Kieran Seymour looks at the highs and lows in his annual review of the year.

Once more the time has come to cast an eye back over the action and telefantasy-oriented output of UK television over the past twelve months. As usual, there have been a healthy number of shows returning for another outing, with a number of new series making their debut. To spice things up a few one-offs have been thrown into the mix along the way, although the BBC's new strand of Christmas ghost stories has sadly been dropped after just two years, with budgetary constraints cited as the reason.

As ever, the BBC has been at the forefront of what could be termed "more imaginative" television, although credit must go to ITV for providing several items of interest. One of them was even quite good, although perhaps not quite in the same league as the outstanding Afterlife from 2005/6.

However, although there has been a good range of programmes for both young and old, it is noticeable that there has been a significant downturn in the number needing to be reviewed here. The biggest drop has been seen in BBC Four's output with precisely nothing produced in 2007 - a sharp fall considering 2006's output consisted of A for Andromeda, The Haunted Airman, Random Quest, Number 13 and the documentary series The Cult of…. A major disappointment, as they were all of interest, even if The Haunted Airman was a complete failure.

But without further ado, it's time to return to the very first day of 2007, when a familiar character finally gained a worthy spin-off series…

JANUARY

With the echoes of Auld Lang Syne having barely died away, the first new programme of 2007 appeared on BBC One on New Year's Day, in the form of The Sarah Jane Adventures.

Unsurprisingly the series was a spin-off from the all-conquering Doctor Who, and once again saw everyone's favourite investigative journalist, played by Elisabeth Sladen, thrown into the frontline against alien invaders. Co-written by Gareth Roberts and series creator Russell T Davies, Invasion of the Bane managed to successfully introduce the regular cast as well as providing a half-decent story - something which the revived Doctor Who arguably failed to do in 2005 with Rose.

Introduced in the opening episode was teenager Maria Jackson (Yasmin Paige) and her father Alan (Joseph Millson) who moved into the house opposite Sarah's, and who managed to get tangled up in the plot to take over the world using a dubious soft drink named Bubble Shock. Along the way, Sarah's eventual adopted son Luke (Thomas Knight) was discovered, a creation of the Bane who it is hoped would help convert the percentage of the population immune to Bubble Shock's effects.

As with the parent series, the effects work was more than acceptable, and the storyline itself was of a standard which the adult Torchwood spin-off rarely approached. The only real fly in the ointment was Maria's new friend Kelsey, who was arguably not quite in the same acting league.

All in all, an impressive taster of what was to come later in the year in the full ten-part series.

FEBRUARY

Primeval finally burst onto ITV1 amid a blaze of publicity on 10 February, and its six episodes of prehistoric action saw Professor Cutter (Douglas Henshall) and his government sponsored research team having to deal with time anomalies through which the prehistoric creatures in question were passing back and forth with ease.

Added to the mix was Cutter's long-lost wife who had vanished in the Forest of Dean some years before, and also Hannah Spearritt, former S Club 7 singer, whose underwear gained a disproportionate amount of screen time and pre-publicity. Subtle it wasn't.

But despite that, the series improved steadily as it went along, with a flock of prehistoric dodos in the fourth episode proving the best of the bunch. Granted, the characters were rarely more than two dimensional, and the series certainly wasn't the challenge to Doctor Who's crown that it was claimed to be, but it did show that, when they put their mind to it, ITV can produce family-friendly drama that can also entertain the rest of the audience without the need for either emergency services or grumpy middle-aged bachelors on far-flung islands. A behind-the-scenes programme, titled Primeval…Behind the Scenes, was broadcast on ITV3 prior to the final episode.

A second season is due on air early in the 2008, although it is rumoured that the effects budget has been cut. Wether this is ultimately to the detriment of the series remains to be seen.

Life on Mars returned for its second and final season on 13 February, with BBC One once more echoing to the sounds of Gene Hunt's 1970s wisdom and Sam Tyler despairing of everything his superior did, whilst hoping that he would finally be able to return home to 2006.

Season One had debuted to almost unanimous acclaim from viewers and critics alike in January 2006, and it's no exageration to say that Season Two was the most eagerly awaited return for a series in years, giving even Doctor Who a run for its money.

