Paradox – Tamzin Outhwaite Thriller BBC1 Preview

Police Struggle to Decode Mysterious Prediction of Impending Carnage

Nov 9, 2009

The BBC's five-part, high-concept thriller pits incredulous detectives against images that seem to foretell future mayhem and death.

Viewers with a stress-related illness or even a tendency to grind their teeth should be aware that each episode of Paradox, the Beeb’s big autumn thriller starring Tamzin Outhwaite, is 60 minutes of pounding tension.

From the opening credits on, the audience is swept along in an intriguing race against time. It’s the kind of ambitious and polished narrative that BBC viewers will probably associate more with American shows, but even most Stateside productions rarely have the whoosh and gasp of Paradox.

Images from Space

Can fragmented images received from outer space by a UK laboratory actually be of a disaster timed to occur 18 hours in the future – a girl’s body, a mobile phone, a driver’s licence, a damaged bridge?

That’s the disorientating prospect that confronts Detective Inspector Rebecca Flint, played Tamzin Outhwaite, when she arrives at the Prometheus Laboratory where a space scientist, Dr Christian King (Emun Elliott), has received what are apparently photos from the future.

Mark Bonnar and Chiké Okonkwo

At first Flint and her colleagues, DS Ben Holt (Mark Bonnar) and DC Callum Gada (Chiké Okonkwo), suspect that the smart, provocative King is a terrorist who might be taunting them.

But as they piece together clues from the images, Flint senses that neither King nor any single person could be responsible for the confluence of random events that seem about to cause a disaster at a remote railway bridge. As she tells her sceptical partners, ‘Maybe King is a wanker, but he’s an interesting wanker.’

Mood of Dread

It’s all filmed with pace and gusto by BAFTA-winning director Simon Clellan Jones (Generation Kill, Our Friends in the North) and the pulsing music perfectly enhances the mood of dread, but Paradox’s real beauty comes in the script by Lizzie Mickery.

The writer behind hits such as Messiah, The 39 Steps and The State Within, here steps into the world of high-concept drama and injects it with narrative velocity without neglecting the human interest. Paradox’s premise may bring to mind the Philip K Dick story that became the Tom Cruise film Minority Report, but this production is distinct from that – less sci-fi, more speculative high drama.

Careering Towards Catastrophe

The stand-off between the business-like DI Flint and the slightly creepy Dr King is done well, as are the parallel stories of the stressed father and the over-tired online dater who are among the innocents seemingly careering towards catastrophe.

Moreover, at the conclusion of episode one viewers get a glimpse of Flint’s love life that sets up the following episode brilliantly.

'High-concept for the sake of high-concept is not interesting'

‘I enjoy high-concept shows as long as they are rooted in something,’ Mickery told this writer at the programme’s preview.

‘High-concept for the sake of high-concept is not interesting. I always want a character or a decision or emotion where you think, that could be me. I think Simon [Clellan Jones] has cast and directed it superbly. You’re aware that you’re in a big high-concept show but you’re with people you can identify with. That makes something even more spooky.’

Tamzin Outhwaite

Certainly, Outhwaite, who’s familiar from less interesting shows such as The Fixer and Hotel Babylon, does a fine job of playing a shrewd detective whose confidence is poleaxed as she confronts the question – Do I really have the power to alter the future?

Mickery has cleverly refashioned the cop show with a tantalising twist of What If? So the Prometheus Lab, which does secret government work, is suitably ominous while the cops are ordinary Joes facing a dilemma that never cropped up at Hendon Police College.

Making the Future?

‘The characters have awful moments when they wonder if they are making the future,’ she says. ‘Sometimes when you change it you get one end result that is good and another which is terrible.

‘The story gets more emotional and morally complex as we go along. It’s fascinating because you take three ordinary police officers, who are used to things in black and white, and put them in this world and all that blurs. They are ordinary people struggling to come to terms with that. If you could see the future, would you actually change it?’

Intriguing and Tense

Space scientist Dr Margaret Aderin advised on the science behind the series’ stories and helped Mickery to expand the ideas she had to play with.

The result is a bold and confident thriller – and one that embarrasses the BBC’s recently bought-in, ludicrous waste of space Defying Gravity.

So where are the prophetic images coming from? That won’t be revealed until later but it will be intriguing and tense finding out.

The copyright of the article Paradox – Tamzin Outhwaite Thriller BBC1 Preview in British TV is owned by Robin Jarossi. Permission to republish Paradox – Tamzin Outhwaite Thriller BBC1 Preview in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.