Crime Traveller: The Complete Series
© BFS Entertainment

Mania Grade: B
Title: Crime Traveller: The Complete Series
Rating: Unrated
Starring: Michael French, Chloë Annett, Sue Johnston
Writer: Anthony Horowitz
Director: Brian Farnham, Richard Stroud
Distributor: BFS Entertainment
Original Year of Release: 2008
Extras: None
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Crime Traveller: The Complete Series

The premise is nothing really new. Two police officers use a time machine to solve crimes. What made this series interesting was its execution. Immediately the device has rules. Traveling back is unpredictable. It could be anywhere from three minutes to a full day. The possibility of going back longer has yet to be attempted. The time traveler cannot bring anything back with them. i.e. a photograph, information written on paper or winning lottery tickets. This also means if they are wounded they will be okay when they are back in their original “time zone”. Now, making it back to the original “time zone” is the key. Because the time travelers have to sync up their wrist device and be back at the exact same time they left. If they do not they will be caught in the loop of infinity for all time. Yes, someone actually does get trapped in the loop during the course of the series.

Michael French plays Detective Jeff Slade (of ‘East Enders’ fame) as the street wise, fly by the seat of his pants cop. His partner is Science Officer Holly Turner played by Chloe Annett (of ‘Red Dwarf’ fame). Both actors play off the Scully/ Mulder relationship in the series. However Holly and Slade are more likable and not nearly as cold to one another as Scully and Mulder were. Now Slade is reckless and she is the brains (it is after all her time machine). What made their performances refreshing was their chemistry and their subtle affection for one another. It plays well over the eight episodes. It seems that when a man and woman are partnered in a series that they will inevitably get together. French and Annett could have played it out over a few seasons without any problems. Unfortunately, they only got the chance for a single season.

“Jeff Slade & The Loop of Infinity” is the very first episode and it establishes the characters and rules of the time machine. The time machine is in Holly’s flat and isn’t mobile. This creates a race to get back every episode to sync up with the machine. This limits how far they can travel yet it plays perfectly to a show with a limited budget. One set, one location and a giant reusable prop that looks like it was salvaged from an old ‘Doctor Who’ episode. 

When they do travel back in time it is never to save the person murdered. It is to find out who did it. Slade believes that they should try and prevent the murders but he learns that time has its own rules and they cannot prevent what has already happened.

What is lightly touched upon is that Holly’s father actually invented the machine and that he is lost somewhere in time. Throughout the series I waited for him to appear or be stuck in the loop of infinity. The series ended before this ever happened but he was mentioned once too often for me to believe his appearance wasn’t inevitable.

By the second episode the two police officers are already in over their heads. Any fan of the genre (especially ‘Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure’) can pick out that many of the strange occurrences in the episodes are Slade and Holly helping themselves after they travel back.

“Fashion Shoot”, the third episode in the series, had a ‘Scooby Doo’ quality to it. There were only so many characters and it was obvious who the bad guys were. Slade and Holly travel back further than Holly has ever traveled before and they are forced to hide from their present selves. They also spend time getting to know one another. Outside of solving the murder, this episode enables the characters to become real instead of their cookie cutter personas we have seen up to this point. It also plays well into the sexual tension between the two characters.

There are one or two episodes that become formulaic but the cast of characters in the police department bring the acting up a notch for your standard sci-fi series. Sue Johnston as Slade and Holly’s chief never plays to the clichés of being the head of the department. Johnston does bring that stern British woman in charge persona to the screen much like that of Judi Dench playing “M” in the Bond films. Many of the side characters have actors that play on their clichés in a way that is never boring and a treat for any fan of the science fiction genre or just good drama. 

The series played out its final five episodes superbly and eventually we do get to the evil time traveler (played by Christopher Villiers). The evil time traveler is inevitable because it is something fans of the genre expect. It was also by far the best episode in the series. Sadly this was also the last episode.

‘Crime Traveller’ is a short lived, forgotten gem of a series that is worth the journey. It had an incredible cast, fun stories and above all it gave us another look at the perils and rewards of traveling in time.