DVD review (region 2)
Starring Marc Singer, Jeff Yagher, Jane Badler, June Chadwick, Faye Grant, Robert Englund
Release date Out now

The battle between the Visitors and the Resistance continues in Los Angeles...

The original kernel of the V miniseries – reinventing the Nazi invasion in modern day America, using aliens in place of the Germans – got rather lost in the second series, but its return is one of the few things to praise about the single season one-hour series that followed.

Los Angeles becomes a place where Visitors and humans are supposedly able to live side by side, much like Casablanca was in the Second World War, with the corpulent form of Lane Smith's Nathan Bates watching benevolently over everyone. But as seen in the movie Casablanca, what this really means is there's lots of double-dealing going on, with both sides trying to engineer an advantage.

Unfortunately, there's not a lot to praise about the show. The opening two hours kill off one of the more interesting characters, and to all intents and purposes uses magic to make the Star Child a more audience-friendly teenager, who can ineffectually flirt with the new macho male lead played by Jeff Yagher. The distinctive voices of the Visitors are lost, which negates a load of plotlines from the original miniseries, and makes them even less distinctive from the humans, except for the rare moments where we see one of them eating a live mammal!

Jane Badler chews the scenery, with June Chadwick's Lydia not far behind. Michael Ironside can probably count himself lucky that Ham Tyler gets written out, while poor Marc Singer does his best with occasionally diabolical material. Faye Grant and Robert Englund soldier bravely on, but for them too it's often a losing battle. The repeats of shots from the miniseries becomes embarrassing and while there is the odd moment that recalls the heights of the original series, most of this is forgettable dross. Paul Simpson

VERDICT; 4/10
If you're a V fan, spend your money finding the spin off novels – most are a vast improvement on this!

Click here to buy V: The Complete Series at Forbidden Planet (forbiddenplanet.com)