Posts tagged: Stan Lee’s Lucky Man reviews

Stan Lee’s Lucky Man S01E08 “My Brother’s Keeper” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on Sky 1, Fridays, 9pm
Writer: Ben Schiffer
Director: Jon East

Essential Plot Points:

• Harry’s brother is framed for the murder of his girlfriend Babs.
• Winter assigns Orwell and Suri to the case and warns Harry not to get involved. Harry may as well reply, “Talk to the hand.”
• With the help of his luck powers Harry learns that the real killer is Charles Collins, ex-military-man-turned security firm owner who was also the guy playing bodyguard to sulky, Stanley-knife-weilding Russian student Sasha last week.
• Harry believes Collins is Golding. Collins certainly has a connection to Kalim and Lily-Anne Lau.
• Collins orders a reluctant Lily to kill Kalim. She reluctantly agrees to.
• Suri finally loses her rag with Harry keeping secrets and shows Winter the video of Harry winning big at Lau’s casino the night of Lau’s death. Winter still needs more evidence to nail Harry though.
• Harry asks Winter for help in nailing Collins. Winter says he can’t because his hands are tied but does agree to investigate Collins and his link to the dodgy deputy mayor (and ex cop) Frierson further. Amazingly, he’s true to his word.
• Rich is arrested for the murder and moved to White Cross Prison.

• Collins phones Harry and asks to meet him at the Millennium Dome. Harry goes there but gets a phone call from Rich in prison (he appears to be being coerced) telling Harry the plan has changed: he needs to take the cable car to the Victoria Docks.
• Eve phones Harry to tell him it’s a trap (sadly she doesn’t do an Admiral Akbar impression). Harry says he knows this but his magic luck bracelet will protect him. Eve says it doesn’t work that way. Harry oddly doesn’t reply, “Well, it did last week.”
• Collins is waiting in a van at the docks with a rifle. In the cable car Harry dodges Collins’s bullets but has to watch helpless when Eve attacks Collins, but she’s overpowered and is kidnapped by him.
• Harry retaliates by breaking into Collins’s home and waiting for him to return. He finds bloodied evidence proving Collins killed Babs.
• But Collins – who denies being Golding – manages to overpower Harry.
• He bundles Harry into the boot of a car and is driving him somewhere (to Golding?) when Harry’s luck kicks in again. A lorry crashes into the car killing Collins and freeing Harry, who runs off with the bloodied evidence.
• Winter receives an anonymous tip off  which give him grounds make a search of Harry’s flat. There, Suri discovers a severed head in the freezer.

Review:

Last week we suggested that the reason Harry used his magical luck with such refreshing gay abandon in that episode may have been down to the fact that it was written by someone with a track record in telefantasy who was more comfortable with placing the supernatural in a natural setting than some of show’s other writers. Seems we were right. Because this week’s episode is courtesy of  one of the show’s regular writers (Ben Schiffer who’s penned two previous episodes) and, hey presto, the “luck” moments – with one exception – drop back to the level of “things that you’d dismiss as suspiciously handy coincidences” in other crime dramas. The one exception – Harry dodging bullets in the cable car – is definitely an exciting set-piece, but in essence just a repeat of the bullet-dodging scene from last week. There’s no new extraordinary example of Harry’s powers this week. Trucks unexpectedly hitting cars? That happens on some US drama pretty much every week.

But it’s becoming boring complaining about what Stan Lee’s Lucky Man isn’t, when it clearly has no intention of being that. By episode eight it’s obvious we’re never going to get really fanciful, visually stunning, comic-book-style examples of Harry’s powers. The show is never going to explore how the luck powers operate beyond some vague “it makes bad things happen too.” There’s never going to be a supervillain for our Lucky Man to fight.

Instead, Lucky Man just wants to be a conspiracy crime drama. It has an arc plot but it’s not concerned with the lore of the bracelet; it’s concerned with criminals from all levels of society doing extremely nasty things to get their hands on a MacGuffin. The magic bracelet may as well be priceless stegosaurus egg or a new laser spoon or a drug that makes EastEnders watchable or something. And you know what? As the season reaches its climax, it’s actually becoming quite gripping on that level. You find yourself excited about finding out who Golding might be and the complicated web of intrigue that links Frierson to someone like Lily-Anne. And how could you not want to tune in next week after a cliffhanger involving a severed head in a freezer?

Of course, any conspiracy drama will get around to the “frame a friend” storyline at some point, but Lucky Man’s version is a decent stab at the trusty old trope. James Nesbitt holds everything together by being as effortlessly watchable as always as the bullish Harry; he’s one of those pig-headed guys you’d hate to have to work with in real life but who makes great telly (and probably always stands his round down the pub). This is turning into a blistering performance, even if Harry as a character is slightly hampered by being the only gambling addict in the world who doesn’t go terminally gung-ho with the addition of a magic luck bracelet. Stephen Hagan also gives a wonderfully broken performance as the rabbit-in-headlights Rich.

The show is also benefitting from showing Winter in a more sympathetic light. For him, it seems, last week wasn’t a blip. He is intelligent. He is a good cop. He’s not a two-dimensional angel of vengeance. Sure he wants to clip Harry’s wings but that doesn’t mean he’ll ignore evidence (or a good argument) when he’s presented with it. This is a very welcome development.

Not so much Suri’s betrayal. It’s not completely unmotivated – Harry must be really exasperating to work with – but she’s been shown to be so intelligent in the past that her volte-face feels a little sudden and extreme. It might have helped if she’d shown just a little more remorse, but instead she looks like an excited puppy when Winter asks her if she’s like to join him in the search of Harry’s flat.

Lucky Man may not be the show we wanted, but on its own terms it’s finally coming good. And, we have to admit, this week’s entertained us so much that we immediately needed to see the next episode. Which we did. And it’s a belter. Sorry you have to wait a week!

