BBC3 has opened its doors to give viewers a sneak peak into three new shows it has lined up.  This started with supernatural, medical horror Pulse which debuted online one week before its TV broadcast and followed up a week later with Stanley Park and Dappers, but more on those in the coming days, but today we start with Pulse.

A great starting point for any horror is to identify a common fear and then exploit it.  For many hospitals, although being a place of healing can also be terrifying, you don’t check in if there is nothing wrong with you and while you are there you have to put your faith in these doctors who supposedly have your best interest at heart, but are at the end of the day just doing their job.  So with the setting seemingly right how does this new BBC pilot play out?

Hannah resumes her training at one of the country’s top teaching hospitals, it has been a year since she broke down following the death of her mother.  Haunted by spectres in mirrors Hannah finds herself reluctantly following her in mother’s footsteps in career she is not sure she really wants to be in. Her dedication to one particular patient leads her to discover that at night strange things are going on the hospital. Hannah’s former lover and promising surgeon Nick has problems of his own, following an operation he manages to infect himself with something that he needs to keep under control with frequent injections. Hannah soon discovers that he is involved with something paranormal when she is attacked by a corpse, freaking effected by the sickness Nick  Hannah away for her own safety promising to reveal all, instead he takes his life leaving Hannah with old questions unanswered and new ones burning. Are the experiments that go in the hospital just about saving lives or is there something far more sinister.

The show is determined to pack in as many horror clichés as it can, from the rotting corpse  appearing in the mirror, girl chased down corridors, locked in a library with a stranger, no one believes her, the double twist ending, unexpected people spring out from around corners the list goes on. Horror is a rare genre for TV series, the only one I can name with a continuing storyline is the unsuccessful Harper’s Island.  It seems audience need to resolve device laden issues that come along with horror in a single episode rather than over the course of the series.  Going back to the idea of a hospital as a scary place, the shift here is that we see that fear from the point of view of the doctors; it is something we can not so readily associate with.  Hannah is warned not to get too close to the patients, in doing she is more affected when something goes wrong, but this is also what opens her eyes to the dark side of the hospital. Since Hannah is on the inside, she should start to figure things out quickly. There is a danger that Pulse could fall into the same traps as True Blood where twists are either so obvious the reveal, when it comes, is a major disappoint or so hidden that it feels like it was plucked at random.

Right now Pulse has failed to grab me, sure there is some crazy shit going on in the hospital, but if I am going to invest my time into something I need to care about the characters and their relationships.  The main character Hannah is such a loner in the first episode that she fails to have even one meaningful friendship. I assume that sooner or later the other interns will get dragged into what is going on behind the scenes of the hospital, but right now one believer and cast of sceptics or conspirators does little to perk my interest.

Created / Written by: Paul Cornell, Ben Teasdale and Tom McRae.
Directed by: James Hawes
Starring: Stephen Campbell Moore, Claire Foy, Ben Miles, Caroline Goodall, Arsher Ali, Emily Beecham, Alan Williams, Gregg Chillin, Matti Houghton, Eileen Davies
Date premièred: 3^rd June 2010 – BBC3 (available on iplayer 27^th June 2010)