Radio Times

Sometimes, I'll come across an overwrought drama where I can be fairly sure that the dialogue was written by an infinite number of ants with a giant marker pen.

They roam and doodle, writing whorls of pap that, eventually, someone will shape into pages and form into a script for a science-fiction series. Like Heroes, and, starting on Wednesday this week on BBC2, Defying Gravity.

Defying Gravity is epically awful. It's an international co-production between Canadian, German, American and British (the BBC) broadcasters. I wonder if they are all blaming each other…

I suppose it has at least the potential to become a cult series, cult in the sense of "it's terrible but a handful of people will watch it because it's, like, you know, really deep and meaningful and says a lot about us as humans" and then they'll bore on about it in illiterate messages posted on internet message boards.

Though I'd be surprised if it marshals any supporters along the lines of "it's a cult because it's terrible, but we love it because we can make fun of it and start a drinking game." Just like Bonekickers (ah, the memories).

What's particularly galling about Defying Gravity is that it's obviously supposed to be science fiction for girls, or at least girls who don't like science fiction. It's been described as "Grey's Anatomy in space" because everything not very good has to be a bit like something else that's vastly superior. It can't just be Defying Gravity.

But apart from bridling at the implication that Grey's Anatomy is some kind of catch-all description for female-orientated programming, I have to take offence, too, because Grey's Anatomy is good. Yes, it's a hugely popular, very soapy US medical drama, but it's nicely written, most of the time anyway, and its characters are well-rounded and believable.

By contrast, Defying Gravity's characters are made from balsa wood and they are stereotypes. A group of male and female astronauts are thrust into space in 2052 on a six-year mission to visit seven planets. They are, mainly, idiots who behave like idiots and who do idiotic things. Aren't astronauts supposed to be clever? It's accompanied by the most banal narration you are ever likely to hear; Grey's Anatomy's central character, the witless Meredith Grey, does this, but she's Sylvia Plath compared to maverick astronaut Maddux Donner (played by Ron Livingston, who was the dull Berger in Sex and the City).

Which brings us to that soul-suckingly awful dialogue, or monologue. "In space, there's simply no room for error." Really? Who knew? "It's not about fate, it's about planning." Gosh. "We carry the baggage of our past… our superstitions, our failings." Are you reaching for a bucket yet? "We also carry our hopes and our dreams, the hard lessons learned from our lives… we find redemption in the smallest acts of humanity."

Naturally, everyone Thinks Deeply at the end of an instalment as a wet ballad unwinds on the soundtrack. In episode one it's A Fine Frenzy's Hope for the Hopeless. Quite apt, really.

**

Alison Graham is TV editor of Radio Times

I am strangely attracted to this program and like Steph (16th Nov) want to see it thru.

I have been watching this programme since it began on BBC2, and after the first episode, and after every episode I have seen, I have wondered to myself, 'what the hell was that all about', 'what is the reason behind the hallucinations', 'and why is that Goss (?) bloke in Mission Control so shifty!' But I have to say, despite the fact that the characters are all gorgeous and quite unbelievable, I am really enjoying it. I watched two episodes last night that I had recorded, one from Thursday and one from Saturday, and by the end, I was wishing I could watch another one. I don't know what it is, possibly a strange desire to see it through to the end and find out what on earth (or Venus) is going on, but I am also becoming oddly attached to the characters and the fact that they all have a past that haunts them (don't we all) and the fact that despite supposedly being, as astronauts, one assumes, highly intelligent, they are after all human and all make mistakes, feel guilt, regret, pain, etc etc...

I am finding that, as someone who does generally dismiss these types of shows without watching them at all, I am thoroughly engrossed and dying to see what happens.

How the epically awful Defying Gravity managed to attarct some viewers I'm assuming aren't related to the actors in it is beyond me. Also, I hope they burn all the sets so we can never watch anything of this truly terrible show again. Defying Gravity is as bad as Jedward. Now that is REALLY BAD.

Sorry Alison usually I love your reviews but not this time. I want some fantasy mixed with human emotions. This series is more intelligent than you gave it credit for and the mystery and sensitivity of the main characters make it compelling. There are people on the net asking petitioning for it to continue. If the British could do that with Baywatch than why ever not a good Sci Fi series?

I like this program. It's one of the very few series on the BBC its' worth turning on for. Unfortunately Aunty is following AG's lead and trying to kill it off by bouncing it around the schedule.