The Good:

• The elements are the arc plot are starting to build to a decently tense climax
• The fact that Winter is turning out to be one of the good guys is a pleasant surprise.
• There’s something a bit Hitchcockian about the cable car scene; using a famous location to heighten the tension. It’s not just a pretty backdrop; it becomes part of the drama by forcing Harry to watch Eve being kidnapped while being unable to do anything about it.
• While “friend/colleague/relation is framed” storylines are ten-a-penny in crime dramas, Lucky Man still manages to ramp up the paranoia surrounding Rich’s arrest to a compelling level.
• Desperation brings out a deliciously sarcastic tone in Harry: “Information is how I make my living.” “Oh so the killing… that’s just a hobby, is it?”
• Oh yeah, and this cliffhanger…

The Bad:

• Does Charlie’s “Danger Dave from Derby” anecdote before hits Harry have to go on quite so long?
• “She’s just a bit tied up.” Good grief, how many times have we had to endure that gag before? Then again, Harry is the kind of character who might think he’s being enormously witty saying it.
• All the evidence against Rich is so convenient, surely the usually-smart Suri would smell a rat?
• Why isn’t Harry surprised when Rich rings him from prison?
• There are a couple of bits of Rich’s testimony that don’t make sense. Why can he not recall what Collins (or Duncan as he knew him at the time) looked like? And if, as he says, he returned to the flat to fetch his phone so he could phone Harry, why didn’t he phone Harry? Are these just little scripting lapses that we aren’t supposed to notice or is there something Rich hasn’t revealed yet?
• Suri doesn’t seem to be quite so smart this week, mainly because the writers need her to suddenly betray Harry for arc plot reasons.
• Could we please have some rationalisation about how the magic bracelet works, please?

And The Random:

• Harry says to Suri, “He’s not even a thief let alone a murderer,” but didn’t she note something dodgy about the artefacts in Rich’s shop in an earlier episode? Is that one of the reasons why she’s inclined to believe Rich may be capable of serious crime?
• Collins’s car has the registration number M15 BTB but we assume this isn’t a subtle reference to him working for MI5 because that would be a twist too far.

• When  Harry is in the cable car being shot at, he raises his hand to reveal the magic bracelet. We assume this was just the director’s way of reminding us that magic luck was protecting Harry; however it did look suspiciously like Harry was using the bracelet to deflect the bullet, Wonder Woman-style.

Review by Dave Golder

• Read our other Lucky Man reviews

Stan Lee’s Lucky Man S01E07 “The Charm Offensive” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on Sky 1, Fridays, 9pm
Writer: Stephen Gallagher
Director: Jon East

Essential Plot Points:

• After a ranting, half-naked man bursts into flames when he’s Tasered on a London bridge (he was covered in petrol) he’s taken to hospital. Harry and Suri try to interview him, but the only thing he says before dying is “Golding”.
• Harry and Suri discover that the guy was one of two scam artists who preyed on rich foreign students.
• Unfortunately one of their “victims”, Sasha, has a powerful, dangerous Russian daddy with connections to a man in London. Guess who? Yep – the mysterious Golding.
• Golding’s men are now after the other scam artist, Jed, who is on the run with his latest victim as a hostage.
• Harry and Suri interview the hostile Sasha, who later tells her English bodyguard she wants Harry dead. He says he’ll deal with it his way (ie, subtly) rather than the Russian way (ie, not very subtly).
• But his attempt to engineer a seemingly accidental car crash to kill Harry is defeated by the magic luck bracelet. In fact, Harry is using his magic luck bracelet loads this week as his confidence in its power grows…
• …And Suri is beginning to notice how oddly he’s behaving.
• Jed tries to escape the country in a boat, but it’s a set-up. Golding’s men have left a gun in the boat and they want Jed to shoot Harry so he gets the blame for the cop’s murder. But lucky old Harry dodges all the bullets.
• Suri doesn’t witness this because she received a nasty blow to the head earlier in the episode, and despite going into a fit, refuses to go to hospital. But Harry does insist she rest and not come with him.
• Before Harry can arrest Jed, Golding’s men whisk him away.
• Jed’s body is later found along with a security guard’s in what’s been made to look like a double suicide pact.
• Meanwhile in other plotlines: Winter begins to suspect that deputy mayor Frierson was once an even dodgier cop than Harry.
• Deputy Mayor Frierson senses that Winter’s holier-than-thou witch hunt could cause trouble for him, so he attempts to lure Orwell to his side.
• Anna tries to make daughter Daisy like Nikhail Julian, but her hatred of pretzels is non-negotiable. (We’ve never really warmed to Daisy before but this makes her go up in our estimation – as regards her dislike for both Nikhail and pretzels.)

Review:

Scriptwriter Stephen Gallagher is an old hand at telefantasy. He’s been writing the stuff for decades now. Which is probably why “The Charm Offensive” is the first episode of Stan Lee’s Lucky Man that feels totally confident with its supernatural elements. Of course, this could also simply be because Harry is growing more confident with this powers but you can’t help thinking someone like Gallagher is the right man for the job at this point in the show’s run. Whereas some of the other writers are clearly happier with crime elements than the fantasy ones, Gallagher embraces the more bizarre side of the show and runs with it. He has Harry pushing his luck over and over; he guesses passwords, he heads straight for the vital evidence at a crime scene, he leaves a car to park itself and he dodges bullets.

There’s a sense of fun and spectacle here that’s often missing from the show, but that doesn’t mean the episode sacrifices its usual Luther-lite hard-boiled detective vibe. If anything it steps it up, with burning men, Stanley-knife wielding Russian vamps and faked suicide pacts. This is probably the most gripping and satisfying crime-of-the-week the show has delivered so far, helped by the fact that Jed is a wonderfully loathsome opportunistic villain. By the time he gives Suri a Glasgow kiss you’re ready for him to die horribly. In a TV landscape where the villains are often more interesting than the heroes, it’s always refreshing to have a baddie with no redeeming features at all. He even dresses like a banker.

