Lost Christmas, while The Borrowers was yet another version of Mary Norton’s classic children’s books. It featured Christopher Eccleston, Victoria Wood and Stephen Fry, and was also broadcast by the BBC at Christmas.
Lifetime’s unauthorised biopic Magic Beyond Words: The J. K. Rowling Story featured Poppy Montgomery as the struggling young Harry Potter writer and proved, if there was any doubt, just how boring being an author really is.
For the first time since its 2005 revival, the BBC’s Doctor Who totally lost the plot (literally) under new show-runner Steven Moffat. Matt Smith’s increasingly annoying time traveller faced his “final” days as he and his various companions bumbled their way through thirteen episodes that culminated in a ludicrously complicated finale that totally failed to deliver a satisfying conclusion to the season’s multiple plots.
Neil Gaiman, Mark Gattis and Toby Whithouse scripted episodes, and guest stars included Frances Barber, Hugh Bonneville, Lily Cole, James Corden, Ian McNeice, Simon Callow, Mark Gattis, David Walliams, and Alex Kingston as the no-longer-enigmatic River Song.
As usual, the Christmas special, The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe, was also a disappointment, as the Doctor whisked a wartime widow (the excellent Claire Skinner) and her two children off to a Narnia-like winter wonderland filled with menace. Guest stars Bill Bailey, Arabella Weir and Alexander Armstrong were completely wasted, thanks to Moffat’s lacklustre script.
Earlier in the year, viewers of the children’s show Blue Peter took part in a competition to design a new version of the central console of the TARDIS.
Despite an injection of cash from America’s Starz network, the BBC’s ten-part mini-series Torchwood: Miracle Day, in which the usually immortal Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) was the last man in the world who could die, was ultimately disappointing, despite solid support from series regular Eve Myles and new team members Mekhl Phifer and Alexa Havins. The impressive list of US guest- stars included Bill Pullman (as a creepy paedophile-murder), Lauren Ambrose, Wayne Knight, C. Thomas Howell, Ernie Hudson, John de Lancie, Nana Visitor and Frances Fisher.
Angela Pleasence popped up as a psychic bag lady, Peter Bowles played an old newspaper editor, and the intrepid reporter adopted an alien daughter in the BBC’s fifth and sadly final series of The Sarah Jane Adventures, which only ran for three two-part episodes in October due to the death of its star, Elisabeth Sladen.
Although ostensibly aimed at young adults, BBC 3’s six-part The Fades was one of the best and darkest supernatural shows of the year as teenage outsider Paul (Ian de Caestecker) discovered that he was really one of a group of “Angelics” that could see the cannibalistic dead, who were returning in corporeal form to wreak revenge upon the living and bring about an apocalyptic future. Daniel Kaluuya as Paul’s geeky friend Mac managed to keep the tone of Jack Thorne’s superior series from getting too dark.
At the beginning of February British TV came up with not just one, but two haunted house series. Based on an unproduced 2008 pilot for an American show called The Oaks, ITV’s Marchlands was about three families living in the same rambling old house in 1968, 1987 and 2010, who were all connected by the restless spirit of a drowned eight-year-old girl. Atmospherically told over five one-hour episodes, the increasingly spooky series featured Jodie Whittaker, Alex Kingston, Dean Andrews, Denis Lawson and Anne Reid amongst its impressive ensemble cast.
Less impressive was Bedlam, the first original drama commission from cable TV channel Sky Living, in which no horror cliche was left unturned by its three soap opera creators. Over six episodes, former mental illness patient Jed Harper (Theo James), who could see ghosts and how they died, and his only likeable flatmate Ryan McAllister (Pop Idol winner Will Young) investigated multiple hauntings in Bedlam Heights, a creepy apartment block converted from an old insane asylum. Coincidentally, the first episode also involved the vengeful ghost of a drowning victim.
