TV reviews

In the UK: Sundays, 9pm, BBC1

As we all know, detectives need a gimmick. There’s Columbo, the working class detective; Inspector Morse, the crossword-puzzle-solving detective; Resnick, the sandwich-eating detective; Life, with the ex-con, Buddhist detective. And so on.

Wallander stars Kenneth Branagh as the eponymous Swedish detective.

Hold those words in your mind for a few seconds: Swedish detective. Think about it. Envision the stereotype.

Hey presto, you’re right. It’s Wallander the depressed detective who has so many life problems, it’s a wonder he hasn’t simply killed himself because it’s Tuesday.

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In the UK: Mondays, 8.30pm, BBC3

The sitcom of the 90s was very definitely Friends. So it comes as something of a surprise for Adam Chase, one of the show’s producers, to be slumming it on BBC3 with Clone, a sci-fi sitcom about a mad government scientist who tries to create a super-soldier and ends up producing someone a bit ‘special’ instead.

Greater creative freedom and the chance to work out the kinks before pitching it to the US networks is the alleged excuse, and that’s fair enough. If some of the best writers of the US TV scene want to use British TV to experiment with ideas, I say let them.

The only proviso for that is that they’d better produce something funny. And Clone? Well, it’s very…

Continue reading “Review: Clone 1×1”