More good moments came in the form of Winter, who has has a surprising but totally logical and consistent shift of priorities. He may loathe Harry, but if his motivation is weeding out dangerous and bent cops, then turning his attention to Frierson makes total sense. It’s weird to feel yourself inwardly cheering, “Go Winter!” when he slaps an internal complaints form in front of Frierson and tells him, “Surprise me with one of these.” In retaliation, Frierson decides to tempt Orwell to the Dark Side. All of which is an unexpected and immensely satisfying turn of events.

The little scene between Eve and Letmontov Jr is dripping with hidden meaning too. Very intriguing.

Harry, meanwhile, is going through that patch every new superhero goes through; flexing his newfound powers and thinking they make him invincible. This is also known as “pride before a fall”, you mark our words.

The Anna/creepy prisoner Governor plot is just weird (we’re still hoping she’s pretending to be interested in him) and a little dull, but presumably it’s heading somewhere. So all in all a great little episode, yes?

Well, nearly. There are a few problems that severely let thinsg down. And they’re unusual problems in that they’re sloppy production problems rather than concerns about the characters or plot. Gallagher has written some set-pieces that should be highlights but suffer badly in translation to screen. The almost-car-crash is ruined when Harry takes his hands off the wheel and trusts to luck… but you can clearly see someone is still steering the car in the long shot. And it’s a long shot in both senses of the word. This isn’t a case where you need to freeze-frame the action and zoom in to spot the blooper; it’s really bloody obvious!

Similarly, he opening scene with the guy bursting into flames is so badly edited it’s not immediately clear what’s happened. And when you do cotton on, you still have the nagging feeling that the director has wimped out on something that was far more graphic in the script.

In fact, there are odd little directorial choices throughout, such as when Suri and Harry enter the posh student flat for the second time and Suri fiddles with something on a shelf, while Harry vanishes off-screen and shout, “Fire escape”. It’s like they filmed the covering shot but ran out of time for close-ups.

It’s a shame that such a well-written episode is let down by poor production choices. Must be a case of Yin and Yang…

The Good:

• Interesting, quirky, unpredictable plot of the week.
• Snappier dialogue than usual
• Winter proving that while he might be an irritating git, he’s a principled irritating git.

• Harry finally making the most of his luck skills. The bullet-dodging scene is exactly the kind of ludicrous but entertaining set-piece the show needs to give us more often.
• The Golding mystery is deepening in all kinds of intriguing ways.
• The burnt man was suitable icky.
• The very abrupt end with the reveal of the carefully-composed “suicide statue” had a disturbingly Hannibal vibe to it.
• Talking of disturbing, how creepy was Sasha in this shot? Make her an on-going villain!

• A solid, well-crafted, well-paced script.
• In fact this could easily have been a four/four-and-a-half star episode if not for the cringingly poor production howlers.

The Bad:

• Normally we’d put bloopers in the “Random” section, but the the out-of-control car sequence is so piss poor it entirely ruins what should have been a highlight of the episode. It’s not just that you can clearly see someone with their hands on the wheel, it’s the fact that the car handles like it has someone at the wheel. It’s just very, very shoddy.

• The opening scene with the man bursting into flames when Tasered is another bungled set-piece that could have been great. The explosion is so tiny in the distance it’s not immediately clear what’s happened. In fact, it looks suspiciously like something has been cut, possibly for reasons of tastes? Whatever the case, the final result very disappointing.

• What was it with all the weird angles and the fish-eye lens during the nervy security guard scenes? It looked like we’d entered the Twilight Zone. Or Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse Of The Heart” video.
• No Josie or Rich or Burn Gorman’s delightfully freaky pathologist again.

And The Random:

• Writer Stephen Gallagher wrote two Doctor Who stories in the ’80s (the brilliant “Warriors’ Gate” and the okay-if-you-can-ignore-the-teddy-bear-monster “Terminus”), and was one of the main writers on the silly but amusing Bugs. Other telefantasies he’s penned include Eleventh Hour, Oktober and Chimera.
• Why does Anna scoff at the suggestion that she’s going out with Nikhail when she quite clearly is? She virtuallty presenting him as “new dad” to Daisy.

• This week’s signs and portents: Eve says that Paul Letmontov’s mother was very beautiful. He says her’s was too. This had the feel of an exchange dripping with hidden meaning. Draw your own conclusions, and then wonder how she lost her leg…

Review by Dave Golder

• Read our other Lucky Man reviews

Stan Lee’s Lucky Man S01E06 “A Twist Of Fate” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on Sky 1, Fridays, 9pm
Writers: James Allen, Alan Westaway, Neil Biswas
Director: Brian Kelly

Essential Plot Points:

• Eve proves to Harry how powerful the magic bracelet can be taking him to fixed cage fight and getting Harry to bet on the guy who’s supposed to take the fall.
• Instead the guy who’s supposed to win slips in some blood and knocks himself unconscious.
• Eve explains she also brought Harry here to send a message to the man who runs the cage fighting; a man called Golding whom Eve believes also killed Lau and her mother. She actually reveals this over a couple of scenes in different parts of the episode in an attempt to not make it feel like one massive infodump.
• While at White Cross fulfilling her mentoring duties, Anna finally gets Billy to open up a little about how Grey died. He says someone called Golding did it. Ooooooooh! It’s all connecting.
• Anna and White Cross boss Nikhail Julian are swiftly becoming an item, which is such an unlikely development one can only assume Anna is just pretending so she can get her hands on his files. Either that or it’s an elaborate plot mechanism to make sure that Harry and Anna’s daughter rings Harry at the WORST POSSIBLE TIME later in the episode.
• A body of an African boy is found in a building that’s due to be demolished to be replaced by a project that’s the baby of London’s deputy mayor.