As ever the series relied heavily on contrasting the difference between the decades with Sam's more modern methods often bringing him into conflict with his 1970's colleagues, whether it be attitudes to sex or race, or just in policing in general. With the announcement that the series would be coming to an end after just its sixteenth episode, thoughts obviously turned to to how Sam's situation could be brought to a satisfactory conclusion, with theories among the public eventually spiralling way beyond all sane discussion.

As the season progressed, it became increasingly apparent that Sam was indeed in a coma, as messages from the real world started to intrude to a greater extent, eventually leading up to the final episode where Sam finally awoke back in his real life. But what people really weren't expecting was that Sam would discover that, despite driving him round the bed, his imaginary life in 1973 had been far more real to him than that in 2006, leading him to finally throw himself off the top of a building as he so nearly did at the end of the very first episode, and ending up in another coma, and back in 1973.

All in all, a highly satisfying way for one of the decade's best dramas to conclude, and the endless stream of people who needed the ending explained in words of less than two syllables should be deeply ashamed of themselves. Special praise also must be made for the fifth episode which began with a Camberwick Green spoof that just has to be seen to be believed. It was quite possibly the funniest thing BBC One broadcast all year, and yet more proof that Life on Mars was in a league of its own. Here's hoping that it finally gets the BAFTA it so richly deserves in 2008.

MARCH

15 March saw the start of the three-part Superstorm being broadcast on BBC One - the only example in 2007 of the "what if" genre that had swamped the schedules just a few years previously.

As with Supervolcano from the same writing and production team in 2006, the drama was set in the United States and followed the usual formula of interspersing the main story with an interview with one of the main characters after the dust had settled. In this case, the story saw a team of hurricane experts assembled in an attempt to devise a reliable way to control the increasing number of hurricanes which are threatening the United States as climate change starts to make an ever increasing impact on weather systems. Unsurprisingly, several competing theories emerge and, as might expected, both are eventually used. But not before team leader Dan Abrams (Chris Potter) has pulled the plug when the inevitable political interference starts to demand results before theories have been tested, and all available data has been considered. At which point, the major hurricane which had been heading towards Miami takes a right turn and heads straight for New York…

So far, so predictable. As, indeed, was the identity of the traitor in the team who passed on the information to the military which allowed the Miami-bound hurricane to be diverted.

In all honesty, it's difficult to know whether the drama was any good, as the "natural disaster averted by US scientists" scenario has been done to death in recent years, and it's becoming increasingly difficult to tell them apart.

All things considered, it was a passable hour-and-a-half of drama. It's just a shame that it actually lasted for twice as long as that…

David Tennant's second full season of Doctor Who began on 30 March and, as in previous years, provided a diverse range of stories, from the outstanding to the rather poor.

The season began with Smith and Jones which introduced Freema Agyeman as new companion Marth Jones, a character who divided the audience almost down the middle with as many in favour as against. In all honesty, following in Billie Piper's footsteps was never going to be easy, but it's difficult to see why some people were so against the character from the outset, as Martha was easily as likeable as Rose, and a fine choice for the role. It's just a shame the episode itself wasn't that great - something of a tradition as that's now three slow starts in three years.

Things moved up a gear with Gareth Roberts' outstanding The Shakespeare Code, the series' obligatory nod to old-school Doctor Who, and the episode in which the money really showed on screen, as the Doctor and Martha battled against witchcraft and Carrionites in Elizabethan England.

The following episode, Gridlock, would appear to be the yearly one where this particular reviewer diverges from popular opinion, as the lack of plot, overdose of sentimentality (especially the toe-curling scene involving The Old Rugged Cross) and ludicrously predictable final words from the Face of Boe, proved to be just too much to stomach. Leave it to Star Trek in future, please…

Daleks in Manhattan and Evolution of the Daleks were also a point of some contention, both online and personally, as the story looked the part - boy, did it look the part! - and it sometimes went in the right direction, but ultimately fell flat on its face. The promotion of the series in the Radio Times also caused something of a stir as someone with too much power and precious little sense decided that a completely inappropriate picture of the humanised Dalek Sec on the front cover was worth sacrificing one of the few cliffhangers for. Wrong…

Two mid-season fillers in the form of The Lazarus Experiment and 42 appeared next, with the former being just plain dull and Chris Chibnall's first contribution since the woeful Fear Her being a passable real-time adventure.

