I'm not familiar with Philip K Dick's work although his writing has always intrigued me, especially when I think of the several movie adaptations of his work, from the obvious "Blade Runner" to "Total Recall", "Minority Report" and others.
This latest 10 part Channel 4 series dramatising individual Dick short stories felt like a good way to make myself better acquainted with his work as well as hopefully seeing some good-quality TV science fiction.
I did enjoy this first tale set in an alternative world where the population is split into "Teeps" (telepaths) and "Normals" (non-telepaths) who naturally distrust each other and can't get along. When a female telepath offers her services to the security forces against her own kind, her main task is to locate for the Normals the inventor of a special hood which negates mind-reading of the wearer by a telepath and to do this she's paired with a hard-bitten male detective.
Filmed in a grainy, greeny filter depicting a world where people drive what we'd call today vintage cars and still use typewriters it has the look and feel of one of the tougher 70's TV cop shows (like "The Sweeney"), a look I'm very comfortable with. I liked the way story eventually narrowed down from a who-and-where-is-he manhunt to the relationship between Teep turncoat and cop working up to an inconclusive, make-your-own-mind-up ending.
Particularly memorable was the early scene where she "mind-raped" a captured hood-wearer for information on his confederates, but the whole production was well staged and acted. One niggle though for me was the poor sound quality, making it difficult to pick up dialogue even as I appreciate there was a lot of background whispering going on.
Otherwise this episode set a good standard for what will hopefully follow.
This latest 10 part Channel 4 series dramatising individual Dick short stories felt like a good way to make myself better acquainted with his work as well as hopefully seeing some good-quality TV science fiction.
I did enjoy this first tale set in an alternative world where the population is split into "Teeps" (telepaths) and "Normals" (non-telepaths) who naturally distrust each other and can't get along. When a female telepath offers her services to the security forces against her own kind, her main task is to locate for the Normals the inventor of a special hood which negates mind-reading of the wearer by a telepath and to do this she's paired with a hard-bitten male detective.
Filmed in a grainy, greeny filter depicting a world where people drive what we'd call today vintage cars and still use typewriters it has the look and feel of one of the tougher 70's TV cop shows (like "The Sweeney"), a look I'm very comfortable with. I liked the way story eventually narrowed down from a who-and-where-is-he manhunt to the relationship between Teep turncoat and cop working up to an inconclusive, make-your-own-mind-up ending.
Particularly memorable was the early scene where she "mind-raped" a captured hood-wearer for information on his confederates, but the whole production was well staged and acted. One niggle though for me was the poor sound quality, making it difficult to pick up dialogue even as I appreciate there was a lot of background whispering going on.
Otherwise this episode set a good standard for what will hopefully follow.