Cliche means that something has failed in the end product that makes it's concept seem petty rather than larger than life, that something was broken and never fixed and as such the media did not draw the consumer out into its world far enough for them to believe in what they created.
But there are also times when the word cliché can be used like a badge of honor.
Jago and Lightfoot: The Bellova Devil is one such example of getting it right, it blends elements that in other less well-written scripts would have seemed overused and stale, such as a detective story set in Victorian London or the dead rising from out the grave in the middle of the night. This play blends them all in a script by Alan Barnes, one that really has twists and turns in it worthy of any murder-mystery tale.
Christopher Benjamin (Henry Gordon Jago) and Trevor Baxter (Professor Litefoot) do another remarkable job here, being both entertaining and capturing the essence of the characters they played so well in Doctor Who almost thirty-three years ago.
The rest of the cast is pretty good as well, so you are really able to lose yourself for a bit in the world of this Victorian odd couple.
Running throughout the story is a sense of both practical detective work and the strangeness of the world beyond Human understanding, one that makes some of the reveals at the end all the more shocking, as you are led to believe the antagonist could be either from our world or the world beyond and they keep you guessing.
Overall series plot points are kept to a minimum in the play, meaning you can pick up this play without ever having listened to the first story, The Bloodless Soldier, but also means that if you did the mystery deepened a bit as well, keeping you waiting for the next installment of the series.
-Thomas Spychalski
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