Can I cop out and say a combination of the three? I say that with the tempered caveat that I thought the show pulled its socks up just a little this week. Oh sure, you could still see where every pound hadn’t been spent, and I’m increasingly dubious about hinging a key role on Tamzin Outhwaite’s shoulders. But the batshit crazy moments were fewer in number, some of the logic gaps had been closed up, and in their place was more of a police procedural. Not a great police procedural, but a police procedural nonetheless. And one that I, you might have guessed, didn’t easily follow. Emun Elliot’s Dr Christian King continues to take on something of a ringmaster role, even though there’s a sneaking suspicion that he’s none the wiser as to what’s going on himself. But bugger it, why not have some fun with it, he’s reasoning. We like his style. Once more, of course, you’re asked to buy that this a deathly secret mission that the group have to tackle, where the team of crack detectives seem unable to call on any assistance for even the most mundane of jobs. We get it, it’s cheaper that way. And one quick aside, while we’re talking budget. How is it that E4’s Misfits is made on a shoestring and hides it well, while Paradox has had a more generous cash injection, yet looks so, well, ‘underfunded’…? This time, it was a potential rape and assault, with a telegraphed and not well-acted main suspect, that was the focal point. It wasn’t densely plotted, but it did have some more solid foundations. And it did have a few bumps along the way. Furthermore, it didn’t have a tidy conclusion, leaving a character out in the open to revisit next week (as the ‘teaser’ trailer at the end hinted). What lifted the episode slightly is that Paradox spent some time exploring a story ramification. I’m still not quite sure why DS Holt wasn’t told that he was on the hit list last week (and while we’re theorising, could his number still be up? Could the picture they were looking at of his body last week be one still from the future?), but thanks to a fairly clumsy scene, he found out here, and was a bit pissed about it. I like to think I’d be a bit pissed about it too, and here, for my money, was a human being reacting in a way I’d expect them to. While Paradox got its act together a little, the problem, though, is that the investigation itself wasn’t really that interesting to follow. If I hadn’t known beforehand that it was the middle episode in a series, I’d have probably twigged it. It was competent box ticking, and given that there are only two episodes of this left, I was expecting some of the bigger ideas to have kicked in by now. At the moment, we get Dr King offering some Mystic Meg-esque titbits, and Callum remarking about his feeling of how he fits in, but we’re not really closer to finding out who is using the satellite, which of the cast of characters is inevitably working against the others, and – ultimately – what the whole show is about. It might be chucking out a few subtle hints, but – let’s face it – it’s hardly Lost, is it? And here’s the ultimate problem. I remember at this point in Torchwood: Children Of Earth being utterly compelled, after three of five episodes, to rearrange my life to make sure I was sat in front of the telly come the start of episode four. With Paradox, that’s not even close to happening. At the moment, it’s fighting my Sky+ box for a repeat of Only Fools and Horses on Dave, just in case they never show the latter again. Given that Paradox has asked a lot of its audience to stick with so much stupidity to get this far, it’s hardly compulsive viewing. But now that I’ve made it this far, I’m hoping that it starts to tie some strands to the show’s title for next week. Could this be the show where all of a sudden, someone comes off the bench and scores a corking goal with just minutes left on the big red counting down clock? I’m doubting it, but as I’ve got this far, I’m damned if I’m not going to find out.
