Britain’s Jekyll may be the best movie never made of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, because it was actually a made-for-television miniseries. The BBC six-parter is a true reinvention of both concept and character, making for a most unpredictable ride.
Front and center is James Nesbitt (Match Point) as Jekyll, a doctor who’s keeping quite the secret from his lovely wife (Gina Bellman, TV’s Leverage) and their two sons. He’s spending time with another lovely, younger woman (Michelle Ryan, TV’s Bionic Woman). Oh, they’re not having an affair — he’s hired her to keep him and everyone else safe from his other, not-better half, the lecherous, fanged gadabout who calls himself Hyde.
But this is not the Jekyll/Hyde tale you’ve seen dozens of times before, unless there’s one I don’t know about where Hyde kills a lion, tosses the supposed king of the jungle onto the van of his would-be captors, and then sings a spirited round of the “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” while standing atop the zoo’s caged den. Not a one of its six hours is a repeat of any before it.
In fact, what begins as a suburban horror story flips its switch into sci-fi mode as the high-tech conspiracy against Jekyll grows deeper and his origins are told in time-tripping fashion. Nesbitt plays both sides of the coin to excellence; his Hyde is a saucy, sexually charged ball of confidence and venom, giving the show a darkly comic veneer. The epic comes from the diabolically creative mind of Steven Moffat, who more recently took the same purists-be-damned, start-from-scratch approach to the world’s greatest detective with the BBC’s brilliant Sherlock. No shit! —Rod Lott
Don’t expect wacky, 
This is the kind of dreck that likely led Lugosi straight to Smack Central. But the worst (and yet best) thing about it is the end, when our hero reporter and his gal pal shutterbug look over at the creepy guy who’s been peering in windows the whole time (and looks like Conan O’Brien with a chromosome deficiency) and ask, “Hey, who are you?” The creepy guy turns to the camera and says, “Who, me? I’m the author of the story! Screwy idea, ain’t it?” and then rolls up his car window, on which is shoe-polished “THE END.” 
Dastan flees with Princess Tamina (Gemma Arterton) across the desert and encounter ostrich races, deadly snakes and guys with gloves that shoot spikes. He is quite the ace at hopping rooftops, performing rope tricks, and smiling and grunting. Whenever he effs up, he unleashes some magic sand in his magic dagger which reverses time for several seconds, resulting in a cool effect whose cost could keep Third World countries flush in white rice for years. 
After an initial night of bonding in the cabin over a pork dinner — during which Busey repeatedly plays with a disembodied pig’s head, and you wonder if that was scripted — Ice-T gets a rude awakening (literally) as he learns he — not wild animals — is the intended prey. Despite the miles and miles of forest around them and not having hunting dogs, they always manage to know right where he is. After running for a while, Ice-T decides to turn the tables on them, and you can pretty much guess what happens from there. It involves little more than rock-throwing, rigging vehicles, jumping from trees and uttering bad quips.