Just watched another episode, awful really and then I learn that it is being relegated to Saturday night at 1040. Says it all really.

some parts of the review and other comments posted, may be right, (some of the effects(?) may have been altered so the program would work... artificial gravity,faster than light comunications (delays would be min 2.5 secs for lunar orbit (2way) how far away are they in later episodes?)... But I'd rather watch this than the pile of junk (soaps + reality TV) the wife watches... ;p

Defying Gravity defies the laws of nature. Also defies comprehension as to how anybody can not wish it consigned to a black hole.

I really enjoy Defying gravity.

I do not understand why there is such bad reviews, I have seen far worse on television.

I also love the story line, things happen for a reason, fate.

ongrats to the writers and actors, job well done.

Its mind boggling bad. The dialogue is stilted and banal. The acting is wooden. The plot is incomprehensable. I hope the commissioning editor is among those senoir personnel that the BBC is parting company with.

A welcome and honest review. If only TV producers would stop giving us chick-lit sci-fi that would be a welcome step. Whats happened to writers like Terry Nation, Chris Boucher and Nigel Kneale. Can we have some SF that has some like ...ideas and isnt all about how GREAT humans are. We get enough of that from the Americanised BBC Doctor Who series

Nice review. Great to hear someone hating something unreservedly, for a change! I haven't seen this show so can't comment on it - but the review is fab.

'Defying Gravity' will only achieve its eponymous aspiration if the Universe suddenly gives up on Reality altogether! It's so bad it's on a scale of awfulness of its own. Why can't Sci-Fi drama actually have some serious drama and decent writing? It would make a wonderful change.

By the way - haven't they knicked some of sets and props from 'Space Odyssey' from a few years back? That was a docu-drama really worthy - it's only 'flaw' was that it was too short at two parts and not a full series. Excellent. For fans of DG - try comparing it with this.

They have obviously spent all the budget on the sets and special effects and not on the script writers and actors. There is nothing wrong with the story line, but it is predictable and slow and therefore falls far short of other series like Galactica, Lost, Fringe and Heros. As far as a space romp it is remarkably accurate to NASA and ESA daily business, slow and mostly boring. E.g. On Wednesday, after several days of waiting for the right kind of weather, NASA launched a big firework call Ares 1 and it was soooo NOT exciting when it happened because it just went up and then fell into the sea as planned. Those watching had hoped for an lauch pad explosion or a stowaway 6 year old boy called Falcon but sadly and predicatbly, like Defying Gravity, nothing like what we expected happened. I will watch todays episode but if it don't speed up I will go back to growing grass from seed.

I'm really disappointed that Ms Graham- usually very insightful in her reviews and columns- has utterly missed the point of Defying Gravity. The relationships and fallibilities of a crew who need to be infallible is an approach usually taken only in written "realistic" sci-fi. It seems that it's hardly been attempted before for TV lest it be lazily called "Grey' Anatomy in space". The dialogue in the pilot has to be a bit cheesy as it's trying to give the sense of the whole series in the first episode without actually giving everything away, just like every other pilot show ever. Give it a chance- the reason so many potentially great shows die young is because they never get a chance to hit their stride.

Didn't Peter Howitt direct Sliding Doors? I'll bet he wasn't expecting (heh heh) the Spanish Inquisition...

Grey's Anatomy did spring to mind when I was watching the pilot. And I'm with colin smith on the winch thing. And did the tether have to spool out so far in the first place?

Defying Gravity gets my vote. Yes, it has flaws - but then so does every other TV show or film. As for banality and sterotypes - Alison, Alison! Have you ever watched Eastenders, Corrie or Emmerdale???

I have been lucky enough to have seen all 13 episodes of this series and I am very disappointed that it seems to have been killed off. We shall never know now what the "objects" final purpose was, what Nadia's hallucination meant, why can't Jen see an object or just "why Wassenfelder". This had the potential to be a very good series but unfortunately it did seem to suffer from it's stylistic approach of flashbacks to flesh out the characters. I wonder if the USA obsession with making 22 episodes rang it's death-knell, maybe the constraints of a 13 episode format would have produced a tighter, more palatable effort.

I'd like to say that Defying Gravity is worse than Star Trek by a long way, and that having seen some more Star Trek episodes now, that Star Trek can be quite good.

