TV preview: White Heat | Dirk Gently | Empire

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An epic drama following a group of friends from the mid-60s to the present day, it’s difficult to avoid comparing WHITE HEAT with its most obvious antecedent, Our Friends In The North. But aside from their shared goal of exploring the social upheaval of their epoch through a variety of contrasting characters, it feels altogether more superficial than Peter Flannery’s opus, at least on the evidence of its opening episode.

Written by seasoned dramatist Paula Milne – whose credits include the schmaltzy adaptation of Small Island – it raises alarm bells from the off with a faux-profound voice-over even more cloying than Vanessa Redgrave’s in Call The Midwife. And that’s saying something.

Such earnest sentiment gnaws at the core of White Heat, as does a tendency to dutifully tick off the issues of the day – racism, class, the sexual revolution etc – in lieu of having anything new or meaningful to say about them.

It also doesn’t help that Milne’s characters so far feel like over-familiar archetypes carefully put in place to cover every socio-historical base. And while she cheekily acknowledges this by having one character opine that the group feels as though it’s come together as part of a social experiment, it still feels terribly contrived and heavy-handed.

So, we have a student house in London’s Tufnell Park populated by an arrogant would-be radical rebelling against his establishment background, a naïve middle-class virgin from the provinces, a stoic West Indian, a sensitive Asian, a fat Catholic, a free-spirited northern artist whose parents don’t approve of all this T’London nonsense, and – the only potentially interesting character, played by the always excellent Lee Ingleby – a conservative yet outspoken lad who couldn’t escape from Newcastle fast enough.

Shot through a deliberately idealised sun-kissed haze, the 60s scenes of them frugging to The Yardbirds and groovily casting aside the values of the Old Order – symbolised by the death of Churchill, just to labour the point – are juxtaposed with chillier interludes set in the present day, with Juliet Stevenson and Lindsay Duncan as estranged versions of the virgin and artist as they return to the flat following the death of one of their old friends.

The mystery of what drove the group apart and who it was that stayed there for all those years before dying alone, does succeed as a dramatic hook, and it’s certainly possible that, were it to find its way in episode two, White Heat may be worth the effort. But it’s disappointing that, given its potential, it already feels like a missed opportunity.

The same goes for DIRK GENTLY, which is so indebted to the modern telefantasy paradigm established by Doctor Who and Sherlock, it barely has any identity of its own.

The late Douglas Adams, upon whose work this series is loosely based, once served as script editor during Doctor Who’s original run, so the links are inherent anyway. But television really doesn’t need another straggle-haired, loose-limbed, people-phobic, geek-chic eccentric solving crazy puzzles with assistance from a more diffident and human sidekick. It’s probably only a matter of time before they revive Catweazle starring Ben Whishaw as a sexy nerd wizard in a pin-striped smock (I really shouldn’t be giving them any ideas).

Stephen Mangan is fine as Gently, a conceited, bumbling, shabby detective who conducts “tangential investigations” based on his belief in the interconnectedness of all things. But his borderline charming performance isn’t enough to rescue this micro-budgeted production from resembling a CBBC version of Sherlock.

The gritty cheapness of original BBC 4 comedies such as The Thick Of It and Getting On actually works in their favour, as their dark, jittery essence practically demands flat lighting etc. But Dirk Gently, in trying to create a much lighter and more fantastical mood, is ill-served by its cheapo aesthetic.

Everything about it is far too slight: slightly likeable, slightly funny, slightly clever, but never enough to really succeed as either comedy or drama. And while the decision to downplay the science-fiction concepts found in the original books makes sense from a budgetary point of view, it also exacerbates the general feeling of pointlessness. It’s just too generic and ordinary. And Douglas Adams was never generic and ordinary.

What is Jeremy Paxman trying to say in EMPIRE exactly? That British imperialism wasn’t all bad? Then why does he spend most of the first episode of his new series cataloguing the litany of grisly and appalling crimes committed in its name? There’s nothing wrong with that, of course: at the risk of slipping into Churchill-ese, we must never forget this horrendous stain on Britain’s character.

But why does Paxman, after indulging in a bout of sober laceration, then badger elderly Egyptians into acknowledging at least one good thing about their British oppressors? Massive post-colonial guilt? Or is Newsnight’s chief inquisitor simply incapable of interacting with people without needlessly grilling them alive? Either way, it’s an interesting but rather confused programme, although you may enjoy the hypocrisy of him criticising British imperialists for their arrogant self-satisfaction. Pot, kettle, Paxman.

• WHITE HEAT

Thursday, BBC2, 9pm

• DIRK GENTLY

Monday, BBC 4, 9pm

• EMPIRE

Today, BBC1, 10:25pm