Paradise Towers [TV/1987.10.5 ~ 10.26]

★★★☆☆

  If you're like me, and you're quite into elaborately created sets of run-down street corners and dilapidated building interiors, there's no getting around the fact that Paradise Towers is a fun experience. From the assured direction by Nicholas Mallett (has to be one of the 80s' most criminally unsung heroes when it comes to the directing seat) to the absolute fun that both Sylvester McCoy and Bonnie Langford seem to be having, it's so easy to sit down and enjoy the wackiness with a side of conceptual horror (the synopsis for this is pretty horrifying if you think about it long enough... which I've been doing for years now). Oddly enough, this willingness to mix the light-hearted and the brutal is what turns some people off from Season 24 and I can hardly blame them. Their tastes are theirs, and my tastes are mine. I simply choose to believe that this is a delicious piece of telly.

  I'd say that this was probably the kind of story that didn't need four parts to bring alive; three would've been enough (and I'd have taken one more episode of Delta and the Bannermen because it's sublime) to contain all the little details that get me excited (such as the surprisingly intricate culture of the Red Kangs). Nonetheless, despite so many people bemoaning its execution, I wouldn't have Paradise Towers any other way; it's precisely the odd mishmash of light and dark that works so well with an equally odd setting -- an all-but-abandoned residential building complex with the egotistical chief designer killing from beyond the grave for suitable bodies -- and for some reason, McCoy's Seventh Doctor works so well in these settings. Don't get me wrong, he's grown on me over the years as the master manipulator, but I cherish every moment I get to see the cute eccentric professor type we got in Season 24, the intergalactic buffoon who would find his way into every close-knit group and destroy corruption from the inside. Just take a gander at the scenes he has with the Red Kangs -- they're so naturally charming together, a ragtag gang and a reckless ringleader with a silver tongue. All so very entertaining.