• The boy actually died 14 months before and the body was recently moved here. His kidney has been removed.
• To cut a long story short, the deputy mayor, Karl Frierson, did it. Or was responsible for it, to be accurate.
• Frierson, by the way, is a former DCI who worked with Harry on the case involving the murder of Eve’s mother, which was never closed. Harry now thinks Frierson made sure the murderer was never caught.
•  Harry also thinks that Frierson had the African boy killed because they shared a rare blood type, and Frierson was dying of kidney failure.
• Suri, who’s faith in Harry is wavering, goes undercover to lure the doctor who performed the operation out of hiding. She succeeds but is almost killed in the process, because Harry and Anna’s daughter rings at the WORST POSSIBLE TIME so Harry misses the SOS from Suri. D’oh!
• Harry forces a confession out of the doctor by pretending he’s got a part in a Fast & Furious films: he drives through red lights fast and furiously until the guy is begging for mercy.
• Harry is on the verge of arresting Frierson when Wimter stops him. The doctor has retracted his confession.
• Oh yeah, and somebody – either with the police or in Frierson’s office – is leaking facts from the investigation to the press. Harry interrogates the journalist and tells her that her writing’s rubbish and full of inaccuracies. Bad move, Harry – the laptop is mightier than the sword. Soon she’s slagging him off in her rag.
• Lily-Anne Lau is let out of custody on lack of evidence and immediately threatens Harry’s family.

Review:

There was a moment of hope right at the start of the episode when it looked like Lucky Man was turning a corner. Eve, it seemed, was getting as pissed off as the rest of us with the fact that – after six episodes – Harry is still taking baby steps with his magic luck bracelet when most people would be running riot in every casino and bookies across the city by now. Or, if they were a cop with a conscience, then at least having more luck making sure their suspects don’t keep getting let off through lack of evidence. Let’s face it Harry’s, not getting much luck at the moment.

So Eve takes Harry to a cage fight to show that luck can influence even a fixed cage fight to make the wrong man win. Hurrah! Surely now the show is really going to have fun with the concept?

Well… no. It’s back to Lidl’s own-brand Luther for much of the rest of the show; dour, gritty and just a teensy bit dull, until Harry finally remembers his superpowers at the end of the episode in a half-decent scene in which he interrogates a guy by driving at high speed through a series red lights. After last week’s similar scene involving green lights it seems the writers on the show have some serious issues with traffic flow in the capital that they’re working through. Good for them. Shame they don’t have more exciting issues.

It’s becoming dull wishing this series was something it clearly doesn’t want to be. But it beggars belief that a show about a man with superpowers seems happy to plod along like yet another generic crime drama. Lucky Man has an in-built USP but spends most of its time looking slightly embarrassed to put it into action. It does seem a bit of a waste.

But if you accept that the show is never going to be The Flash, or even Daredevil, but just wants to be CSI: Slightly Supernatural London, then, yeah, there are a lot worse ways to waste an hour. The backstory hots up this week with the name “Golding” connecting Grey’s death at White Cross with all the other deaths Harry’s been investigating since the series began (maybe the bracelet is orchestrating things for him, making sure he’s assigned all the relevant cases). Eve opens up a bit (blimey, she takes her time) and reveals she is a “torch” like her mother before her; torches being the only people who can take the magic bracelet off one (dead) person and give it to another. Meanwhile, the powers that be are making sure that Harry takes two steps back to every breakthrough he makes. Perhaps most worrying for Harry is that Lily-Anne is now free and quite open about wanting revenge. His luck really needs to change

After a couple of weeks of Bald Russian Guy and freaky Lermentov Jr bring some comic book villainy to the show, they’re missed this week (well, one of them’s very dead), because former bent cop and current bent politician Frierson proves a rather bland antagonist. Also conspicuous by their absence are bother Rich and his girl Friday Josie, two more characters who bring some much-needed lightness of touch to the show. It’s a shame because this is one episode that really needed a respite from wall-to-wall glum. The nearest we get to humour is Harry’s constant sarcasm to his bosses, which is fun to a certain degree (and prefectly in character) but does all add to the general mean-spirited tone.

The revelation that Anna and White Cross boss Nikhail Julian are an item comes out of the left field; when they walk into the swanky party with his hand round her back you’re left wondering if you fell asleep through the bit when they got together. We’re holding out hope she’s just leading him on because she need something out of him.

We’re still holding out for the episode where Harry really starts putting his powers to the test, though. And there’s one moment in the Next Week On… trailer that makes it look like episode seven may be the one.

The Good:

• For the second week in a row traffic lights provide the highlight of the episode with Harry’s high-speed interrogation of Dr Marghai.
• The scene at the cage fight is another good use of Harry’s luck powers. More, much more of this, please.
• Suri going undercover, especially the moment when she realises she’s trapped and her first thought is, “I’m in a room with lots of handy, pointy medical equipment.”
• Eve actually gives some answers. Real answer. Not vague, cryptic, teasing answers but ones that made sense. Which is great but… why now, suddenly? Why not weeks back?
• Harry being in a generally pissed off mood and not caring which superiors he insults.

The Bad:

• Two of Harry’s arrests are let off the hook on “lack of evidence” in one episode. Presumably this is no coincidence (there’s a conspiracy going on), but Harry never connects them so it ends up looking like the same plot twice in rapid succession. Besides, as far as conspiracy plotlines go, this one’s got precious little new to offer. It’s serviceable enough but very familiar territory.
• The plot line involving Harry’s daughter was an extremely unconvincing way of generating a bit of tension using a lazy application of the old  “phone call at exactly the wrong moment” trope. You end up wanting to throttle the selfish moppet (or hoping Lily-Anne might run her over at the bus stop) rather than care what’s happening to her.
• And when exactly did Anna and the guy who did all those pretentious monologues on Heroes become an item? Were they flirting last week? Could have fooled us!
• Is Winter’s spirituality ever going to have any bearing on anything? Or is it a particularly arbitrary piece of character “motivation” to stop him being entirely lacking in depth.
• The show’s still far too dour. Where’s the fun?

