Kiss Kiss Bang Bang [Review: The Deep]

Somewhere beneath the Arctic ice, BBC's sci-fi submarine series The Deep is proving to be more than just melodrama with gritty-blue colour grading - it's got ideas. There's no question of spinning this series out and making you wait months for a tiny snippet of a hint Lost-style - tonight the revelations were coming in thick and fast and breaking their way in through the hull. I won't reveal them here, that's what BBC iPlayer is for.

The melodrama is pretty over the top - it's almost as if someone in the scriptwriting department realised that "high pressure" could be a metaphor for something! James Nesbitt and Orla Grady in particular really go for maximum emotion - admittedly, she has returned from the dead. And while I expect realism to take second place to drama in a series like this, I did notice that there's rather a lot of casual gunplay considering the action takes place inside a pressurized vessel located several thousand feet underwater.

By contrast, it's great to see Minnie Driver in a really powerful role here, as the ice-cool submarine commander taking tough decisions and just about holding the crew (and her hairstyle) together. There's a distinct lack of large prehistoric sharks in this series - so far - but you can't have everything and so I am thankful for the bangs.