Crime Traveller
The BBC's Saturday Primetime slot is a graveyard for quality television, a time slot where it attempts to prove it can make programmes every bit as bad as those shown on ITV. In 1997 Crime Traveller came stumbling into this wasteland and the BBC got their wish.
The premise is simple: fighting crime is a lot easier if you have a time machine. Fair enough, you could do a lot with that premise and a couple of series (Quantum Leap and Sliders, for example) have spun themselves out from just such a single idea. However it soon becomes clear that any possible clever use of the time travel idea is hampered at every turn by the utter stupidity of the script. Jeff Slade (Michael French) is a maverick cop who gets results his way. You may be familiar with this archetype if you have watched TV any time since, say, the early Seventies. Holly Turner (Chloe Annett) is his science officer, using her police salary to pay for spare parts for her late father's time machine. So far, so plausible, by sci-fi standards. In fact it starts off much like any conventional police drama; it even has a car chase (which must have blown a fair chunk of their budget).
As a drama though it's about as grit-less as you would expect from Anthony Horowitz, the writer behind The Midsomer Murders and Foyle's War. Never mind Homicide: Life On The Streets, this doesn't even aim for the realism of The Bill. After much laughable coppering (for reasons never explained, two of the supporting detectives are Little Lord Fauntleroy and Baldrick) it is time for Turner to spill the beans about her dad's machine. When she first shows it to Slade she tells him to "spare me the inane comparisons, please". Well, sorry, I'm not going to: it looks like something the BBC props department would have been ashamed to furnish Doctor Who with. And so aided by this unlikely pile of junk they turn back the clock to valiantly right some wrongs in the stupidest way imaginable.
The sheer preposterousness involved becomes glaringly apparent to the viewer in an astonishing scene where Slade suddenly pulls a gun and then proceeds to hog-tie two innocent middle-aged caterers in order to steal their van and uniforms. It is a scene of quite staggering incongruity. Up until this point Slade has appeared to work for the CID of some metropolitan backwater like Croydon. Now it turns out he is a member of the Flying Squad and his warrant card allows him to go around assaulting members of the public. In fact a further two firearms are involved in the course of the episode, a classic sign of laziness on the part of Horowitz, considering this is a British drama. This laziness is endemic to the series. For example, 'The Lottery Experiment' - his favourite episode - revolves around a gold bullion robbery. This robbery is rather easy to accomplish since the vault is separated from a pedestrian subway by a single row of bricks that can be knocked out by a small chisel. Rather than thinking his way through the plots, Horowitz (or else the producers of the series) simply steams straight ahead and hopes the audience won't notice. This is perhaps understandable when writing for ITV but anyone who has ever seen a real drama will be howling at the screen within minutes.
Everything that is wrong about Crime Traveller can be seen clearly when it is compared to a more recent BBC drama that similarly tried to put a new spin on the concept of the detective programme: Jonathan Creek. That programme had interesting, well-rounded characters played by actors with a genuine sense of chemistry between them. The plots were complex but didn't unravel under the slightest examination. A witty, clever script facilitated both of these things. Crime Traveller has none of these things. French is a smug soap actor and acts as such whereas Annett has nothing to do in a nothing role. Sue Johnson, as Slade's imperious boss, Grisham, is the only one who emerges with any dignity and notably she is the only one who still has a career. I've already repeatedly mentioned that the plot is a tissue of offensively obvious implausibilities and the programme's idea of a quip is euqally offensive. For example, Slade remarks to Turner: "Are you telling me you can build a time machine but you can't cook a cheese souffle? You've got your priorities all wrong." Even if the point is paint Slade as the misogynistic lunkhead he is, it is a point that is missed on director Brian Farnham who plays this as a joke. It's a dismal drama and the DVD collection itself reflects this in its cheap and hasty construction. The boxes do not even detail the episodes they contain. It gives the strong impression of a product thrown onto the market and left to fend for itself. Unfortunately for its producers it seems likely it will starve to death.