And The Random:

• Bombay Blood is a real phenomenon, and crime and medical drama scriptwriters love it to bits. It’s been used to add tension to shows as diverse as Holby City, General Hospital, NCIS: New Orleans and Psi Factor: Chronicles of the Paranormal.
• What’s happened to Burn Gorman? That female pathologist we were palmed off with this week was disappointingly generic.
• Probably a coincidence, but when Suri looks around the medical theatre for things that she could use to defend herself, there’s a shot of a tabletop with (unlucky) 13 different medical implements on it.
• The horse that Harry backs in the bookies has the suspiciously portentous name “Forget Her Past”.

Review by Dave Golder

• Read our other Lucky Man reviews

Stan Lee’s Lucky Man S01E04 “Higher Power” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on Sky 1, Fridays, 9pm
Writer: Neil Biswas
Director: David Caffrey

Essential Plot Points:

• Winter assigns Harry and Suri to the case of an FRSA (Financial Regulation Security Authority) agent, Kate Olsen, who made a 999 call from her office but was never seen again.
• Turns out she was investigating billionaire Russian businessman Vincent Lermentov – the guy who killed himself in episode one by freefalling from a skyscraper without a parachute.
• Turns out Kate has records of him having extraordinary luck in his financial dealing over the years.
• Harry notices that Lermentov is wearing the magic bangle in an archive photo.

• Suri and Harry work out that Kate has been kidnapped not killed but she’s also diabetic so she could die without medication. Is that what the kidnappers want? To murder her with no evidence of foul play?
• Meanwhile a Bald Russian guy (who sounds like the B in bald should be capitalised from the way everybody says it) is still stalking Harry, hanging around outside Anna’s house and scaring his little girl. This gives Harry the excuse to stay the night and sleep with estranged wife, but she makes it clear she just needed a comfort shag and he should read nothing into it.
• Harry interviews Lermentov’s son, who clearly knows something about the magic bangle.
• Anyway, a few luckily-escaped scrapes later Harry and Suri work out that Kate’s boss was leaned on by team Lermentov to dissuade her from pursuing the Russian billionaire (the Bald Russian guy was also at the final meeting between Kate and her boss). Kate refuses. Hence Bald Russian kidnapped her.
• Suri surmises that the Russians may be attempting to smuggle Kate out of the country in a shipping container. And she’s right! Hang on… who’s wearing the lucky bangle here?
• At the shipyard Harry correctly guesses which container Kate is in. He then gives chase to the Russians and is clouted unconscious by Bald Russian guy.
• Harry wakes up bound to a chair opposite the similarly bound Eve.
• Bald Russian explains that only Eve can remove the bangle.
• Eve says it’s not the real bangle.
• Bald Russian says something along the lines of, “Okay, let’s find out shall we?” and the proceeds to play Russian roulette with Harry.

Review:

Okay, we’re in luck. Last week we said what this show needed was a proper comic-book baddie for Harry to lock horns with and this week we get one. Sort of. Bald Russian is slightly more Bond henchman than Marvel supervillain, but he’s the most comic-booky thing in this show so far. Or at least he was until Lermentov Jr showed up, although – again – his allergy to light and his urbane passive aggression makes him more of a Doctor No than Doctor Doom. Not that we’re complaining – it’s all a step in the right fantastical direction for a show that’s been a bit timid about embracing its roots so far.

Plus, Bald Russian is involved in the two best scenes by far – his nasty, brutal fight with Eve and the game of Russian roulette with Harry – so we’re definitely happy he’s finally stepped out of the shadows.

That was the good news. Sadly the dastardly duo’s influence didn’t rub off on Harry and co, who were more low-rent-Luther than ever. Harry seems almost determined not to have any fun with his powers and weirdly seems to be in denial about them for most of the episode. Surely he can’t still have doubts? Then again, he runs straight into Bald Russian guy’s iron bar so maybe he’s right to question how all this luck stuff works. Increasingly it seems he has to consciously switch it on, except that wasn’t the case in earlier episodes. It’d be handy if the writers could make the rules a bit clearer.

Harry also doesn’t help himself by acting like a borderline stalker with Anna, though all credit to her; she takes advantage of the situation then says sling your hook.

Suri is disappointingly “okay” this week. She’s normally a lot better than okay but here she’s mostly just telling Harry stuff she’s learnt. Or guessed. Because her hunch about the Kate being kept in a shipping container was a pretty lucky guess for someone who doesn’t have a magic bangle. Winter and Orwell seem to think they’re in a Samuel Beckett play, whispering hoarsely and staring witheringly at each other. Presumably this is supposed to give them a menacing air, but instead they look like they’d rather have less boring lines. It’s a shame that Orwell has returned to a one-dimensional “nail Clayton” mode as he was far more interesting last week when he was showing signs of grudging respect. It’d help if we knew why Orwell is so anti-Clayton because at the moment he seems to be doing it because he’s secretly in love in Winter and trying to impress him.

On the other hand, the arc plot is shaping up pleasingly. Eve may still be completely incapable of forming a sentence that actually means anything but for once she seemed to be stalling for good reason not just to make the viewers suffer. We got to learn a little more the history of the magic bangle and its previous owner, and Lermentov Jr looks promisingly mysterious as chief moustache twirler.

Besides, we’re hoping that this Russian roulette business will be a turning point for Harry. Surely that’s got to change a man?

The Good:

• The Russian roulette scene is one the show’s best set-pieces so far.
• Bald Russian guy finally bring a sense of comic book menace to the show.
• When Anna shags Harry but tells him, “This changes nothing,” we think we’re supposed to feel sorry for Harry, but instead we were thinking, “You tell him, girl!”
• “Before you got that bracelet you were not a very lucky man.”
  “I don’t feel very lucky now.”
• The fight between Bald Russian and Eve was a great down and dirty bit of combat, almost worthy of Netflix’s Daredevil series.

