Fed up with all that doubt and speculation? Want to know how this year’s series ends for definite? Want to know exactly what character John Simm plays, right now, for sure, no messing around?
What evil, unscrupulous organisation could you convince to divulge such top secret information, I wonder?
How about the Beeb? What a bunch of silly billies.
In the US: CBS, at all sorts of times
In the UK: Not yet acquired
I’ve been getting an eerie sense of déjà vu watching this. It’s not because this is a US version of the UK 2003 show, although maybe some of the animals are the same. It’s because Aardman has been doing this show in various guises for a long time now.
On the face of it, writing a Sapphire and Steel story shouldn’t be that hard. You can more or less make it up since there are no real rules. The less you say about what’s going on, the spookier and more interesting it gets. The more alien you make the heroes, the better. Ideally, you should make it a four-hander involving Sapphire and Steel, maybe a five-hander if you bring in another element. And the plot should be about regular humans doing something more or less normal and then time deciding to pick on them for no reason.
Simple, huh? (Well, probably not. Cf Adventure Five, the only TV story that wasn’t written by PJ Hammond).
And yet the Big Finish team never do it. Instead of following those simple guidelines, they always populate them with half a dozen extra characters, and have to have some moral tale in which time decides to break in because gay people are forced to hide in the closet or someone doesn’t realise that death is inevitable and can’t be wished away. And, like some “very special episode” of Blossom, Sapphire and Steel have to learn something about “what it is to be human”.
Have a guess what happens in Perfect Day.
In the US: HBO, Sundays, 9pm ET
In the UK: Not yet acquired.
Repeat after me: “I’m sorry. Did I miss something?”
Go on.
I’m sorry. Did I miss something?
Easy huh?
That’s lucky, because you’ll need to use this phrase a lot if you choose to watch John from Cincinnati, the new show from Deadwood creator David Milch. It could well be the most brilliant hour of television yet devised. Or it could be the most awful. I’m really not sure.
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