The Confessions of Dorian Gray: Series 4

This fourth season returns to the format of the first two, with eight narrated stories, each a snapshot of some event in Gray's long life. Also, unlike the third season, there's no plot arc here and the stories are not arranged chronologically. It's a little uneven as a result, although there are a couple of gems amidst the more routine stories.

• The Enigma of Dorian Gray – Gray is invited to the unveiling of a new computer system in 1960s Manchester and recounts the story of how he met its creator. On the face of it, this is more science fiction than the series' usual supernatural fare, but it's really more about the relationship between the two men and how it reflects on Gray's true personality. The horror stakes here are minimal at best, but it's a strong examination of our anti-hero's soulless nature.
• Freya – This time we move to 1970s Scandinavia for a story with links to Norse legend. It's a fairly straight-up monster story, albeit one that also relies on Gray's moral ambiguity. The isolated setting also helps, and the story manages to cram both tension and mystery into its short length.
• Human Remains – The third episode is set within a hospital where patients have been disappearing and Gray keeps experiencing something that may or may not be a hallucination. It's quite an inventive story, playing with the narration – some of which is delivered by Gray while he is on drugs – and making good use of the short run time. But what somebody would make of it who doesn't do what I do for a living, I don't know...
• His Dying Breath – An unremarkable tale following the standard tropes of the series without anything much new to add to them. It would probably have worked better in an earlier season, and on its own merits, it's quite good – featuring a supernatural killer stalking 1920s London. But it's been done before, and much of the course of it is, by now, predictable.
• Banshee – A ghost story set in Ireland at the turn of the last century, notable among other things for portraying Gray relatively early in his life, when the supernatural world is something he's only recently come to terms with. The twist ending is effective, and the creepy setting well-realised.
• The Abysmal Sea – Another straight monster story, this time set at sea, and with an inevitable similarity to Jaws. The story does a good job of racking up the tension, but it's also enlivened by some reflections on Gray's immortality and what it means, particularly in terms of his relationships to normal people.
• Inner Darkness – This is an unusually standard horror tale, the sort of thing that's been done many times before – albeit usually as the prelude to a story rather than the entirety of it. It's done well, but it doesn't ring any changes on the basic idea, and the fact that the only person supposedly in peril is Gray himself (who obviously isn't) takes away much of the edge. One of the weaker stories in the run.
• The Living Image – The final story in the collection is, however, one of the best, and particularly notable for not being horror. Instead, it concerns Gray swapping places with a (non-supernatural) doppelganger and experiencing life as an ordinary man with an unremarkable family. It's a good change of pace, making effective use of some of the complexities of its lead character – who really is the villain here?