HERE are some things which may - or may not - be true about Shattered (TVB Pearl, 9.35pm). One New Year's Eve, a couple are nearly killed while speeding along a twisting mountain road after a party. Their car takes a dive down an embankment; the wife (Greta Scacchi) is thrown clear and escapes with a few cuts and bruises; the husband (Tom Berenger) is so badly injured that he barely escapes death and has to have his entire face reconstructed.
The world would be an even stranger place if amnesia was as rampant as Hollywood movies seem to suggest, and Berenger develops a particularly convenient case in Shattered. He knows who the President is, for example, but can't remember his own family, which is a good excuse for Scacchi to start popping the buttons of her blouse open and he falls in love with her all over again.
Time to get out the Sherlock Holmes kit, however, because there are screeching clues that all is not as it seems. Joanne Whalley-Kilmer overacting madly as the wife of a close friend, for example; Bob Hoskins as a private eye who discovers some intriguing facts about the scheming Scacchi; and Berenger's nightmares, which seem to lead to an abandoned marina on a dark and rainy night.
Wolfgang Petersen directs with pretensions towards Hitchcock, but the entire plot is undone by an astounding series of implausibilities at the end which will leave viewers gnawing at their couches in frustration. However, Shattered is good, tense fun up until the final reel - and if you're left yelling 'that's not possible!' at the TV set, rest assured that you wouldn't be the first to cry out in disbelief at Bob Hoskins' explanation for still being alive. ENJOY Alien Nation (ATV World, 9.35pm) as a standard police action thriller - and one with a darned good cast to boot.
Just because the plot involves the integration of aliens in Californian society in the near future, after a ship carrying 100,000 extraterrestrials crash-lands on Earth, doesn't mean that Alien Nation has any higher aspirations towards sci-fi heaven. It's just solid, well-acted and well-directed entertainment, which I thoroughly enjoyed.
The aliens are called Newcomers, and they have been created by genetic engineering to be smart, strong and adaptable slaves - but there is no slavery on Earth, so they slowly move into American society. Some are cops, some are villains, some are shopkeepers; and one has murdered police detective James Caan's partner. So the world-weary Caan is understandably reluctant to accept a newcomer (Mandy Patinkin) as his new team-mate - he eventually realises, however, that this may give him entry into the newcomers' underworld and he can avenge the death of his buddy.