Nobody else seems to have twigged that this is a longer, less dramatic, version of 2004's Space Odyssey: Voyage to the Planets. Same mission, same ship, same pods, etc.

"Just look at Star Trek" is not as simple as it sounds. I'm a sci-fi fan, but I would agree with TWF that sometimes Star Trek has been cheesy, naff and even, once or twice, rubbish. But Star Trek has gone through several reinventions since the 1960s, when it was in fact ground-breaking - viz the first inter-racial kiss and the first non-white-caucasian actor in a key role on USA TV. Looking back at that first Star Trek, with Kirk et al, it does lack modern production, but it was forty years ago. Then we had The Next Generation, which had its extremely good stories and its extremely poor ones, only held together by the quality of the actor at the helm (Patrick Stewart). Deep Space Nine probably represents the nadir (OK some stories were good, but it was trying to do Babylon 5 badly). Voyager, once it found its feet was brilliant, with a tight story arc and good characterisation, dealing with some quite profound issues - hitting the heights that The Next Generation reached without its lows. Enterprise was, sadly a different matter, apeing the original series with a dreadfully acted captain, although it picked up in season 3's and 4's story arcs. So, you can't just say "look at Star Trek" - which one? OK, it's always relatively safe, family viewing, an establishment story (although it has to be said that Voyager and Enterprise, in different ways, began to blur the boundaries). Star Trek will never be as gritty as Battlestar Galactica, or as anarchic as Firefly or Farscape, but pointing and laughing at it is as off-target as, say, assessing what Steven Moffat will do with Doctor Who by watching Delta and the Bannermen (when the Sylvester McCoy Doctor was at his lowest ebb)! OK, I can accept people not liking Defying Gravity; I don't like Footballers' Wives or Eastenders. I prefer something that makes me think whilst taking out me of the everyday into the extraordinary - as long as its well written, acted and produced, of course, which Defying Gravity - so far at least - certainly is.

Agree completely with this review. And I'm in the States, where I've masochistically watched a full half-a-dozen episodes of this ghastly thing…all out of my misguided love for Ron Livingston, and a vague hope that it might improve.

This is one of those rare shows so appallingly, inexcusably bad that it makes me angry. Genuinely angry. Give me those hours of my life back!

P.S.: BTW, I'm a huge sci fi fan. But no one except a lobotomized cabbage could possibly watch this show without feeling their intellect--nay, their very soul--was being insulted. Gaaaaah, cancel this nightmare and free Ron to do something better.

The angry reaction of fans just proves Alison Graham's point. It will become a cult for the simple reason of it being cheesy, naff, and absoulute rubbish. My answer to anyone who doesn't agree with me is this: "Just look at Star Trek."

Just how bad does a program have to be for it to be universally panned?

I find it astonishing that anyone can enjoy it. But then again, some people do watch the most awful rubbish. Bring back the Borgias and Eldorado I say!

Defying Gravity is (on the basis of two episodes) a great show. My wife was reticent about it before watching, but at the end of the Pilot said that it could even get as good as Battlestar Galactica (the remake of course...) - high praise indeed. Never mind Grey's Anatomy (never watched it anyway), it cleverly and subtly uses production elements from other sci-fi and related drama series to give a good solid foundation for telling a brand new story. Yes, one can quibble about the lack of winch on the tether and the physics of Zoe's predicament in episode two, not to mention how they're managing faster-than-light radio communication, but show me one sci-fi show that doesn't have issues like that. The sad thing is that (unless episode 13 actually ties up the entire story) the show appears to have been written off by its paymasters before even the pilot was aired in the USA. (The sets have apparently been destroyed, so making a second series more difficult.) So, Defying Gravity looks to be going the way of other brilliant concepts that don't fit the TV companies' idea of what people want (or should be fed, more like): shows like Firefly and Regenesis (which latter also had Maxim Roy in it). Those companies aren't going to change their policies any time soon whilst pundits like Alison Graham keep rubbishing sci-fi and trying to make people think it's silly to watch it. In fact, she doesn't seem to like anything that gives any intellectual stimulus! Why let her write drivel about things she's decided she doesn't like before she's even watched them? There are plenty of people who argue (not without cause) that TV suppresses intellectual and imaginative activity. Shows like Defying Gravity do the opposite, but Alison Graham would, it seems, rather fill TV with more mindless pap. We don't want people thinking for themselves now, do we?