• Talking of which, this was the best-framed shot of the episode.

The Bad:

• No Josie. We needed some of her amusing snark.
• The level of luck is really underwhelming again – the barge fire could have been a high point but Harry just kicks a door and the padlock falls off. Whoopee-effing–doo.
• The episode is even more dour than the previous ones. Where’s the fun? Loosen up a bit!
• Not sure that having Harry quite such a snivelling wreck during the Russian roulette scene was a good thing. Sure he’d be crapping himself but in this kind of show you want a little bit of stoicism from your hero.
• Orwell has taken a strep backwards after his interesting development last week. He’s just “boring lap dog” again.
• Harry seems to have written off the magic bangle’s powers as fake at the start of the episode which, considering everything he’s been through, is highly unlikely.
• The security at the FRSA is truly terrible.

And The Random:

• This week’s random symbols of luck/bad luck include: a stylised black cat figurine on the desk of kidnap victim Kate Olsen and an albatross figurine in Vincent Lermentov’s apartment. Lermentov’s shipping company is also called Albatross. In times past, albatrosses were often regarded as the souls of lost sailors so killing them was supposed to bring bad luck. A bit more of a stretch is the fact that when Harry is looking at the CCTV footage and the time code skips 10 minutes, the time it jumps to is 21:34 which has “13” in the middle. But that’s probably just coincidence.

• When Rich was asking Harry last week what he thought of British Museum magic bangle expert Barbara Haleton, we thought he was trying to match-make for his brother. Seems he was after her himself. Though why he wants to keep that secret from his brother is a bit strange.

• Whoever it was who set the barge on fire, she was definitely being employed by Lermentov’s Albatross shipping company as her jacket proved. But it’s a bit of a mistake to wear a DayGlo jacket with your employer’s logo emblazoned on it when you’re murdering people in full daylight, surely?
• The FRSA (Financial Regulation Security Authority) is not a real organisation (and there is no Hope Square in Canary Wharf).
• Anna Clayton’s boss is called Nathaniel Kelso, which is the name of a cartographer who has worked for The Washington Post and Apple Maps. We’re pretty sure there’s no connection but it’s a weird “fictional” name to pluck from the air.

Review by Dave Golder

• Read our other Lucky Man reviews

Stan Lee’s Lucky Man S01E03 “Evil Eye” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on Sky 1, Fridays, 9pm
Writers: Ben Schiffer, Neil Biswas
Director: David Caffrey

Essential Plot Points:

• Mysterious woman Eve summons Harry to Hatton Garden where a jewellery robbery takes place – by thieves on motorbikes – and a diamond shop owner, Franks, is accidentally killed (it turns out he was being tortured and had a heart attack).
• Still affected by what happened to boyfriend Ben, Suri is affected by the man’s death. Detective Superintendent Winter hears about this and demands she takes some time off.
• He forces Harry to team up with Orwell on the case, making Orwell the senior investigating officer.
• They learn of another diamond robbery in the same area at a shop owned by Max Solomons. Harry is not convinced by the shop owner’s story of events – especially why the robbers would want to beat him up.
• Harry – through luck – finds a picture of a valuable blue diamond hidden in the workshop of the other diamond shop that was robbed.
• Harry and brother Rich unsuccessfully try to buzzsaw the magic bangle off Harry’s arm. They then turn to an expert at the British library who connects it to a legend from the Chinese Tang dynasty.
• Bored at home Suri goes the Green Dragon and works out that Roulette wheel is fixed.
• Someone  secretly delivers a razor blade to Grey in prison and he kills himself.
• This makes Anna scared and for the first time in ages she turns to Harry for comfort.
• Harry finds a connection between the two diamond shop owners and is convinced one of them has the diamond, and the robbers know of the diamond’s existence too. But where is the diamond?
• Harry follows Solomons in his car, and Solomons is attacked by the biker thieves. Harry manages to stop the thieves taking his briefcase. Inside there are plans to cut the diamond.
• Turns out Franks wanted to cut the diamond while Solomons didn’t, but changed his mind after Franks’s death.
• Both Harry and Orwell find out from separate sources where the man who’s going to cut the diamond is based: under Smithfield Market. But Solomons’ son has told the motorbike thieves too. It’s a race to the diamond…
• …Which ends in a win for Harry, because Orwell is knocked unconscious by the biker thieves while Harry finds the diamond and subdues two of the biker thieves.
• The third biker thief takes off her helmet to reveal that she’s Eve, who then runs off while Harry is still trying to pick his jaw up off the floor.

Review:

What a crying shame. After taking a significant step forward with episode two, Lucky Man stumbles a few steps back with episode three. Is this some kind of Yin and Yang? For every dull episode we get a good one? Or is that just wishful thinking that things might pick up again next week?

The bizarre thing is, looking at the Good and Bad sections below, on a first glance the Yin and Yang seems to be reasonably well balanced. Indeed, there is a lot to recommend in “Evil Eye”, especially Suri, the unexpected development of Orwell’s character, the daft moment with the buzzsaw and the twist ending.

The problem is that the downside really drags the show down. The overriding problem remains its reluctance to embrace its silly central concept. The “luck” this week rates disappointingly low on the “wow”-ometer. On a scale from “winning the lottery four weeks in a row” to “woman at till accidentally gives up a penny extra in your change” the luck in Lucky Man ranks somewhere around “Rain holds off until you get on the bus”.

The investigation is fairly lifeless as well; serviceable but not particularly engaging. It’s left to Nesbitt once again to make the case feel likes it’s worth caring about and he does a creditable job of nearly convincing you. Darren Boyd also does a good job as Orwell, the yes-man who is slowly turning into to yes-but…–man. There are certain moments between these two very different cops that have an edgy electricity that raises the show a bar or two.