Neither show was as outright ludicrous as FX’s thirteen-part American Horror Story, but what would you expect from the people who brought you Nip/Tuck and Glee? Connie Britton, Dylan McDermot and Taissa Farmiga were the dysfunctional Harmon family who moved into an old Los Angeles mansion, only to discover that it was not only haunted by the world’s most dysfunctional ghosts, but that they had also inherited the neighbour from hell (a scene-stealing Jessica Lange). A two-part Halloween episode introduced Zachary Quinto and Teddy Sears as a deceased gay couple, Mena Suvari guest-starred as the 1940s “The Black Dahlia” murder victim, and pretty much everybody ended up dead (if not gone) at the end.
The second season of Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton’s gruesome six-part comedy horror series Psychoville from the BBC saw the return of embittered clown Mr Jelly (Shearsmith) and Imelda Staunton’s mysterious company director Grace Andrews, and the introduction of obsessive librarian Jeremy Goode (Shearsmith again), who was haunted by a Silent Singer (also Shearsmith). Christopher Biggins and American director John Landis both had cameos in the second episode.
More soap opera than science fiction, the BBC’s eight-part Outcasts followed the trials and tribulations of a group of bickering Earth settlers trying to build a new future on a distant planet called Carpathia. Unfortunately, despite an ensemble cast that included Liam Cunningham, Hermoine Norris, Daniel Mays, Eric Mabius and Jamie Bamber (whose character was killed-off in the first episode), not only was the show a dull reworking of the 1994–95 series Earth 2, but the central mystery also owed much to Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles. The series was quickly moved to another time-slot because of disappointing viewing figures.
Despite occasional flashes of welcome humour, the third season of the BBC’s Being Human was a grim affair as vampire Mitchell (Aidan Turner) rescued ghost Annie (Lenora Crichlow) from Purgatory and was forced to face the consequences of his bloody massacre of a passenger train in the previous series.
While werewolves George (Russell Tovey) and Nina (Sinead Keenan) found themselves expecting a baby, unexpected visitors dropping by the housemates’ new Barry Island home included teenage vampire Adam (Craig Roberts), who was really forty-six years old; party-loving zombie girl Sasha (Alexandra Roach); werewolf traveller McNair (Robson Green) and his son Tom (Michael Socha); stressed-out social worker Wendy (Nicola Walker); persistent policewoman Nancy Reid (Erin Richards), and mysteriously resurrected vampire Herrick (Jason Watkins), who claimed to have lost his memory.
An eight-part spin-off show, Becoming Human, was available on the BBC website (and subsequently edited-together as a TV special). It involved schoolboy vampire Adam (Roberts again) teaming up with a werewolf (Leila Mimmack) and a human (Josh Brown) to solve a mystery.
Relocated to Boston, an American version of Being Human starred Sam Witwer as vampire Aidan, Meaghan Rath as ghost Sally and Sam Huntington as werewolf Josh. The first season aired over thirteen episodes on the Syfy channel.
In the second season of Syfy’s Haven, loosely based on a Stephen King story, all the main protagonists discovered that there were secrets in their past they never knew about.
Bi-sexual succubus Bo (Anna Silk) learned to work with the Fae, despite the new Ash (Vincent Walsh), while werewolf detective Dyson (Kris Holden-Ried) sacrificed his ability to love in the second season of Syfy’s Lost Girl.
The third season of the channel’s enjoyable Warehouse 13 saw the return of Jaime Murray’s terrific H. G. Wells, while Eureka’s Douglas Fargo (Neil Grayson) made a return visit to the Warehouse, which was apparently destroyed in the season finale. Kate Mulgrew, Anthony Michael Hall and Aaron Ashmore joined the cast as semi-regulars.
The third series of Syfy’s Sanctuary ended with the inhabitants from Hidden Earth coming to the surface, and the fourth season kicked off with Dr Helen Magnus (Amanda Tapping) travelling back in time to Victorian London to prevent Adam Worth from changing history. In the two-part finale, Magnus put her long-term plans for the Sanctuary network into action, as Caleb (Gil Bellows) plotted to turn the human race into Abnormals.
Syfy’s likeable Eureka (aka A Town Called Eureka) ended its fourth season with an accidental spaceship launch, but it was back three months later with a Christmas special in which everyone was turned into cartoon characters.