And then, in late May, the real standouts of the season appeared.

Paul Cornell's two-part story, comprising Human Nature and The Family of Blood, was based on his own original Doctor Who novel from 1995. Set in a boys school in 1913, Doctor John Smith was a newly arrived teacher who, as we were soon to discover, had some very strange dreams about being pursued by aliens. Martha, one of the maids, keeps a close eye on his movements and also on Nurse Joan Redfern (a star turn by Jessica Hynes), who Smith is becoming close to. Enter the Family of Blood who have been pursuing the Doctor through time and space, and who procede to take over the bodies of both students and locals in an attempt to track down an elusive Time Lord.

Ironically, for a series about an alien Time Lord, a story that reduced him to the level of mere mortal, with no direct knowledge of his real identity, showed more about the character than a great many others. The burgeoning relationiship with Joan Redfern was a highlight of the story, and the "death" of John Smith was superbly handled, as was the glimpse of the future he could have had. Special mention must be made of both Thomas Sangster as Latimer and Harry Lloyd as Baines - the latter suberbly played by Robin Hood's Will Scarlet, and as far away from that character as it is possible to imagine. The final scene at a Remembrance Day service also brought a lump to many a throat. Quite simply one the best stories of this or any other season.

The following story was the one people had been dreading - the Doctor-lite episode which enabled the shooting schedule to include the Christmas special, and which in 2006 had thrown up the unedifying spectacle of Love & Monsters. However, as we should by now have come to expect from Steven Moffat, Blink instead turned out to be one of the very best Doctor Who stories of them all, even giving his Hugo-winning The Girl in the Fireplace a run for its money.

Based on his own What I Did On My Christmas Holidays by Sally Sparrow, from Panini's Doctor Who Annual 2006, the story saw the sinister Weeping Angels causing all manner of havoc as people who were unfortunate enough to blink in their presence were zapped back in time, causing all kinds of mischief with the timeline as the Doctor and Martha had been seperated from the TARDIS, and were stuck in 1969. Aided by a number of cryptic DVD Easter Eggs, only Sally Sparrow (Carey Mulligan) can save the day.

From start to finish, the episode was nothing short of perfection. The story was convoluted in the best sense of the word - David Renwick's plots for Jonathan Creek come to mind - but never less than gripping. The Doctor's presence was felt throughout. The Weeping Angels were arguably the most terrifying creations to have appeared in the series - nightmares were reported across the land the following morning from delighted parents! And in Sally Sparrow the series has arguably seen the best candidate for "companion that never was but should have been". If actress Carey Mulligan fails to achieve a glittering career in television then there really is no justice.

The final three-part story (yes, more than two parts for the first time since 1989!) was written by Russell T Davies, and saw the return to the series of John Barrowman as Captain Jack Harkness - last seen on screen in the final episode of Torchwood Season One. As events would transpire, the ony reason for his inclusion in the episodes was that every gimmick connected with the character would be needed as the plot progressed.

For months, rumours had suggested that Derek Jacobi's Professor Yana in Utopia would turn out to have a hidden secret, and it was also suggested that it would be tied in with John Simm's appearance in the final two episodes as the sinister Harold Saxon. In the event that secret was to be the entire reason for Utopia's existence, as it was really all about the final ten minutes, in which the discovery of a fob watch and Yana's attention being drawn to it, produced the revelation that there was another Time Lord still around, and he was know as…the Master!

Gasps of delight all round from old fans who hadn't already known what was in store, and then the inevitable regeneration scene as Yana changed into the rather manic and over-acting form of John Simm. Who promptly legged it in the Doctor's TARDIS!

A fun episode in which Derek Jacobi quite simply stole the show. In restrospect, however, Simm's pantomime villainy was just a herald of things to come, and the first use of Jack's inability to die was perhaps another example of Russell T Davies' lack of imagination when it comes to extricating characters from a tricky situation.

The Sound of Drums began in a similar manner as the Doctor, Martha and Jack managed to follow the Master back to present-day Earth with the mearest lazy wave of a Sonic Screwdriver over Jack's broken Time Vortex Manipulator. As the Master's plans to resurrect the Time Lord race forged ahead, the TARDIS crew find themselves first on the run and then seperated as the Master holds the now aged Doctor captive on the giant Valiant (think Cloudbase from Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons) along with Jack and Martha's family. Martha herself was off on the planet spreading the word about the Doctor before returning to where her journey had begun a year previously and the final confrontation with the Master and the Toclafane.