This review originally appeared in The Alien Online October 2005.
The premise is simple: fighting crime is a lot easier if you have a time machine. Fair enough, you could do a lot with that premise and a couple of series (Quantum Leap and Sliders, for example) have spun themselves out from just such a single idea. However it soon becomes clear that any possible clever use of the time travel idea is hampered at every turn by the utter stupidity of the script. Jeff Slade (Michael French) is a maverick cop who gets results his way. You may be familiar with this archetype if you have watched TV any time since, say, the early Seventies. Holly Turner (Chloe Annett) is his science officer, using her police salary to pay for spare parts for her late father's time machine. So far, so plausible, by sci-fi standards. In fact it starts off much like any conventional police drama; it even has a car chase (which must have blown a fair chunk of their budget).
As a drama though it's about as grit-less as you would expect from Anthony Horowitz, the writer behind The Midsomer Murders and Foyle's War. Never mind Homicide: Life On The Streets, this doesn't even aim for the realism of The Bill. After much laughable coppering (for reasons never explained, two of the supporting detectives are Little Lord Fauntleroy and Baldrick) it is time for Turner to spill the beans about her dad's machine. When she first shows it to Slade she tells him to "spare me the inane comparisons, please". Well, sorry, I'm not going to: it looks like something the BBC props department would have been ashamed to furnish Doctor Who with. And so aided by this unlikely pile of junk they turn back the clock to valiantly right some wrongs in the stupidest way imaginable.
The sheer preposterousness involved becomes glaringly apparent to the viewer in an astonishing scene where Slade suddenly pulls a gun and then proceeds to hog-tie two innocent middle-aged caterers in order to steal their van and uniforms. It is a scene of quite staggering incongruity. Up until this point Slade has appeared to work for the CID of some metropolitan backwater like Croydon. Now it turns out he is a member of the Flying Squad and his warrant card allows him to go around assaulting members of the public. In fact a further two firearms are involved in the course of the episode, a classic sign of laziness on the part of Horowitz, considering this is a British drama. This laziness is endemic to the series. For example, 'The Lottery Experiment' - his favourite episode - revolves around a gold bullion robbery. This robbery is rather easy to accomplish since the vault is separated from a pedestrian subway by a single row of bricks that can be knocked out by a small chisel. Rather than thinking his way through the plots, Horowitz (or else the producers of the series) simply steams straight ahead and hopes the audience won't notice. This is perhaps understandable when writing for ITV but anyone who has ever seen a real drama will be howling at the screen within minutes.
Everything that is wrong about Crime Traveller can be seen clearly when it is compared to a more recent BBC drama that similarly tried to put a new spin on the concept of the detective programme: Jonathan Creek. That programme had interesting, well-rounded characters played by actors with a genuine sense of chemistry between them. The plots were complex but didn't unravel under the slightest examination. A witty, clever script facilitated both of these things. Crime Traveller has none of these things. French is a smug soap actor and acts as such whereas Annett has nothing to do in a nothing role. Sue Johnson, as Slade's imperious boss, Grisham, is the only one who emerges with any dignity and notably she is the only one who still has a career. I've already repeatedly mentioned that the plot is a tissue of offensively obvious implausibilities and the programme's idea of a quip is euqally offensive. For example, Slade remarks to Turner: "Are you telling me you can build a time machine but you can't cook a cheese souffle? You've got your priorities all wrong." Even if the point is paint Slade as the misogynistic lunkhead he is, it is a point that is missed on director Brian Farnham who plays this as a joke. It's a dismal drama and the DVD collection itself reflects this in its cheap and hasty construction. The boxes do not even detail the episodes they contain. It gives the strong impression of a product thrown onto the market and left to fend for itself. Unfortunately for its producers it seems likely it will starve to death.
This review originally appeared in The Alien Online October 2005.