1.11 Hunger Pangs This week’s Atlantis sees a poverty-stricken Jason stealing a loaf of bread to sate his hunger, clumsily escaping the clutches of the rightfully outraged shopkeeper, whilst dropping the bread into a trough of water. It’s a lesson to us all that theft is wrong, actions have consequences and even heroes that, at one point, could dine on their reputation cannot dine if they no longer have money. That’s not the point of this week’s episode, however, the point is… Jason is buff. Jason has desecrated a shrine to Hecate and, being the expert in all things Greek, he has absolutely no idea what this means. Thankfully for our dim-witted, buff friend, Pythagoras does. Enlisting the help of Ariadne, they plan to cure Jason of his malady, but this puts her life in peril and it’s only the buffoonery of Hercules and Pythagoras that stop her becoming dog food. It’s a race against time to save Jason from being lynched by the city’s guards and prevent a pointless plot contrivance from killing him. Atlantis continues to ride the rollercoaster of adequacy, seeing yet another episode where the bar is set at mundane. It’s the type of episode where you could go and make a cup of tea, come back and feel you’ve missed nothing interesting and it’s unlikely you’d be driven to watch it again. After each transformation, Jack Donnelly appears in the nude, covering his dignity and showing off his buff torso. The transformation is barely shown and what we do see is tame by any standards. Donnelly does a decent enough job, showing a hint of skill when he comes face-to-face with Ariadne, but otherwise he’s just a decent body running around. Pythagoras’ love of maths plays a big part in this episode, getting references in two scenes – geometry is used to help him clean a room and the swinging of a pendulum leads him to believe he knows how to measure the passage of time. Robert Emms is clearly having fun with his character, delivering a quirky, if somewhat stilted, turn. Visually, there’s something about Atlantis that make all the environments look like sets on a sound stage. There’s rarely a feeling that it’s filmed on location and, for a bustling centre of trade and industry, it feels a bit empty. Whilst it may be visually interesting, it doesn’t feel lived in. Unevenly paced, unevenly acted, this week’s Atlantis is yet another interesting premise let down by the delivery. It never really gets going, though has yet another strong, if somewhat cliched story. The ending is rushed and, despite what is happening to Jason, it’s difficult to actually root for his survival, or his love for Ariadne. It’s just a melange of mediocrity, a much of a muchness, a medley of the mundane. You get the point. It struggles to be anything and seems to suffer from scriptwriters who only occasionally dip their toe into the pool of interesting. Perhaps, by series two, they’ll dive in and bring together the skill of some of the cast, the potential of the world in which its set and the heritage of the BBC when it comes to fantasy and period dramas. Two episodes to go… will we ever discover if Pythagoras actually desecrated Hecate’s shrine by pushing over her effigy and crushing one of her worshippers? Probably not… Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.