Right...

Taken as a whole the two episodes on Earth had much going for them. Martha's family were a much more likeable bunch that Jackie and Mickey previously, and the effects work was outstanding. The re-creation of Gallifrey and the Valiant were suberbly done and up there with the best the series has produced to date. The idea of the Master wanting to resurrect his dead race was also a good one.

But, and here's the rub, it was complete rubbish from start to finish. From an acting point of view John Simm's Master was appalling - camping it up for all he was worth, and arguably on a par with the series' previous acting low, Jamie Foreman in The Idiot's Lantern. The use of the TARDIS as a "Paradox Machine" to enable the world's population to be decimated and ultimately have the reset switch hit at the end was risible - the various Star Trek series of the 1990s were righty lambasted for the use of such tactics on a weekly basis, and there's simply no excuse here. The use of Jack's inability to die and his Time Vortex Manipulator were the only reasons for him to return. Like the overused Sonic Screwdriver, these gimmicks added nothing to the story other than providing an easy get out when somehing more imaginitive and original was called for. Even Yana's transformation into the Master at the end of Utopia was a direct lift from The Family of Blood, and was syptomatic of a story which was nothing more than a greatest hits compilation, lacking even a couple of new tracks to freshen things up, relying on back story and continuity to provide a spectacle.

All things considered, a spectacle was all it was, because the story was as shallow and devoid of interest as any that have yet been made. Ideas need to bucked up before 2008…

As in 2005 and 2006, the new series of Doctor Who was followed immediately by the behind-the-scenes series Doctor Who Confidential. Unlike previous years, however, the running time was increased to a bum-numbing forty-five minutes - arguably a stretch too far. Hopefully common sense will prevail for the 2008 run, and the excess flab will be cut back.

The following Friday (2 April) saw the return of the magazine-style Totally Doctor Who for CBBC, which once more explored the concepts and background in a more child-friendly way, as well as adding a serialised animation into the mix, which ran throughout the series and featured the vocal talents of both David Tennant and Freema Agyeman. A compilation of The Infinite Quest was eventually shown on BBC Two on 30 June.

APRIL

The fourth outing for supernatural drama Sea of Souls arrived on BBC One on 17 April, and once again continued the trend for the series to shake up the format each year, consisting of a single two-part story, with Professor Monaghan's assistants, Craig and Justine, both being jettisoned this time around.

Investigating a house into which a married couple have recently moved with the intent of restoring it, Monaghan finds himself faced with the possibility that Victorian spritualist Robert Dunbar (Douglas Henshall) may have successfully achieved the transference of souls from one body to another, with the possibility that Dunbar and his wife may be trying to to take over Ian and Karen O'Rourke.

Ironically, I praised the previous season for its move to individual stories in each episode, but this one-off return to the series' original format was easily a match for That Old Black Magic from the end of Season One, by far the best of the old two-part stories. For once the series had some genuinely creepy moments, with Monaghan's about turn from sceptic to believer building credibly on the end of the previous season. Although nothing has been announced, it would be a shame if the series was to come to an end just as it finally achieves a commendable level of consistency in its storytelling.

A week after Sea of Souls, BBC One's second supernatural drama of the year appeared in the form of Stephen Gallagher's Life Line, advertised prior to transmission as a supernatural love story. In retrospect, this may not have been the smartest thing to say, as somewhere along the line the series totally failed attract an audience - although it does have to be said that they didn't miss much.

Wealthy Peter Brisco (Ray Stevenson) returned to London and promptly stumblled across old flame Katy (Joanne Whalley), who, straight after leaving her partner, manages to walk straight into oncoming traffic as Peter waits on the opposite side of the road. Peter is put in contact with a chat line that may, or may not, put him back in contact with the deceased Katy, and soon after the mysterious Catt (Jemima Rooper) shows up on the scene, with Peter being left to uncover whether she is really the reincarnation of Katy, or even someone else…

The first thing to say is that the revelation that Catt was actually the reincarnation of Katy's ex-partner, who had committed suicide after her death, was the best thing about it. A neat twist, but possibly not as unexpected as it could have been. Where the story really fell down was that you really couldn't care less what happened to any of the characters. Self-obsessed, dreary, unsympathetic…not the the best way for a supposed supernatural love story to procede.

