JEREMIAH BOURNE IN TIME
The Memory Man
SF comedy can be a tricky beast, but if anyone can make it work, you’d think it’d be Nigel Planer. The former Young One has been writing and reworking this time travel story for years, and it has finally been realised in this third entry in the Big Finish Originals range.
Jeremiah Bourne is a fairly typical annoying teenager, arguing with his stepsister, helping out his stepdad and trying not to dwell on the issue of his mother, who disappeared when he was a child. But when he picks up a couple of old photographs, he discovers he has a very untypical ability – travelling through time. When he walks out into the London of 1910, he’s quickly thrown into a world of theosophists, eugenicists and street gangs – most of them still on the street where he lives. There’s a lot to take in, and he’s not sure yet how he even managed to travel in time, or if any of this is connected to his missing mother.
There are some interesting concepts here, but unfortunately Jeremiah Bourne comes across as a confusing mix of serious subjects and caricatured comedy characters, with not enough payoff. There’s certainly something of Blackadder in the historical figures, booming with delight at the idea of time travel and fast food. Alas, that’s where the comparison ends; most of the comedy falls flat, while weighty topics are touched on too lightly to really land.
Comedy Cockneys aside, the acting is generally first rate, with Tim McInnerny and Sophie Thompson in particular shining despite the weak script. But they can’t make up for an incoherent plot or an overload of implausible characters. It’s a shame, because the ideas behind the show – a unique method of time travel, an obsession with the skill of memory, a shadowy society from the future – have a lot of potential. It just hasn’t been realised yet. Rhian Drinkwater
Torchwood’s Eve Myles stars in October’s Big Finish Originals release: gothic horror Blind Terror: The Gods Of Frost.