Brit Sci-Fi. The big flag-bearer for that these days is Doctor Who, naturally, with the spin-off Torchwood that will air this year over the pond on BBC: America “only short while after it airs in Britain”. Many of us older, classier folk will point to direction of Sapphire and Steel, and some of the more self-important people remind that Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes could be seen as Sci-Fi as well. And then there are the classic flying-in-space stuff. But I don’t really want to go into those, more to the couple of not-so-high-on-the-eye-candy ones the new Doctor Who has paved a road for.

And there is a good number of mention-worthy ones. Not maybe great in a Hollywood quality way, but if you’re willing to give them the benefit of doubt and have a healthy tolerance in your suspension of belief, they’re pretty watchable. At least in a campy way. Being Human, a story of a werewolf, a vampire and a ghost, sharing an apartment and coping with their own problems, both supernatural and mundane. What makes it so great is the certain low-key feel it has. The ghost is just a regular girl, with no fancy special effects. The werewolf is a bit dorky-looking and the vampire. Well, the vampire actually manages to pull of quite a good vampiric feel, if he wasn’t so scruffy. But the things it does are subtle and in my mind, don’t try to force you a direction like many other shows do. There are no actual bad guys (ok, well, there are, but they’re just being human) and the label and line of being a monster is blurry and pushed to the background. The people in it look real and feel real. Just enough makeup to make them look nice on camera and clothes selection that doesn’t scream stage costumes, or even TV-costumes. The rough really brings out the humanity better. And in this show it works really well. Also, it doesn’t hurt that they actually seem to toss episodes online on the site that you can watch, even outside Britain (at least works fine here in Finland). And Edit: they took the episode offline from the page, which means it can’t be viewed in Finland anymore, which is a shame. Bad BBC3. Bad. No cookie.

The second show I wanted to mention, to contrast a bit on the rough bit is Demons, which ended last week. The rough in this one isn’t in the actors, in fact two of the four leads could be considered A-List actors on the Brit standards. It pops in when the writing comes in and the horrors of the universe are revealed to us. The fact that we’re supposed to be scared by people in dog masks dancing around is more than a bit far-fetched. And beyond the stage makeup, it’s like the writer was asked to take the basic premise of Buffy The Vampire Slayer and switch a few words around so that no-one notices. We have a British young guy, who comes from a long line of Smiters, who hunt the half-lifes (vampires and such). He is being guided by an American older guy. Whereas Being Human played things low-key, Demons is pompous and falls to the “cool is everything” traps where-ever it might find them. The characters are written with mystery and awesomeness and whatnot in them, and of course this means that the viewer doesn’t develop any sort of a bond to them. And when things turn to such that there should be an “OMG, can’t believe he/she did that” moment, it’s more like “Ok, he/she did that, who cares?” For something having such high profile actors, the show is, as someone put it “utter tosh”. It is best watched as a warning tale, nothing else.

And the third one is one that’s running for the third year – Primeval. The new episodes were supposed to start on Valentine’s Day, but apparently they’ve delayed the launch somewhat. The show is utter rubbish, but in a good way. The premise is pretty much “People hunt prehistoric creatures in modern times” (or “Torchwood with Dinosaurs”). There is a good deal of time-travel involved, and (if you don’t want to get spoiled on the first season ending, skip to the end of this paragraph now) the first season ends up with the main character screwing up the time line and returning to an alternate version, which is an awesome stunt to pull. The second season toys with the idea even further, and frankly, can’t wait for the third to start.

You could say that the show’s Jumping the Shark a lot. They don’t really mind going the “this might bring us more viewers” route if they can. They geekify things and even included raptors to the show on the second season, because they just happen to be cool. But seriously speaking, they had the first panties shot of the cute female lead in the first episode, and that kept happening for the first season, so we’re not really talking about a show that’s trying to pull in viewers by being something written by Shakespeare. But unlike Demons, the show has that nice rough Brittish edge. No unnecessary flaire, just low-key dinosaur hunting. It’s a dreadful, dreadful show. But very a lovable one. The TvTropes page for the series is pretty much a shining praise for the sheer camp-ness.

Other recent shows worth mentioning are Survivors and Dead Set, that both deal with an outbreak and the handful of survivors from it. Both shows are above the quality of any of the stuff mentioned above, so I won’t “really” include them in the list.