Doctor Who: Paradise Towers review (DVD) ★★

A lot of people hated Paradise Towers when it first went out, but I wasn’t one of them. It concerns the Doctor and his companion Mel trying to get a holiday; they go to a holiday resort but find it’s grim, people are going missing, something unpleasant is going on, the people are riven into factions. There are the officious caretakers, the sweet old lady “rezzies”, the Kangs (female gangs to you and me) and an extraneous adventurer called Pex.

So far so OK. It’s overlit and if it sounds like Blade Runner then the first shot of the “menacing” cleaning machine will remind you it was Doctor Who in the 1980s, so budgets were negligible. There are some nice ideas, though. Playing it as a satire mostly works. Briers is a great jobsworth and the narrative continues to send us to the basement to find out what’s lurking there.

Unfortunately what’s there is a very cheap looking pile of junk indeed, which prompts Briers – no doubt under direction – to tip a delicately balanced performance from just the right side of comedic to total farce. The resolution is clumsy and the narrative gets confused – and for once, couldn’t the coward have stayed a coward and not found enough bravery to self-sacrifice and save the day? Just this once..?

You’re left with an underfunded, unsatisfying story. Many people didn’t “get it” during the first few episodes; I did and remember from the time feeling thoroughly let down by the fourth. That feeling hasn’t gone away, even after all this time.