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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Lucy Mangan

The War Between the Land and the Sea review – prepare to roll your eyes a lot at this fishy Doctor Who spinoff

Female Homo Aqua/Sea Devil and man in protective suit in dark undergound environment
Treading water … Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Salt) and Russell Tovey (Barclay). Photograph: BBC Studios/Bad Wolf/James Pardon

The fishmen cometh. Or, to put it another way – The War Between the Land and the Sea, the long-awaited Doctor Who spin-off from Russell T Davies concentrating on the adventures of Unit rather than the double-hearted man from Gallifrey, is finally here.

RTD stalwart Russell Tovey stars as Barclay, an everyman figure who soon – two excellent puns incoming – finds himself out of his depth, nay a fish out of water, as he is forced to take the lead in the geopolitical crisis that surrounds him. Barclay is a low-level clerk with Unit who, through the kind of bureaucratic snafu that you may in your salad days have believed was confined to fictional romps aimed largely at children over the festive period until age and experience poured slugs into them, ends up being part of the operation sent to deal with the discovery by a group of Spanish fishers of – well, fishmen. Fishfolk.

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