Quarter 2 Reviews- Speculative Fiction- Old

015 Speculative Fiction – Old 

May Child was an emotionally wrenching story that carved out a place of its own as it delved deeply into a childhood tragedy that emotionally crippled a woman for most of her life.  Margaret (Patricia Routledge) gets a phone message from Ron (Roy Hudd), who is back in England after having spent some time living in the Costa del Sol.  He wants to reconnect with her.  Margaret, who is in the habit of talking to herself, dismisses his message.  She likes living alone and doesn’t want to interact with anyone, including the rather pathetic May (Emily Fleeshman), a schoolgirl who shows up during a thunderstorm (in fact, she has to climb through a window because Margaret has put so many locks on the door she can’t be bothered to open it).  Margaret tries her damnedest to send May away, preserving every last defense as May gets her to admit that she was once engaged to Roy but chickened out of marrying him.  She spent all her working life in a butcher’s shop at the till and hated it.  Indeed, as May forces Margaret to admit, she has not had real happiness in life since childhood—and has indeed not felt she deserved happiness.  I can’t give away the twist here, but it leads to an ending that was certainly deserved.  May Child was written by Elizabeth Kuti and directed by Tanya Nash in 2004.  

The vast majority of Time Hops was wonderful fun (I was disappointed by the ending).  Time Hops is the unlikely story of EK6 (Sara Crowe), a mouse-scientist from the future, and her pursuer, RV101, a rabbit-warrior, also from the future.  David Harewood was absolutely wonderful as the murderous, rather Judge Dredd-like RV101.  Eek (as the mouse called herself) decided to steal a Time Bike and go to the past to try to stop the cataclysmic event that caused the Earth to be polluted, and all life on it to be reduced to mutated mice, rats, and rabbits living in underground warrens.  In stealing a Time Bike, she made the mistake of choosing Norton (Ian Masters), not Harley (Bradley Lavelle), so that when she ordered Harley to self-destruct, he put it off until RV101 stole him and pursued Eek.  Eek went back to 1994 where she met surly (and rather badly dated!) teenager Steph (Nicola Stapleton), her younger brother Max (Dax O’Callaghan), and local rabble-rouser Baz (Paul Reynolds).  The majority of the next four episodes sees RV101 and Baz in pursuit of Steph, Max, and Eek as they hop through time.  This, rather amazingly, also gives Steph, Max, and Eek a sidekick in the shape of young Horatio Nelson (Joshua Towb)!!  It’s wonderfully mental fun, with clear homages to Doctor Who, and the timey-wimeyness (at least before the cop-out ending) is pretty good.  Worth noting, too, is the theme music, which seems to me the style that the Doctor Who theme would have been like if the show was still running in 1994.  Time Hops was written by Alan Gilbey and David Richard-Fox and produced by Nandita Ghose.