Strange : review

2003

SF elements

Review

Defrocked priest John Strange and his sidekick nurse and ex-physicist Jude track demons, hindered by the sinister Canon Black.

Ian Richardson is definitely the best thing in this, exuding menace as Black, out to thwart Strange at every turn, and delivering some delicious one-liners. The rest is somewhat bland, despite being knee-deep in dead or deranged vicars, as the tortured Strange makes life rather more difficult for himself than it needs be, and Jude keeps walking into dark rooms by herself...

On the one hand, I like the fact that there's not too much info-dumping: backstory details are revealed only slowly through the series. Yet that very lack of background is rather implausible in this particular set-up: if I were Jude, I would have done some serious research into Strange much earlier. The whole series is rather like this: a few good ideas struggling to win out over rather sloppy execution.

Rating: 4.5