And thank God the script eventually gets around to addressing the fact that Anna doesn’t know who hired her to represent Grey. We were worried for a while that this was a throwaway line last week that was never going to be mentioned again. How does this all weave together?

What the show lacks are some supervillains. Well, not literal supervillains, maybe, but individuals for Harry to go head-to-head with. Yeah, there’s Winter but he fulfils another, different dramatic function (though it’s not impossible that he could be orchestrating things and will be unveiled as the big bad later in the season). But it needs villains of the week to really test Harry’s luck powers. The procedural formula largely avoids traditional villains because the perpetrator is supposed to be a surprise revelation. But Lucky Man has decided to pursue the procedural route and that may be why it’s failing to spark; the only special powers a procedural needs are tenacity and intelligence. Something like luck negates the need to actually investigate… unless, of course, you don’t let your star use that power most of the time. Which just leaves the audience slightly frustrated.

What do you think? Will the show’s luck turn again next week?

The Good:

• Suri telling Harry not to break the law when he uses a mobile while driving the car.
• Using a press conference for a bit of “story so far” exposition – expensive (they had to pay all the extras!) but better than Winter and Orwell telling each other stuff they already know while walking down a corridor.

• The utterly ridiculous scene with Rich trying to buzzsaw the magic bangle off Harry’s wrist – “I watched an online tutorial while  you were at the loo!” It seriously needed a “Don’t try this at home!” warning. Josie’s face was a picture. Plus, how Irish did Harry go when Rich started cutting? This show is much more fun when it’s ludicrous. It should be ludicrous more often. Talking of which…

• Burn Gorman’s arch forensic pathologist would fit right in on Gotham. He’s brilliant, especially his completely undisguised look of disdain on learning that Orwell is Harry’s superior.
• Orwell’s speech about, “This is your forte, isn’t it, Harry. Getting in their heads. Weak men,” is a telling one, especially as he then lets Harry off the leash to do exactly that – get into a weak man’s head. Orwell might not be quite the lapdog to Winter that we thought he was. He’s intelligent enough to play an advantage when he sees one.
• Besides, after Winter sneeringly points out to Orwell that the robbers are, ”One step ahead of Clayton, two steps ahead of you,” you really do feel some sympathy for the guy.
• Then Orwell rings Harry to let him know about the diamond cutter at Smithfield’s; he doesn’t try to keep the glory all to himself. He’s definitely coming to the light side of the (police) force.
• There’s clearly more to Sendhil Ramamurthy’s creepy bleeding heart liberal prisoner governor than meets the eye. Otherwise they wouldn’t have cast Sendhil Ramamurthy in such a small role.
• And while Suri isn’t quite as bubbly and funny as usual (well, she is bereaved) it is another strong episode for the resourceful cop.
• The twist with Eve being one of the biker thieves is pretty obvious, but it’s still great to see Harry’s shock at this turn of events.

The Bad:

• Incredibly dull teaser – two blokes we don’t know arguing about something we don’t understand.
• The finer details of the investigation into what the two old gentlemen jewellers want to do with the diamond make for some very tedious dialogue at times. For a potential diamond heist it’s a rather dry, stodgy plot.
• The origin story for the bracelet seems a bit unnecessary. Sometimes things are better left a mystery. It’d be more fun exploring the effects of the magic bangle rather than finding out where they come from. But this element looks like it’s destined to play an ever larger role in the series.
• When Harry needs some luck to help him out with the biker thieves, the results are disappointingly dull.
• Although lots of little bits of low-level luck come into play throughout the episode, it lacks one big “Wow!” set piece.
• Eve turns up and talks in riddles again. Yawn.

And The Random:

• We’ve been waiting for a big (unlucky) 13 to show up. This is the floor that Suri lives on. Maybe she’s the Yin to Harry’s Yang and that’s why Ben died? Or maybe it’s just a big coincidence?
• Hatton Garden is, of course, currently infamous for the “Hatton Garden safe deposit burglary” in April 2015, performed by a four OAP thieves, one of whom arrived for the heist by bus.
• Burn Gorman, who plays the pathologist, Doug, was in episode, but we forgot to mention then that you might know him from Torchwood, The Man In The High Castle (in which he was brilliantly loathsome) and Pacific Rim.
• Liev Solomans, meanwhile, is played by Mark Fleischmann who is also the headmaster, Me Jeffries, in the excellent CBBC series Wolfblood.

Review by Dave Golder

• Read our other Lucky Man reviews

Stan Lee’s Lucky Man S01E01 “More Yang Than Yin” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on Sky 1, Fridays, 9pm
Writer: Neil Biswas
Director: Andy De Emmony

Essential Plot Points:

• Harry Clayton is a cop with a gambling addiction that has wrecked his marriage. But he still can’t avoid the attraction of the London casinos.
• After another round of bad luck the casino bass bars him and demands he pay his debt.
• However Harry’s luck turns when meets a mysterious woman who tells him where to place his bets on the Roulette table and she’s right every time.
• Harry repays her with a shag. She repays him by leaving him to wake up alone in the morning with a magic bangle he can’t take off around his wrist.
• Harry’s luck keeps up. He avoids getting crushed by falling bricks and his evangelical new boss misses some evidence that would show that Harry is a bit dodgy.
• Harry’s daughter is knocked off her bike by a car, but she’ll survive. This is the scriptwriters making a point! Mysterious woman returns to explain the point in case we don’t get it: luck comes with a cost… Yin and Yang and all that.
• Oh and she was supposed to give the magic bangle to somebody else, but she didn’t because seemed like a “good person”. But the guy she was supposed to give it to is angry and wants his bangle? Who might that be? She can’t reveal that yet… she’s a mysterious woman acting mysteriously, after all. She can’t just give the plot away in the opening episode.
• Meanwhile there’s some crime going on. The casino boss dies; a Soho pleasure palace boss loses one of his girls and seems scared; a young guy who’s permanently angry is somehow involved and it all ends up in boat chase on the Thames.
• Harry is not good at boat chases. Cue cliffhanger with Harry in the water and another cop drowning under the capsized boat while some villains approach brandishing machetes…

Review:

Cynic-Man – a little-known superhero created when he was bitten by a radioactive movie blogger – might suggest that Stan Lee’s involvement in Lucky Man probably went little further than a dinner conversation where went, “How about a guy who’s super lucky?” Because aside from the the opening credits there’s very little of a comic book vibe to this lavish, new Sky 1 show. It feels more like a family-friendly Luther or Silent Witness with a supernatural twist that it’s ever so slightly embarrassed by.

