Ah yes, Stan Lee’s Lucky Man (Sky1). It’s a bit like The Professionals – if they were in the pages of a Marvel comic.
James Nesbitt’s DI Harry Clayton fights crime in London with the help of an ancient oriental bronze bracelet given to him by a mysterious woman after a night of passion. It brings him the power to control luck. But it also brings something bad to counterbalance that luck. So in the first series, there were deaths, severed heads, kidnappings, relationship problems, that sort of thing. The bracelet is something of a mixed blessing.
At the start of a second series, Harry meets another mysterious woman, named Isabella, who would also like to have a night of passion (she keeps asking him out – a sure sign). He’s still in love with his estranged wife, Anna, though. But Anna still hasn’t forgiven him after she and their daughter were nearly killed by evil overlord Golding. Or for his gambling addiction. It’s complicated.
Isabella wears what looks like the exact same lucky bronze bracelet – only hers is more powerful. So powerful, in fact, that at the roulette table hers totally bosses his – and Harry breaks his 186-day winning streak.
Meanwhile, in the day job, Harry hares around London after a vindictive serial ricin poisoner, who may be about to murder his own mother. Hurry!
It’s an odd, not entirely successful pairing – hammy, hackneyed retro cop show plus comic-book superpowers. Jimmy N gives it his all, as ever. He’s very watchable. It all is, in fact – easy on the eye, slick and shiny. London – the show’s other other big star – looks lovely: the Thames, Brick Lane, the wobbly bridge and Tate Modern, Senate House. But there’s not an awful lot beneath the sheen.
Schofield’s South African Adventure (ITV) is a family holiday video that found its way on to television. Silver-haired TV presenter Phillip Schofield and his wife, Steph, go for a walk in a colourful part of Cape Town, check out property prices, do a little drumming. Then they put on wetsuits and go on a shark cage-diving excursion with Marine Dynamics Shark Tours, who get a nice plug (and another from me, and I didn’t even get a dive!). How lovely. For the Schofields.
