Eleventh Hour

I managed to watch the second episode of this four part series last night, and was even more impressed than I was after the first. Patrick Stewart plays the role of Ian Hood perfectly. It's actually very refreshing to see him playing a character who's far more human than the two roles he's most famous for. Ashely Jensen is also utterly superb, and it's thanks to both of these actors that the series manages to be as affecting as it is. I really warmed to Jensen after seeing her in Extras; I had high hopes for her future career, but you never know how it's going to turn out. Based on her performance in this, she has a very bright future ahead of her. It's also refreshing to see a female body-guard character, rather than the stereotypical knuckleheads It's genuinely one of the most unsettling, thought-provoking and yet humorous series I've come across in a while. It's a shame there are only the four episodes in this run, but I'd hope that Jensen and Stewart had enough fun making it to do some more. Stephen Gallagher's writing is also particularly strong here – I'm familiar with his particular brand of bio-horror from dramatisations like Chimera, but have never really read any of his novels. I initially thought that Ian Hood might have been a character he'd written about before, but I can't find any mention of him in his previous books. So Eleventh Hour gets a big thumbs up from me. The state of British television is a beautiful thing to see at the moment. This, Hotel Babylon, Life on Mars, and things like Hustle and Spooks are all proving that we can produce excellent, character driven drama of at least equivalent quality to the US, and sometimes more.