2 out of 5

Creator: Stephen Gallagher

Science Advisor to the government Ian Hood (Stewart) travels around offering his special insight on fringey matters – clones, miracle water – with his gun-in-hand escort (Ashley Jensen) fending off baddies when the good doctor’s curiosities lead him, unawares, into danger.  It’s an absolutely fair premise for a TV show that would allow for a mix of science and action, but while the original UK version does a better job than the US remake of making Jensen’s character actually seem trained and useful (and not just a sidekick), it does a much, much worse job of making the show interesting.  Stewart, with his prim and proper approach, should be a shoe-in for portraying an aloof genius, but the scripts don’t seem to allow him enough gobbledy-gook talk to actually sell it, so more often than not he just seems like a smart guy who bumbles into strange things and knocks into the canister with the cure.  And since this is played straight and with typical UK dryness, the over-serious (and generally overlong, episodes averaging a full hour and a few minutes) tone and lumbering score and long linking shots just make everything so morose that the interesting subject matter doesn’t appear to be getting a thoughtful treatment so much as unnecessarily stretched out to fill space.  And for a 2006 series, episode 3’s computer sequence is painful to watch, suggesting that this was written by someone who’s awareness of science and fiction stalled somewhere in the 90s.  It took me a long time to watch the four episodes, and honestly this might only get one star if the US version, which I really liked, didn’t at least bring me to appreciate the value of the premise and general character chemistry established.  Otherwise, you can seriously skip this in favor of its American counterpart, which uses our good ol’ U.S. of A need for action and excitement to spin the show into something much more intelligent and fun.