Curfew, Sky One

So bad were the opening 15 minutes of Sky One’s sort-of sci-fi drama that this viewer very nearly turned off. Based on that first quarter of an hour the show appeared risible, clunky, awkward and poorly-imagined. A little crass too, with the F-word scattered randomly across the script without any apparent thought given to its potential power when used sparingly instead of profusely.

But sticking with it over the first two episodes has paid off. The ensemble cast, which includes Adrian Lester, Billy Zane, Sean Bean and (though we haven’t met her character yet) Miranda Richardson, have gradually begun to inhabit their roles and the drip-feeding of information via flashbacks has introduced new and more intriguing layers to the story, set in an alternate reality (or is it a near future?) in which a totalitarian UK is under night-time curfew. Why? Because the country is plagued by vicious, fast-moving beasts, the result of an as-yet-unknown virus which turns humans into mutants, or “mooks” as they’re known. Those who want to try to escape and have an appropriately outlandish vehicle in which to do it can enter a road race, with the ultimate prize being access to some nebulous Shangri-la – an island where, it is promised, you can sleep out and night see the stars. Or something.

This may change, but so far in the race we’re rooting for the Donahues, and not just because they’re driving a clapped out old Volvo estate. A more-or-less normal family, they’ve already lost one parent (Lester) to a mook bite but younger child Roman (Ike Bennett) may hold the key to the whole mook mystery in the cache of files he downloaded after hacking into the servers of the sinister Brooke Heath medical facility. Helping them out, albeit grudgingly, is former ambulance worker Kaye Newman (Phoebe Fox), her ex-boyfriend Michael (Malachi Kirby), a former inmate at Brooke Heath, and Kaye’s sister Ruby (Aimee-Ffion Edwards), who’s now going out with Michael.

So imagine Wacky Races co-directed by Quentin Tarantino, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish, which is to say imagine Death Race crossed with Shaun Of The Dead and Attack The Block, but with post-apocalyptic punk stylings borrowed from Mad Max and Escape From New York and a soundtrack by John Carpenter or Tangerine Dream. Did I miss anything in that round-up of influences? Oh yes, episode two featured a brilliant visual gag lifted lock, stock and smoking bazooka barrel from Chris Morris’s jihadi satire Four Lions, and Game Of Thrones fans already excited by the presence of Sean Bean will have been delighted by the special effects shot which closed Friday’s second episode – a massive barrier circling London which, though not made from ice or patrolled by actors in fake bearskin rugs from IKEA, was a dead ringer for The Wall.

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