I just called to say I love… this series.

Captain Perry made his choice and here we see the result as we come full circle, with a change of pace in the final chapter and all the narrative threads knit together. Will there be ‘no new year’s day’ as the song goes?

We dive back in with friends we met in the last episode in the only consecutive instalment of Calls that feels like a clear sequel to the preceding one. It starts with a neat, explanatory recap as our hero Dr Rachel Wheating, and her colleague Dr Surman, are trying not to explode General Wilson’s brain as they enlighten him (and us) on the intricacies of interdimensional physics. Dr Robert Wheating, Rachel’s father, is the only hope left when that call falls flat and we soon understand Rachel’s reluctance to contact him as Robert appears to adhere to the ‘mad-scientist’ trope of ground-braking genius-level research succeeding at the expense of family relationships.

The ‘glitch’ is expanding, clearly because of Captain Perry’s choice, but happily for Rachel and Dr Surman; said glitch allows another Call that might just save the world. You can throw grumpy, misogynistic and spiteful in with Robert’s mad-scientist vibe. It reminds me a little of the spiteful nature of ‘the Universe’, our prime suspect so far for all these awful events, but has it been wrongly accused?

The denouement of Calls is satisfying on a deeper level than I would have expected from nine short audio-based graphically animated stories. We finally understand the events of ‘The End’, meaning the beginning of the Calls series. Will it be “the end of all things, in the blink of an eye?” or will “the Universe reset, fixing itself and [allowing] people to go back to their lives without ever knowing what happened?” Robert himself gets the chance for a hard reset so he can ret-con his own narrative from 1978 onwards. The niggling fly in the narrative ointment is akin to the last moments of the classic horror story when we realise that the bogeyman is not actually dead: what will that final inter-dimensional behavioural change mean for the space-time continuum? Chew on that nugget if you will.

Verdict: A well-crafted and expertly performed opus in nine brief, cleverly animated episodes that take the audience where we did not expect to go. I need to ask my Editor if I can go over 10 with the final score… I suspect not so here it is: 10/10

Claire Smith