Review - The Sarah Jane Adventures: The Man Who Never Was

 

The sonic lipstick's last hurrah (Part 3 of 3)

It seems churlish — and a bit pointless — to dwell on the negatives, so let's get it them of the way.

The Man Who Never Was is the weakest serial of The Sarah Jane Adventures's final half-series. The details are clunky and there is an almost unforgivable bit of idiot-plotting to get us to the cliff-hanger at the end of the first episode.

But never mind all that; it is still an entertaining episode and a fitting tribute to its late star.

The other parts of the story, the important bits, more than make up for the deficits, and Russell T Davies deserves our thanks for reigning in his tendency towards over-blown melodrama.

I'm going to miss The Sarah Jane Adventures an awful lot. In its quiet way it offered its young (and not-so-young) viewers a powerful moral vision and provided an example (instead of a lecture) of a subtly radical alternative to life as most of us know beneath its fantastic trappings.

Some spoilers behind the link. And I'll try not to get blubbery.