All things considered, it would have probably made a passable episode of an hour-length anthology, but at two hours in length it outstayed its welcome quite considerably.

MAY

BBC One's con-artist drama Hustle arrived on 4 May for its fourth season, and saw several changes to what had gone before. Firstly, the two episodes which bookended the season had been filmed in the United States - mainly, one suspects, due to the popularity of the series on cable over there - and this provided a welcome change of scenery. The other notable change was in the cast, as lead character Mickey Stone had left to work on a con in Australia, leaving Marc Warren's Danny Blue to make the step up to team leader. Introduced in the second episode as an up-and-coming young grifter was Ashley Walters as Billy Bond - effectively taking Danny's original role in the team.

Sadly, it does have to be said that the series didn't work quite as well as before. While there was nothing wrong with Walters's performance as Billy, the balance was thrown off somewhat by promoting a complete dimwit like Danny way above his station, into a position where the calm head and lightning brain of Mickey had always seen him come out on top. Like the previous season, things took a while to get going, with the two best installments coming right at the end of the run. The penultimate episode saw the con-artists finally being brought down a peg or two as they ended up getting conned themselves, in a story where a hostage situation at Eddie's bar left them none the wiser as to how it happened - well, apart from Danny, whose careless talk had caused the problem in the first place. The final episode saw the gang heading off to Albert's old stomping ground in Las Vegas, where his past caught up with him and the race was on to rip off a casino.

With rumours suggesting that Adrian Lester may return as Mickey for Season Five, it's to be hoped that a better mix of stories is achieved next time around, as two real successes out of six isn't really good enough.

JUNE

Steven Moffat's Jekyll arrived on BBC One on the 16th for a six week run, and was the first of two modern re-tellings of genre classics in 2007. It was also the best by a long margin.

James Nesbitt played the part of Tom Jackman, a descendant of the original Dr Jekyll, whose fears for his family lead him to hide all knowledge of their existence from his alter-ego, the wild and dangerous Mr Hyde. Unsurprisingy, the cat gets let out of the bag, and as well as having to protect his family from Hyde, he also discovers that his identity and secret are of the utmost importance to a shadowy organisation willing to sacrifice both his children and his wife for their own ends.

Like a lot of programmes, Jekyll opened with an episode that didn't seem to be quite sure where it was going, and Nesbit's portrayal of Jackman was similarly confusing. It was only as the lives of Jackman and Hyde began get more tangled that it became obvious that Nesbit was actually pretty damn good in the role, with both characters being identifiable at a glance. Less welcome was Gina Bellman as Claire Jackman, which she played just like her last role, and also the one before that. Even further down the acting scale was Paterson Joseph as the stereotypical Brit playing a Yank - brash, egotistical and with a very dodgy accent. Nice exit, though - a swift piece of knife action from Hyde that was as impressively gruesome as it was unexpected.

With the final episode suggesting that the Jekyll legacy has been passed on to the next generation, it would be a major shame if the opportunity wasn't seized. The traditionally weak ratings for a telefantasy series in a 9pm Saturday slot may prove decisive, however.

JULY

Season Two of BBC Two's comedy-free sitcom Hyperdrive arrived on 12 July, and once more showed that it's the runt of the BBC's current telefantasy litter. As with Season One, viewer apathy ensured that not a single one of the desperately weak six episodes made it into BBC Two's top 30 programmes, and it promptly left the way it came - with no audience, no laughs, and no one to mourn its overdue passing.

As before the crew of the HMS Camden Lock travelled the galaxy under the command of Nick Frost's Commander Henderson, boldy going where everyone had already been, and screwing up everything in sight with minimum effort.

In all honesty, it's hard to envisage a more pointless way to spend thirty minutes of your life, and harder still to work out why such an abject failure of a show was given a second chance. CGI work of the highest standard, mind you!

