The War of the Worlds

As other reviewers have said the first episode wasn't really terrible although the flash forward scenes were annoying and confusing. However the second episode after the "miraculous" meeting between the "heroes" is a total disaster. In this episode the whole alien invasion thing becomes irrelevant and we're stuck with a little bit of a horror movie (where the aliens play the part of the serial killer) and a little bit of post invasion red planet survival simulation. In the end i didn't even care if the heroes survived in the past or in the present. The only people who might like this mess are fans of the lead actress Eleanor Tomlinson.

I'll start with the positives, the acting was good, and it was nice at least to see The BBC making sci fi, in a time when it has been sadly shoved to the back of the queue.

Unfortunately, it's a pretty poor attempt, earlier in the year I thought this was going to be a big Christmas drama, big budget, exciting, featuring Eleanor Tomlinson and Rafe Spall, I'm glad they didn't transmit this at Christmas, it would have been an even bigger disappointment. Spall and Tomlinson were wasted, they're great, but were up against it with the script.

What should have been dynamic and exciting was slow and dull, not helped by the clunky jumps forward in time.

Sometimes tinkering works, sometimes it doesn't, I fear here there was too much tinkering. Simply put this was poor, with the last episode proving a real challenge to get through. 4/10

The BBC took a classic masterpiece and turned it into a steaming pile of ####!

What a shame! After looking forward to this adaption I was left feeling empty and unsatisfied. Such was the lack of tension - half the family were sat eyes closed and snoring midway through this borefest. I couldn't feel any empathy towards any of the characters, and the story thread was weak. The special effects were equally weak. It's a shame that the scriptwriter felt the need to turn a classic sc-fi story into a dreadful three-part politically-correct soap opera.

This is more about Amy fighting against the repression of the male dominated hierarchy and traditional western values than it is about earth fighting aliens.

I'm sort of cheering for the martians.