On a traumatic backstep, Frank inadvertently brings back a woman who has been dead for 21 years, causing massive disruptions worldwide.

Entering its third year, big things are expected of Seven Days. It’s intermittently shown an ability to transcend its limitations and come up with some fantastic stories. This one, while thankfully using the basics of the series to spin a story rather than simply rehashing a film’s idea, remains a fairly standard entry in the show’s canon.

Once you’re got over the concept of Frank managing to retrieve someone from Heaven (or at the least ‘limbo’), it’s actually a nice story of redemption as a young mother, Maryann, tries to make up for not being there for her daughter when a drugs bust ended in her death in a car accident. The only thing is, it’s all so obvious. The second a waitress asks ‘Do I know you?’ it’s clear she’s the woman’s grown-up daughter, and it seems a bit lazy to put the kid through exactly the same lifestyle problems as her mother, basically being a case of plotting the same scenes twice, once with drugs, once with guns.

The addition of a black hole caused by Maryann’s absence is a good device to provide a bit of extra interest, but the Backstep team seem content to just look at it rather than doing anything about it, keeping their fingers crossed that Parker will be back in time (pardon the pun). There are some nice touches that help make this a little better, from Ramsey’s being upset at having run over his own dog and the final coda, to Ballard’s way of explaining things in layman’s terms for the relative idiots around him. What we need is to up the character interaction; despite being one of the remaining regulars, Donovan still isn’t even present! Admittedly the nature of Parker’s job tends to make it a solo effort, but that doesn’t preclude the rest of the Backstep team getting involved. We’ll see how it goes. It’s not a bad start to the season, but it’s not the most accomplished story in the world.

***

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