Demons of the Punjab

After last week’s space hospital high-jinks, Demons of the Punjab couldn’t be more different. One of the great successes of Chris Chibnall’s Doctor Who is the vivid difference from week to week in terms of colour, landscape and tone. Pakistan looks beautiful here, the great beauty of the natural landscape even more pronounced after the white artificiality of the Tsuranga. Both stories have one thing in common, however. They are full of heart.

Once it is revealed that Grandma Umbreen’s husband-to-be Prem is due to be killed, the story really bursts into life. All of a sudden, the stakes are raised immeasurably. I can’t help but feel if Umbreen had revealed in the very first scene with Yaz that there was at least some sadness associated with the first marriage in Pakistan, then the narrative motor driving most of the story along may have been able to propel it forwards from the very start. As it stands, the first 20 minutes, like The Tsuranga Conundrum last week are a little languorous, both worlds slowly building before the threat makes itself known. 

But what a world writer Vinay Patel creates! Although events follow the course of just two days with one small family, the perils of Partition-era India are always felt, the dangers looming off-screen, broadcast over the radio-waves and in distant gunfire. The episode evokes the doom-laden atmosphere of 1960s classics The Massacre or The Aztecs. As events take their course, the forbidding darkness of man pushes itself to the fore and a downbeat, emotional climax marks the standout moment of the story, Shane Zaza putting in a powerfully understated turn as Prem.

As for the rest of the cast, there’s a real mixed bag of talent on offer here. Bradley Walsh gives real weight to several moments, his scene with Yaz a quiet victory. But both Jodie Whittaker and Amita Suman completely trample over some quite beautiful speeches. In fact, Whittaker’s inability to find nuance in her performance, or even credibility, is becoming a major sticking point for this reviewer. Her wedding speech is truly dreadful, her charisma completely absent, her comic timing somewhere yesterday. She only shines in the scene on the spaceship when she’s facing off against the gloriously unsynchronised but beautifully masked titular demons. Perhaps there’s an element of her needing to be the star of any given scene, but she’s not written that way. In fact, her Doctor is remarkably sketchy. No one has asked her real name. No one has asked where she comes from. She’s been acutely unexplored and is getting by on bad jokes and her time machine. Perhaps, like the companions, she’ll find her episode later this year. 

Despite a number of poor performances however, this is the best episode so far this year. For all its vivid imagery and gorgeous photography, it’s about a sad, pointless shooting in a field, meaning that it feels remarkably grown up for post-2005 Doctor Who, a show in which Russell T Davies embargoed humans killing humans. The illustration of tensions between brothers is at times unbearable and the death of the holy man needless and affecting. This is Doctor Who that is resolutely about something, about people, in a way it admittedly hasn’t been for some time. I didn’t know much about Partition when sitting down to watch Demons of the Punjab. Now I feel guilty for not knowing more. I teach Pakistani children in Oldham, not too far from Sheffield. This feels like precisely the sort of material they and I need to watch. In its own way, Demons of the Punjab is essential. 

8/10

JH