Secrets of the Stars (Part One)

TV When I was about eight years old, I had a nightmare, which was unusual for me because I never had nightmares, I usually slept very well. In this nightmare, I was being chased around the streets of the suburbs where I grew up, not by Daleks or Cybermen or the Nimon, not even by Darth Vader but by Russ Abbot in his C.U. Jimmy guise, ginger wig, braces and kilt, shouting his catchphrase as he repeatedly almost caught up with me, in the fog. Years later I interpreted it as my subconscious reminding me that I’m not really Scottish no matter what my surname might tell me, but the image stuck and I’ve always been tetchy whenever I’ve seen Abbot ever since. Essentially, whilst I’ve nothing but good memories from my childhood of seeing Tom Baker’s teeth and curls and Leela in whatever that was she was wearing (I began young), Abbot’s Basildon Bond guise gives me shivers and I’m thanking whatever it is I believe in that his single Atmosphere has been consigned to history, not even resurrected by TMF during their Guilty Pleasures slots. Yes, I might not have had a fear of clowns. But I did have a fear of Russ Abbot.

Watching his performance in Secrets of the Stars, I wonder if my young subconscious wasn’t just afraid of Russ Abbot as the bogeyman but also as a performer. Now, I’ve only vague memories of the Madhouse, certainly less vivid than that dream, but if he was as appalling then as he is in the first half of this, I’m not entirely sure how that lasted for seven whole series (Barry Cryer's jokes?). With the exception of that just about ok moment in the opening, when his astrologist character Martin Trueman is being himself and chastened by the fraud he’s wrought on his clients, Abbot offers what might charitably be described as almost the worst performances in the role of a villain in the history of the franchise. We’ve already established that as a kids series, the acting in The Sarah Jane Adventures will always have a certain pantomime quality; as we saw in the previous story with Bradley Walsh, that can pay dividends in taking the villain in sinister directions. But Walsh modulated his work, whereas Abbot is going big but not in a funny way, and certainly not in a so bad it’s hilarious way (step forward Joseph Furst); there were moments here, usually whenever he was consulting with his hypnotised assistant, the lovely Cheryl, when I just wanted to rip the skin off my own face.

Did no one give him notes? Did no one say, actually it’d be more interesting here, Russ, if you adapted your performance, keyed it down a bit, so we can see your thought processes. At the risk of getting Behind The Sofa hauled in front of the blogosphere’s imaginary watchdog for insulting a pensioner, I know that Abbot’s not known for his dramatic acting roles, that I’ve stunk the place up myself in Shakespeare and that nu-Who has a propensity for hiring comedians and light entertainers and having great success. But Abbot was never Bernard Cribbins, and you really do have to protect the programme even if it means bringing in a slight unknown. About the only time Abbot seems comfortable here is on-stage addressing an audience, as Trueman introduces himself and his powers to the public. This is Abbot the entertainer and he was delightful, particularly when throwing out revelations about the attic crew. Quite why he felt the need to do his whole performance like that we might never know. Perhaps if we’d seen less private moments and like Odd Bob he’d simply been a figure our regulars went to, more of the public man in other words, he might have been more bearable.

It’s certainly the regulars who made this episode worth watching and even writer Gareth Roberts seemed more comfortable writing for them than his villain (which isn’t me trying to spread the blame by the way). Though he made Luke the bearer of exposition, explaining what horoscopes are with the help of Mr. Smith for any kids who haven’t been sneaking a look at the local paper, he also gave him that really quite wonderful scene calling back to Robert’s first story, Invasion of the Bane, as he realised he was never born, has never had the childhood his friends lived through. Tommy Knight was extraordinary here, perfectly underplaying this small tragedy which had clearly been bubbling under, with this incident acting as a trigger for him to have to deal with it. And once again Liz excelled herself as we saw Sarah-Jane again dealing with much the same issues she experienced in School Reunion of a life lost, though she’s obviously come to terms with these feelings and I wonder if in the next episode Trueman’s mistake will be to assume that he’s hurting her with emotions she’s already buried.

The fact that it’s possible to talk about it in these terms suggests that despite Abbot’s supersizing, Secrets of the Stars wasn’t/isn’t a dead loss. The rest of the regulars were/are very good and I really enjoyed the production design details within Trueman’s own top room, including the signs of the zodiac painted haphazardly on the walls. Abbot certainly looked the part in his white suit that obviously had certain evangelical cues. And despite not starting well with a direct quote from the other Rani at the cliffhanger of Dimensions In Time (and why would we want to be reminded of that?) there were some interesting ideas at the core of Roberts’s story which wouldn’t have disgraced the mother series – our universe being infected by the laws of the horoscopes so that someone can’t just predict the future but know for sure how it will turn out and even take measures to affect it. So far, that’s only really resulted in some parlour games, hypnosis and magic hands but who knows what might happen next week. It’s just one of those curious occasions when one element, in this case the boggle eyed performance of the main guest star, almost derailed the whole experience. Truly, the stuff of nightmares.