Crime Traveller Volume 1 and 2
01/08/2003 . Source: Geoff Willmetts 
pub: Video: Revelation PAE 61172. 200 minutes. Price: £19.99) stars: Michael French and Chloe Annette. Crime Traveller Volume 2 Video: Revelation PAE 61173. 200 minutes. Price: £19.99) stars: Michael French and Chloe Annette check out website: www.revfilms.com This 1997 series got a lot of flak when it was released. Essentially, a gadget story that depends on time travel to go back in time from anything from a few minutes to a day. Holly Turner's father had invented a time machine and apparently lost in time when he didn't return to the machine in time to be brought back to the present. Continuing her father's work but needing funds, Holly becomes a science office for a branch of the Metropolitan police force.  Here, she becomes acquainted with Jeff Slade, probably the smartest one there and let's him in on the secret when a murder mystery needs to be solved. It is from this basis, we have an 8 episode series using all the variants of this theme.
In many respects, the overall idea is a clever one and wouldn't have been out of place in the post-Avengers era. Indeed, the production values of this series are extremely high.  The use of the time machine effect is equally very well thought out. The big question has always hung around the cast. Michael French was living off his Eastenders part - something I can't talk about it cos I didn't watch that depressing soap - and Chloe Annett was considered a fan favourite cos of her part in the last Red Dwarf series.
In person, both might well be nice people but for a series which required at least some chemistry to work between them, it's got a definite feeling of miscasting. This isn't helped matters by the supporting cast. The rest of the police team consists of a police inspector who can barely hold off from resigning, a dim-wit who would have problems getting a job as a lollipop man getting kids across the road and a naive bubble-cut university graduate who learns all he can about detective work from the books he reads. Stereotypes that would work in a kiddie show but not mid-evening on a Saturday night. Writer Antony Horowitz might have had some ideas where he was going with the SF premise but either the cast were keeping to the letter of the script or weren't developing their parts fully enough to stopping it becoming a surreal attempt at policing in London. Having everyone being called by their surnames even when you're friends comes over as a bit ludicrous. Having open plan wire police cells tends to go against human rights just for the chance for a criminal's expression when Turner or Slade goes past for a second time. It's often said that a series can be made or broken by having a well-chosen cast and have something that just takes off in the viewers' eyes. Miss that ingredient and the series is doomed to fail. When you blend how things are with a touch of SF element, it's also very important to ensure that regular reality is upheld and it simply wasn't. If anything and this is an important reason to look at this series as a lesson to be learnt: See what happens when this doesn't work. Re-watching this series again now really hasn't changed that opinion. Yes, it is watchable and the series did have some fans at the time who will undoubtedly pick this up. There is, however, too much dependence on watching the plot unfold than actual caring for the characters although it undoubtedly paved the way for 'Jonathan Creek' to be made with the lessons learnt here. The extras on both DVD packs include biographies of key cast and production people, episode synopsises and cast listings and the other products Revelation are releasing shortly. Some part of me does wonder about the expectations of sales of 'Crime Traveller' also the historian part of me feels encouraged that Revelation will attempt to release other defunct series in the future that we all would like to own as well. GF Willmetts 
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