AUGUST

August's only new programme was the feature-length Empathy on the 4th, the third and final of BBC One's supernatural dramas for the year, in which Jimmy Collins (Stephen Moyer) left prison and found that life on the outside was rather more difficult than it could have been due to the fact that a chance encounter at a railway station had brought him into contact with a man who, from the visions Jimmy subsequently had, appeared to have been involved in a brutal murder. The problem is, no one believes him, and on telling the police they think he was involved…

Hardly the most original premise - far from it, in fact - but there was something in the telling that lifted Empathy above the likes of Life Line, with Moyer's Jimmy being a far more likeable character, even if his relationship with DS Jo Cavanagh (Heather Peace) was entirely predictable. The end of the story hinted at the possibility of more to come, but the transmission on a Saturday evening in early August would suggest that minds at the BBC had already been made up about any sequel prior to broadcast.

SEPTEMBER

September's only new show was the full series of The Sarah Jane Adventures, which began it's ten-week run on the 24th.

Lessons had clearly been learned from Invasion of the Bane earlier in the year as the irritating Kelsey had departed, with new character Clyde (Daniel Anthony) being introduced as a far more likeable replacement. The series proper also had a change of format as each story would be in two episodes, with a week's wait in between.

Things kicked-off with Revenge of the Slitheen, which re-introduced the farting favourites from Doctor Who. Although, truth be told, anyone over twelve probably would have preferred it if it hadn't. Unfortunately this proved to be one of the weaker installments, and it was quickly overshadowed by the next story, Eye of the Gorgon, which should hopefully live long in the memory of younger viewers. Special mention should be made of Phyllida Law who was perfectly cast as Bea, and also the ending which didn't take the easy option by curing her of Alzheimer's.

Warriors of Kudlak proved to be the series' weakest link with a deeply derivative and dull variation on the old "aliens recruit kids for combat via computer game" story. A real waste of two weeks.

Next up was the best of the run with the outstanding Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?, in which the character of the Trickster managed to change history so that Sarah had died in the 1960s while her friend, played by Jane Asher, had lived. Was the Trickster really Doctor Who's Black Guardian in disguise? Could Maria's father Alan save the day? Did anyone really miss Luke for the duration? In order the answers were: possibly, yes, and no, not really.

The final story of what is hopefully only the first series was The Lost Boy which saw Luke become the focus of the show as the Slitheen turned up once more and Mr Smith, Sarah's all-powerful computer in the attic, turned traitor. Minus a point for the farting fiends, but the surprise re-appearance of K-9 was a welcome one.

OCTOBER

Season Two of Robin Hood arrived on BBC One on 6 September, and with the exception of the opening episodes - a curious weakness that the series seems to share with Doctor Who - it proved to be every bit as good as the latter half of the first season. Pleasingly it went on to ever greater heights as the season progressed.

With thirteen episodes already made, and the characters now familar to the audience, it was time to up the stakes, with the dastardly Sherriff now plotting to assassinate the King and install his brother, Prince John, on the throne - a thread which would carry through the entire run. And with plotting comes scheming. And also treachery - even among Robin's own group of outlaws. The decision to see Alan a Dale turn traitor was a master stroke, as not only did it put a regular character into Nottingham Castle along with Marian, but it also allowed for some much needed conflict within Robin's own gang. We've also seen a healthy increase (!) in the number of bad guys getting despatched by Robin and his gang as the season has progressed. While certain sectors of society woud prefer it if even fictional characters played nicely all the time, it's been when the stakes have been raised that the series has been at its very best. Episodes such as The Angel of Death when the Sheriff employed a poisoner, and Walkabout where the threat to raze Nottingham to the ground if anything happened to the Sheriff was nearly enacted, that have been amongst the very best.

But it's to the series' credit that the increased darkness hasn't eroded the level of the humour, with the Sheriff's strangled cry of "Catch the pigeon!" in Larnder's Ring being just one of a multitude of lines which have lightened the mood. Gisborne's continued infatuation with Marian, despite the fact she left him at the altar the previous season, has perhaps been a card which has played a few times too often this year, but his character has also seen some development, with occasional cracks appearing in his fearsome persona.

With a third season already planned, Robin Hood will be an extremely welcome presence again in next year's schedules. If only the tiresome naysayers who continue to put down the series based on the opening episodes of Season One would find another hobbyhorse to bang on about…

Season Six of the award-winning Spooks debuted on the 16th for another run of espionage and political intrigue as MI5's finest continued to protect the UK's interests.