So we have the dodgy but essentially decent cop with his one great character deficiency – gambling – with a gruff no-nonsense boss who’s out to nail him, investigating slightly seedy cases an incredibly gorgeously shot London. So far, so much like so many other British cop shows; just change the location and the one great character deficiency to suit. It does benefit from an effortlessly charming performance from James Nesbitt, a man who can flesh out any role by simply turning the blarney up to eleven. Reveiwers used to moan about professional Cockneys on telly, but Nesbitt shows that being professionally Irish is a noble and worthy trade.

Then comes the twist. This cop, Harry, is given a magic bangle that gives him… well… the luck of the Irish. (Except that we’ve just seen its previous owner commit suicide which doesn’t seem particularly lucky but you have to assume this behaviour will become clear in the coming weeks). Now this – according to the pre-publicity and the Stan Lee connection – makes him a superhero. But Harry doesn’t come across as potential superhero material. And neither does his newfound luck feel like a superpower.

What this opening episode lacks is that one big “Wow!” moment when the luck really kicks in. A ludicrous moment of stupendous luck that makes the viewers’ and Harry’s jaw drop. The grandstanding moment. The signature moment. The Twitter-igniting moment. The one scene where all week you’ll be going, “Did you see the bit where?” The one that’ll be in every, “Previously on…” montage from here on in. The bit where luck does feel like a superpower.

Instead we get some falling bricks and electricity short-out. Cynic-Man is snorting in derision.

It looks like we are going to get that moment during the boat chase at the end but we get a cliffhanger instead. Cliffhangers in a programme about luck? Who can spot dramatic problem here? Not the scriptwriter, clearly.

This first episode of Lucky Man, then, is perfectly watchable if unexceptional cop show with plenty of amusing dialogue (“Look, I have patched for my addictions” “They have patches for porn?”) and a serviceable procedural plot. There are some subtle allusions to some of Stan Lee’s superhero tropes – especially in the dynamics between the regular characters – that suggest that he may have had more of a hand in the basic structure of the show than Cynic-Man believes, but ironically, in a show where there are no other comic book trappings they simply come across as clichés rather then amusing archetypes. Sienna Guillory’s Eve is barely more than plot exposition in motorcycle leathers, though in keeping with the grand tradition of such characters she only ever delivers half the information necessary for no discernible reason and vanishes as soon as she might actually start being useful.

Let’s hope episode two has a bit more fun with concept. After all, we can’t let Cynic-Man win!

The Good:

• The theme tune and credit sequence are the most comic-book thing about the show.
• Nesbitt can’t help but be watchable; he brings a lot of charm to a not particularly fleshed-out role (and we would put a bet on him having ad-libbed, “I haven’t a baldy,” when he drops back into ultra-Irish mode in the conversation with his brother –nice touch).
• It looks great, like a stylish spy thriller, and uses lesser-used London locations well.
• The central concept is intriguing, it just needs to have more fun with it.
• For some reason we really enjoyed the fact that DS Suri Chohan is a quiz show demon.

The Bad:

• Cliffhangers which have a character in mortal danger really don’t work when said character has magical luck powers. It’s bleedin’ obvious something lucky is going to get him out of it. In fact, seeing him survive by some extraordinary stroke of luck would have been a far better ending to the episode.
• Because, let’s face it, the standard of “luck” we see here is all low-rent, pretty ordinary stuff. The show needed one big display of super luck to really capture the audience’s imagination.
• Tonally it seems a little unsure if it wants to be glossy or grim.
• A lot of the characters come straight out of the stock (character) cupboard and it’s unclear if this is just writing on automatic or a meta-gag at the expense of Stan Lee superhero comic tropes (the grumpy boss out to expose the hero; the competitive work mate; the sympathetic workmate).

And The Random:

• Yes, there’s a Stan Lee cameo! He’s signing at London’s Forbidden Planet though with a Belisha Beacon obscuring the first bit of the word “Cult” in their sign some viewers might have assumed Lee was signing at an “Adult Entertainment Megastore”.
• The theme tune is “Lucky Man” written and performed by Corrine Bailey Ray.
• In the ’90s director Andy De Emmony worked almost exclusively on sitcoms, including the entire seventh season of Red Dwarf (1993) and the entire third season of Father Ted (1998) as well as three episodes of Spitting Image. In the 21st century he moved onto dramas like Kenneth Williams: Fantabulosa! (2006) and Filth: The Mary Whitehouse Story (2008). More recently he directed The Bletchley Circle (2012) and the upcoming supernatural thriller Him (2016) which you can read more about here.
• No less than three actors who’ve had major roles in Luther are recurring characters on Stan Lee’s Lucky Man: Steven Mackintosh (Harry’s unpleasant boss – he was in the whole of the first season of Luther); Sienna Guillory (the woman who gives Harry the magic bangle – she was in four episodes of season three of Luther) and Darren Boyd (the contemptuous fellow cop – he was only in half an episode of the recent Luther two-parter but he had a very memorable exit).

Review by Dave Golder

• Read our Lucky Man episode two review