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Preview: Paul Cornell's Pulse for the BBC

My wife likes Paul Cornell's TV work, the ones she's seen anyway. Which means Doctor Who and Primeval. And she's liked what she's seen, So we both snuggled down to watch a preview disc of his new show for the BBC, Pulse.

Three minutes in, there was so much blood that she went to another room, telling me to call her back after there had been three minutes without blood.

So that was that.

For basically the entire show.

But despite having certain resemblances to, say Peter Jackson's Bad Taste, this is a complex, multi-layered drama – and the buckets of blood are much less shocking than the evil that man does to his fellow man.

Pulse is a fringe science drama set in a hospital where some very odd experiments seem to be going on. Patients that wake up in operations, cuts that infect surgeons, mysterious injections, creatures inside bodies and patients that refuse to die.

And characters that include that rare thing, a subdued withdrawn female lead, Hannah who overcompensates to try and make a difference despite being plagued by self doubts, fears and ghosts. Literally on that last bit.

Other doctors who, if not in on the conspiracy, are happy to turn a blind eye to it. And the main "bad guy"… well naturally he's got a thing going on with Hannah.

It's gripping, gritty and surprising with soft squelchy parts full of character, empath and all that modern bollocks too. Funny in placed, harrowing in others, I'd be very interested in seeing more.

But I still found it hard to shake Garth Marenghi's Darkplace from my head. I checked for a "based on melodies originally whistled by Paul Cornell" in the credits to no avail.

Pulse airs at 9pm, June 3rd, BBC 3 as part of a series of pilots. Do not watch with a bowl of spaghetti bolognaise on your lap.

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