I am a big fan of all things sci-fi, whether it is the novels and stories by the likes of Isaac Asimov, Philip K Dick, Ray Bradbury and even Harry Harrison or movies by George Pal or Ridley Scott, but this is not in their league and at 20 episodes the series is way to long. An interesting idea plot wise, big corporation in a universe; "Alphaverse"; dying from over pollution has developed a link to a series of parallel universes in order to plunder their resources. Predictably things go awry after an explosion affecting all three connected universes. The first universe has a decidedly Blade Runner feel, filmed with a green filter and mostly in the dark and rain. Keeping to the Blade Runner theme the big corporation is run from a shiny, palatial office at the top of a tower by a cross between Rachael, the replicant and Cruella De Vil whilst the hero tries his best to be Deckard; even when hurled into another universe; but spends too much time miserably contemplating his navel or chasing his tail for hours on end and getting nowhere fast. Even the cop in this universe looks and behaves like he was drafted in from Blade Runner. The second universe; supposedly ours as it is set in Cape Town; is where most of the action takes place. It has more of a gritty realism with what feels like hours of our protagonist running around seedy backstreets and echoing warehouses either chasing or being chased before ending up in long drawn out fight scenes. This is where he also meets the conspiracy theorist destined to follow him around aimlessly and who, when the protagonist disappears for weeks on end, never wonders if he's OK. This "Betaverse" is also where our antihero, the seemingly psychotic son of the corporation founder spends an inordinate amount of time in unnecessary sexual activity in his nightclub when not dousing himself in water and travelling between all universes at will. The third "Gammaverse" is shot in warm oranges and blues and looks more like an advert for an exotic holiday. From this paradise we get a pointless female "terrorist" hurled into Betaverse as a result of her part in the explosion. She spends most of the series looking confused whilst running away, being captured and brainwashed by some weird group, running away, killing random people and running away until she finally gets to go home in the final episode. Several episodes could have been binned completely as they are obviously a filler episodes adding little to the plot. The final episode was just plain silly, with a lot of poor acting and editing as our protagonists lurched into Matrix territory, in what I presume is yet another universe, to spend eternity hooked into the system controlling the links they have opened up between the other three. If the producers had cut out the hours of navel searching, interminable sex scenes, the long drawn out chase and fight scenes and the unnecessary filler episodes this series could have been half the length. I do have to confess that I only made it to the end by resorting to the fast forward button quite a few times as the episodes trundled on.
Review of Charlie Jade
