Set a course for Obsessed With Film, where I've reviewed the premiere of the BBC's brand new sci-fi drama OUTCASTS, starring Liam Cunningham, Hermione Norris and Jamie Bamber. There's a spaceship in peril, a little boy obsessed with tigers, and flatulent pigs! What else do you want?
The BBC have a tendency to produce sci-fi that, as a result of low budgets and a desire to appeal to audiences who wouldn't ordinarily watch the genre, are often confined to a present-day milieu. Even time/space-hopping Doctor Who tends to flit between Cardiff and London. There are few examples of UK TV shows that have the cash and courage to transport audiences to other worlds, but expeditionary sci-fi seems to be in vogue right now. Battlestar Galactica's remake was the early-'00s vanguard, Avatar took it mainstream in 2009, Terra Nova aims to capitalize for US TV this summer, and before then the BBC have their long-gestating Outcasts. The aforementioned stories all concern people leaving their home environment, often because of irreparable disasters, for the sanctuary of a foreign world. Are sci-fi ideas in constant rotation, or do they come into fashion because of an underlying mood writers capture in their fiction? Continue reading...
