Happy New Year? no comments

Well, it's all go from the start of 2010.

Being Human returns, clashing with the new Wallander on Sunday.

I like Wallander: a grumpy, middle-aged alcoholic Volvo driver. Don't know why.

Then Tuesday sees Survivors back, slightly to my surprise. Obviously it's too late to leave the original series to rest in peace, but why prolong the agony? Better to have spent the money making Day of the Triffids into a six part mini-series. John Duttine could have played Mason's dad. (I'm kidding, Brian Cox was excellent, as usual.) Perhaps they didn't want to look like they were just re-hashing an old program . . .

Seems, much like Paradox, that Survivors was made to be a two-series product, so we were going to get it come what may. Whatever happened to the creativity being left to writers and actors instead of marketers? John Simm said he didn't want to do more Life on Mars, so it ended brilliantly.

A triumph not repeated by Ashes to Ashes, which is being hauled out of the morgue for another airing. I can see the logic: keep making the retro 80's themed program as-is because sending yet another are-they-aren't-they-dying victim back a decade is really throwing remaining credibility out of the window.

Implication is that Gene Hunt won't survive, because they've "done all they can with the character" - which is no positive reason to kill him off. I could stomach a couple of Gene Hunt specials. Programs that is, not bent coppers. Phil Glennister could probably live with it more easily than being haunted by Demons. (Thumbs up to ITV for their hit-or-miss comissioning policy killing that turkey.)

All this and the vague threat of Last. Sorry, I meant the last series of Lost, by my reckoning series six. This sits uneasily with my memory of the producers (not The Producers) saying that they had "enough material for seven seasons". Perhaps it seemed like it at the time, but now they haven't got enough cast left for a five aside football match. Maybe we'll get a "Lost season of Lost" series to follow. Or "The Others" as a spin off - it's likely to be more popular than Joey.

Paradox Lost. Really, this time. no comments

The smell in my nostrils proved right; not so much a final episode as a herald for the next series.

Callum turned out willing to be bad in order to do good, with a frisson of doubt about whether the man he killed really was the killer he supposed. (No-one else seems to think so. The implication was there, but was it misleading? I've been very careful about this sort of thing since The Sixth Sense!)

Misleading was the name of the game, with the troublesome kid that Ben was too concerned about turning out to be a wannabe scientist. His misguided brother wasn't the conflagration we were expecting either; only Flint actually managed to shoot anybody.

Unfortunately it was Christian, giving us a nice little cliffhanger that will take a second series to justify or evade. Plus that little teaser in the lab, just to say that it wasn't all over yet . . .