Doctor Who: The Happiness Patrol (1989)

While most Colin Baker Whos were just a dead loss, the McCoy serials had an annoying tendency to have a clutch of promising, interesting elements - and an increasingly confident central performance - and then scupper them with a lot of running-around. Like Paradise Towers, this has a setting which ought to play to the artificial, kids' show look of Who in the '80s: it's set on a planet where the Thatcherite ruler (Sheila Hancock, very good) has decreed everyone be happy, and the gestapo consists of women with bright pink uniforms and red cockatoo hair - while the executioner is the Kandyman, a giant licorice allsort robot.

Oddly, the production design is a touch dingy, when it ought to be garish, though the costumes and performances are effective. The problem is that the plot consists of people stumping around in their rooms, with captures and escapes that happen by tedious rote as if even the characters couldn't be bothered to put their whole hearts into it. There's an idea here, and it's a shame it wasn't done properly. Still, McCoy has good moments - especially when he shows a moral fervour beneath his habitual looning.
KIM NEWMAN

First published in this form here.

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