Paradox
BBC1
Yes, because we need another GashForward. I don’t know if BBC and ABC held hands 18 months ago and vowed to make a dual assault on our senses with clairvoyant detective horseshit but just a couple of months after FlashBoreward premiered we witness the birth of Paradox, BBC’s "high-octane, investigative drama" starring Mel from Eastenders as Detective Inspector Rebecca Flint, a woman on a mission to do the stupid thing in a series of challenging stop-the-future-before-it-happens situations. This? My rivetted face.
"Nobody knows (or cares) why but astrophysicist Dr Christian King receives images from the future on his computer thing that come FROM SPACE. And in keeping with the rest of the so-called "news" we see these days it’s never good."
Nobody knows (or cares) why but astrophysicist Dr Christian King (Emun Elliott) receives images from the future on his computer thing that come FROM SPACE. And in keeping with the rest of the so-called "news" we see these days it’s never good. Take the opening salvo: a dead girl, a frisbee, a wrecked train, a shattered mobile phone – it’s like an exploded Argos catalogue. What can it all mean?
Dr Space is being all Scottish and enigmatic and teases Rebecca and her bozo colleagues DS Ben Holt (Mark Bonnar) and DC Callum Gada (Chiké Okonkwo) with what might be occurring the noo. This makes no sense at all. Why wouldn’t you just tell them "look I don’t know what’s going on either – kind of weird though. Makes you think doesn’t it?" Instead, shit for brains starts hinting that he may be a terrorist or a Time Lord. Nice work, smart arse.
"Oh this is such a lot of nonsense. Horrible dialogue, gaping plot holes and annoying characters – the shitbird trifecta."
We all know that in real life the moment he even mentioned his future bomb photos they’d have a cloth over his face and have him waterboarded into oblivion. So there’d be none of that Sphinxy riddle-me-this shit once he started sicking up his own lungs.
Once the biographical detail in the images check out, the police start to believe that they really have glimpsed a future disaster – much like I did when I saw the previews. They deduce that there’s going to be an oil tanker colliding with a train on a bridge – they even know which train but they don’t employ the emergency anti-terrorist powers we have in this country that allow them to stop and search GOD to, say, stop the train from travelling. No, they just talk to a man on the train on the phone. That’ll do the trick.
Oh this is such a lot of nonsense. Horrible dialogue, gaping plot holes and annoying characters – the shitbird trifecta. Everything is on the nose, nothing is left to your imagination, people say exactly what they are thinking in every situation. Tamzin Outhwaite is the same as she is in everything else, adequately hacking her way through a flailing script. It is difficult to avoid parallels with its recent American forebear and Paradox does feel like FlashForward on dialysis. It shares many of that show’s vices but expresses them in a skanky low-budget manner. Both shows are so implausibly pleased with themselves that their characters have seen the future.
Well, I’ve seen the future. This gets cancelled.
The best thing about it: Tamzin’s master plan to save the train: run down the road in heels yelling STOP!
The worst thing about it: Dr Space. What a twunt.
The verdict on Paradox: No future for you.
Marks out of 10: 4