jonathan-747-46162

Sparks were flying! Sparks. Were. FLYING!! The heat between Jenna Coleman and Rufus Sewell was so blazing I thought I'd have to put the TV out with a fire extinguisher. My oh my, the chemistry! You SO wanted them to cast off the ties that bound them and just fall into each others' arms and kiss... and they really looked like they were yearning, utterly yearning to do so. Oh how we feel their torment, their inner struggles... if only...

The script so far has seen a little clumsy at times, which is what's holding me back from giving the series a better rating, but this episode in particular earned itself a few extra stars from the sheer chemistry between our two lead actors. It was like watching to supermagnets only being held back by thin stretching strings that were on the verge of snapping. You could feel the force field in your own heart.

So delightful... and so sad.

Sorry, but "Ticket to Heaven" (released the same year) is a much better film about the same subject. While it's an important one, "Split Image" treats it a bit lazily, as another reviewer here pointed out, especially the deprogramming, which is seriously amateurishily done and probably wouldn't have worked in real life.

Moreover, the script gets itself entangled into a touch of reasoning about the duality of humankind - not too subtly, with Dr Jekyll/Mr Hyde in the first act and all, but doesn't do that very well. It just becomes a distracting half-baked idea.

To cover up the poor writing, a lot of special effects, music, and violent action are being used, but that cannot conceal the shortcomings of this movie. Compare that with how "Ticket to Heaven" avoids all that completely and becomes much more powerful for it.

Still. I'd rather have you watch this movie than none at all about cults, since the timeless issues of mind control and mankind's yearning to avoid thinking for themselves sadly are as up to date today as they were then.

Emma Amos's acting was what earned this episode my tenth star. She's raw, she's real, she's everything a parent would be in such hideous circumstances; it certainly seems to come from within right down to her stuffy nose from all the crying making here barely able to speak.

Another star goes to Nicholas Woodeson, reprising his role as a murderous sex offender from another crime series - I won't tell you which one - and who in both cases gives such a blood-curdling performance that you kind of wonder what secrets he might hold in real life. No slander intended here, I'm sure he's a fine person in real life, but I'd still feel less uncomfortable with him being on a leash tied to a tree. Just in case.

I also think Bruce Alexander deserves more credit than he gets. This is one of many occasions where Mr Mullet is visibly torn between his disgust for Frost's methods and his admiration for his results. He acts it out with all the subtlety for you to feel it, even if it's never spelled out, and even if it might not even have been in the script.

Speaking if which, the script certainly puts a knife into one of Britain's sorest underbellies and twists it. There is no room for clerical errors in the sex offenders' list, period, and there certainly isn't enough being done about mistreatment of minors.

I take solace in another young woman, almost a minor herself, being one of the heroes of this episode. She's a neat contrast symbolising goodness overcoming evil.

But that's just me.