This is no 'Grey's Anatomy' - there are more facial expressions in Epsiode 1 of this show than an entire season of Ellen Pompeo.

To put it in perspective, if you're trawling Freeview of an evening trying to find something other than strictly come idle pop, this show is a pleasant enough way to pass an hour. I could live without the monologues, but 'The Wonder Years', 'Sex and the City' and others have prepared me for such interruptions.

And on the subject of perspective, perhaps Ms Graham could do some research by watching some recent sci-fi series or even movies, and then re-assess this show by genre (it easily beats 'Mission to Mars', 'Red Planet' and did anyone see Clooney in 'Solaris' - ouch!), rather than bore on about 'Grey's Anatomy' on a seemingly literate internet message board.

If you condensed the 45 minutes in to 25 you might have a watchable programme. Far too slow in pace, with too many pointless scenes.

It's directed by a Brit (Peter Howitt, Joey in Bread) who also plays the news reporter. Shame on him.

Also, the cast are mostly of above average looks. It's a bit like Hollyoaks in space.

It made blake's 7 look very intellectual.I tend to like sc-fi usually, but this is amazingly pedestrian, with a few dream sequences to make it seem mysterious. I also don't imagine that a space programme would be so much like a dating agency!

It was comically awful. Epically bad. Mediocre beyond endurance. A marketing department's idea of what TV drama should aspire to.

Well, after watching the pilot, and the 2nd installment, i'm afraid i have to disagree with Ms.Graham. the programme is covering (or attempting)to show the physcological as well as the physical side of things in space travel, it shows the 'stereo typical' super humans as being human after all,(and lets face it the 'average' astraunaut is pretty much a biological supercomputer poured into an extremely fit and healthy human body), with the usual sorts of hangups that us mere mortals have to deal with, effects wise, visually stunning, technically, hmm! well ok a space suit leaking as it was supposed to be from a micro leak, would of had it spinning uncontrollably about the tether cord, but hey nice drama..thrown into the mix we seem to have a hint of something going along for the ride, alien or otherwise, we wait to see, and i will be waiting for the next installment....perhaps the fault of the programme lie's with the fact that it may take a bit to much thinking to watch, if you like your sci-fi, or drama with a bit of cerebal effort required to enjoy, then this certainly beats a lot out there on offer....

What a load of old cobblers! One of the most banal programs I've seen for years. Apart from everything else, you would think that having spent trillions on a mission to Venus, someone could have fitted a winch to a tethered line!?

Not seen the show yet (but recorded it for future perusal), but from the review it appears that rather than it being bad, it's just that Ms Graham doesn't like it. Going by her comparison that Greys Anatomy is good, I'm looking forward to watching it (even my wife stopped watching Greys Anatomy at season two, when it got horrendously boring, and she even perseveres with Desperate Housewives).

Yes the English is terrible, and so is the script!!

I couldn't disagree more with this review, I don't know where it has been billed as "Sci-fi for girls" because it's not. I have seen the first 9 episodes (of 13) and reading this review made my somewhat angry. At first I didn't like the Spanish-speaking character, but during the series she grew on me and it all really works. I can not wait to see the conclusion of this season and do hope it gets picked up for another season.

It seems that Alison just has a personal bias against Ron Livingston and is carrying that over to this show.

I totally agree with this review. Ms Graham isn't always right but this time she's spot on.

I disagree with this review. As a hard core SF person in the states I have seen many episodes. I love it. Ok, they do a few silly things like workaround the gravity problem, but that's just minor "comic book guy" critisism. It was a show that I could watch with my wife (not a SF fan) and she looked forward to it as well. It waqs fun. And that is what TV is supposed to be. Oh and it was cool as well. Where else do you get to see floating severed thunmbs?

Oh yeah, it has to have a mysterious arc, but so what? That actually came into play a number of times directing where the show went, such as the selection of the crew. Which critics don't seem to have understood. Everyone has their own opinion of course, but I prefer to think of it as a character driven sf show in space with a great cast- (even though one actually is a doctor)

Please learn to spell.

ya know. Ms. Graham, this show to me is the best thing on television. And be glad that is is coming to BBC. Being in the US it gives me something to look forward to in my week and well u are just jealous of the fact that you are smart enough to be in the space program.

I totally disagree with this review.