big draw, but I never for one second believed circumstances would lead to her slaughtering innocents with a sub-machine gun. Did you? The finale also wrapped-up the serial rapist storyline that never felt deserving of such attention, although it was indeed a very dark moment when easygoing Callum suffocated the ginger miscreant with a plastic bag in an empty warehouse.
And hunky Dr. King finally detected a wormhole in space that might be the mechanism that someone's using to send back images of future disasters. He still hasn't considered the obvious possibility that it's their future selves doing so, oddly. He can't watch much sci-fi. Anyway, in the final moments, King lies shot on the floor of the classroom (but nobody watching at home cares, because life-or-death for him relies on whether or not the BBC give Paradox another series*, not the bullet.)
The denouement was supposed to leave us anxious for series 2, as we heard Flint's voice (assumedly from the future) beam down into King's lab. Okay, so now Prometheus II can transmit voices from the future. That should make things much easier for the team if someone can say "a bomb in the Trafford Centre goes off at four o'clock", so I'm not sure that's a worthwhile development. I'm betting any future audio will be garbled enough to stretch things out an hour: "bomb... centre... clock."
Overall, I've been kinder to Paradox than most critics were, mainly because there's the kernel of a decent idea here, the plots were fairly robust, and the last 10-minutes of every episode were good fun as everything snapped together. But the characters were terribly dull clichés (there just isn't time to develop them because every episode's so focused on the ticking clock investigation**), the dialogue has been consistently laughable, and I just don't buy into the setup with those terrible MoD civil servants at the observatory.
Plus, the show loved to teases us with the mystery of who or what is sending messages back in time, but audiences are so au fait with sci-fi these days that I doubt Paradox has an explanation that will astonish anyone with half a brain. I mean, it's not going to be God or aliens, so who else would want to send a bunch of Manchester cops crime scene photos to prevent catastrophes, but themselves?
24 December 2009
BBC1/BBC HD, 9pm
written by: Lizzie Mickery directed by: Omar Madha starring: Tamzin Outhwaite (DI Rebecca Flint), Emun Elliott (Christian King), Mark Bonnar (DS Ben Holt), Chike Okonkwo (DC Callum Gada), Sam Hazeldine (Matt Hughes), Emma Lowndes (Julie Hughes), Reece Noi (Carl), Connor Ryan (Dylan), Joe Doherty (Fred), Abigail Davies (Amelia James), Lorcan Cranitch (Simon Manning), Jonathan Slinger (Stuart Taylor), Katie Griffiths (Leah Holt), David Hall (Charlie Holt), Jamie Birtwistle (Jason Hedley), Michael Socha (Zac Hedley), Paul Warriner (Police Officer 1), Emma Ashton (Sylvia Broadbent), Jane Riley (Police Officer 2) & Pooky Quesnel (DCI Sarah Bower)
* I've heard that Paradox has a two-year story arc, so I'm willing to bet the BBC will bring it back. It doesn't look terribly expensive, to me. It's also interesting to remember that Paradox was initially supposed to air across five consecutive nights, which would have helped a few of the ongoing plot-threads feel better connected, but I'm glad the BBC opted for traditional scheduling.
** Which is one reason so many of the plots have a connection to the cops, or events threaten their lives in particular. Which isn't a bad idea. But it's still hard to care about the main characters, or their perfunctory families, because nobody really feels genuine.