But with five seasons and some forty-six episodes already produced, it was obviously decided that a change was needed, and in came a season-spanning storyline involving Iran, the United States' desire to promote a conflict with the country and Section D repeatedly getting caught in the crossfire, as each side tried to outdo the other.

The opening two-parter set the scene with MI5 carrying out the bombing of a passenger train in Tehran, in an attempt to kill an Iranian terrorist who was heading for Britain. Little did they know that said terrorist was carrying a deadly virus which escaped in the blast - along with the man himself - and it was soon unleashed on the streets of London. Needless to say, with Harry Pearce (Peter Firt) and Adam Carter (Rupert Penry-Jones) on the case, disaster was averted, but not without the loss of one of their agents, as Zaf was kidnapped by persons unknown, only to turn up dead at the series' end.
As ever, the turnover of characters didn't stop at Zaf, with Ros Myers being written out and newcomer Ben Kaplan (Alex Lanipekun) eventually recruited from the journalistic ranks as Jo had been before him. The final episode aso appeared to see Jo dead, at the hands of Adam.

Overall, the season was only a partial success, although still way above many other dramas on UK television. As 24 has shown in the United States, a season-spanning storyline isn't really practical without changing direction or threat at least once, and the over-reliance on the Iranian angle perhaps prevented the series from taking as many risks as it once did. Adam's relationship with the Iranian Special Consul's wife, Ana, was certainly drawn out too long, and the inevitable love triangle when Ros was added to the mix was utterly unconvincing from the outset.

But that shouldn't detract from what is still a solid and highly entertaining series. The willingness to try something new should certainly be applauded, and if the experiment is to be tried again, perhaps a limit of four or five episodes would be better. With Season Seven already in production, the series continues to fill a gap in the schedules which is uncatered for elsewhere. Long may it continue.

ITV1's Frankenstein on 24 October was an extremely loose re-working of Mary Shelley's original novel, in which scientist Victoria Frankenstein (Helen McCrory) is involved in stem cell research and desperately searching for a cure for her dying son, William. Things take an unusual turn when she introduces her son's DNA into the mix, and body parts start to develop. It's all too late for her son, who dies, but the creature created manages to escape during a storm, before she realises that it is alive, and proceeds to kill near enough everyone connected with the project. Eventually captured, the story ended with the monster in captivity under lock and key, an object to be studied.

Readers of last year's review may recall that I wasn't particularly enamoured of the liberties taken with the BBC's version of Dracula - the basic settings remained the same (apart from the ending) but the actual story was twisted out of all recognition. It was a fair story in its own right, but a dreadful adaptation of a classic novel.

Where Frankenstein went one better was in taking the basic concept and then creating a modern sci-fi story out of it. By changing the period, locations, motivations for the characters and even the origins of the monster, it neatly bypassed all the problems Dracula had in presenting a radically changed story in a familiar environment. While some landmark moments still survived, such as the monster killing a young girl, and the almost obligatory "It's alive!" line, the story was able to take its own path and was, arguably, far better for it.
That said, some of the acting was below par, and the CGI work was ropey as hell. A nice try though.

NOVEMBER

November's only new item of interest occurred on the night of the 16th when the BBC's annual Children in Need fundraiser took over BBC One for the evening. As in 2005, a new Doctor Who scene was the highlight for many, and Steven Moffat's Time Crash saw the long-awaited meeting between David Tennant's Tenth Doctor and one of the previous incumbents in the role. Stepping back into his cricketing outfit after a gap of twenty-three years, Peter Davison ably demonstrated what an inspired piece of casting he was as the Fifth Doctor back in the early 1980s, and just how good he still is today. For fans of a certain age, the chance to see him shine in the role once more was a piece of television magic, with David Tennant clearly relishing the chance to appear alongside "one of his own" Doctors. With the series being scaled back to just three specials for 2009, the campaign starts here for Davison to get a full story to himself!.

DECEMBER

The latest Doctor Who Christmas special, Voyage of the Damned, was broadcast on BBC One in its now traditional mid-evening slot on Christmas Day, and brought in the highest audience for the show since the infamous ITV strike of 1979, with the overnight figures suggesting that a whopping 12.2m people had tuned in.

Picking up from where the previous season had ended, with the TARDIS apparently having been struck by the Titanic, the story saw the Doctor wandering aboard to discover that he was actually on a space-going liner and, as is traditional is such situations, the ship and its passengers were soon under attack, with the lives of everyone on Earth being threatened if the mighty ship fell out of orbit.

Prior to transmission, all focus had been on the casting of Kylie Minogue as Astrid, which is perhaps just as well as the story itself was a slight one, with the unveiling of George Costigan's scenery-chewing Max Capricorn as the villain of the piece proving to be a major disappointment. Sadly, the best that could be said for Kylie was that the performance was acceptable - although it does have to be said, Astrid was still a far more likeable character than Catherine Tate's Donna from the previous year, making her death all the more poignant.

But at the end of the day, people didn't tune in for an acting masterclass. What they wanted was spectacle and adventure - things which they got in spades. Although not up to the standard of The Christmas Invasion, the episode was certainly better than The Runaway Bride from 2006, helped in no small part by being set largely in space, and therefore avoiding the pitfalls of filming a Christmas episode in the middle of summer.

Overall, a fun seventy-minutes, and far better than the swivel-eyed online loons would like everyone to believe…

The 29th brought with it the final two episodes of Robin Hood - showing the dangers of a season-spanning review being written before the season in question has actually concluded!

"Dark" we had already had. "Gritty" we were most certainly prepared for, as the Sheriff took his plan to assassinate King Richard on the road, heading for the Holy Land and a final confrontation. But the death of Marian, however, at the hands of Gisborne, was a bit of a surprise…

Needless to say, with one thrust from a sword, the entire dynamic of the show has been irrevocably changed. Whereas Robin's avoidance of killing could be worked around in the past, it's hard to see how Gisborne, and even the Sheriff, will be safe from his bow in future - threat to Nottingham or not.

But even with "revenge" almost certainly being the key word for Season Three, it's hard to imagine the series turning down a path where it will conclude with a Blake's 7-style bloodbath. With all but Djaq and Will returning to England at the story's end - for my money, they'll almost certainly re-appear with news of King Richard's death - Robin Hood will be a programme to watch with interest when it returns.

The penultimate day of 2007 saw The Shadow in the North being broadcast - the second of BBC One's Sally Lockhart adaptations, again based on an original novel by Philip Pullman.

This time around the visions of a stage magician, and the messages received by a "fake" medium, set Sally Lockhart (Billie Piper) and her gang up against the villainous Axel Bellman (Jared Harris), whose steam gun could prove to be the ultimate weapon of terror and suppression.

As may be guessed from those few lines, this wasn't a contender for drama of the year, or even original story of the decade, but it was an amenable way to spend ninety minutes, as the plot unfolded and the bad guy got his richly-deserved comeuppance at the end.

The biggest irritant, however, was the most grating use of the old "let's get married and then die five minutes later" cliché in recent history, which would have left only the most undemanding or televisually illiterate person not being able to guess what was coming shortly thereafter. Like Warriors of Kudlak from The Sarah Jane Adventures, it may have been an old idea given an outing for a new audience, but that's really no justification for lazy writing…

 

So then, another year is at an end, and the BBC, as usual, have been at the forefront of (nearly) all that was good in the Action TV stakes during 2007.

Doctor Who produced several of its very best episodes of all time. Life on Mars went out on a glorious high - something that should be shown to all drama producers who eagerly try and stretch a good idea beyond it's natural end. In Robin Hood, viewers have been treated to a series that has actually learned from its past mistakes and improved almost weekly. Even children's TV, with the excellent Sarah Jane Adventures and M.I. High, has shown that there's still life in drama for younger viewers - even though Auntie is abandoning the older part of that audience to the soaps and reality dross, as CBBC's output is re-targeted at a younger demographic. On ITV, Primeval showed how Torchwood should have been.

And the year ahead? More of the same, if we're very lucky. The old favourites are all back again, with new science fiction series such as Outcasts and a re-make of Survivors also on the cards - although it's Ashes to Ashes, a spin-off from Life on Mars that most hopes will be pinned on.

With ratings for most of the shows here being remarkably steady, it looks like the current trend for action and adventure will be with us for some time to come.