I am feeling particularly noble after sitting through several episodes of ‘Painkiller Jane’. I gave it a brief peruse a while ago, since it looked mildly interesting.

I managed about ten minutes, then turned over.

Still, you can’t truly judge something without having seen the pilot. Perhaps I’d missed some vital bit of plot/character development?

What I learned from the Pilot:

Our lead character, Jane Vasco, was originally dubbed ‘Painkiller Jane’ by her father, so impressed was he by her ability never to show any pain or emotional distress. He wasn’t impressed enough not to pack her off to Boarding School, however.

She’s expelled 23 times, which seems to demonstrate the ineffectiveness of their expulsion policy, and perhaps that it wasn’t the right school for her.

One wouldn’t expect all this to lead to great academic success, (or psychological stability) but she goes on to work for the DEA, with her sassy best friend as her partner. We first meet them whilst they are working undercover in a nightclub, all dressed up and demonstrating how obviously they stand out.

Unfortunately, the people they try to arrest turn out to work for a Secret Government Organisation, and are hunting Neuros – neurological aberrants. Neuros are people who have weird powers through some genetic thingy. But it’s OK, because if you implant a microchip in them, that fixes them! Thank goodness for technology.

Jane now obviously devotes her time to trying to track down this Secret Government Organisation, to the point that they get so sick of her, they offer her a job. She turns them down, but keeps following them around like an annoying younger sister, until they use their Secret Government Organisation powers to have her transferred to them.

But she’s still not impressed, and even tracks them to their Secret Underground Headquarters (in a disused subway station called Deckard Street – which could be a subtle ‘Blade Runner’ homage if the huge illuminated sign wasn’t in every possible scene).

At a loss for what else to do, they have her accused of a crime she didn’t commit, and she at last agrees to work with them. They then offer her partner a job, too, which is nice if a little unexpected. So, they send Jane off on her first mission, and she almost immediately gets pushed out of a 40th storey window.

But don’t worry, because she wakes up in a body bag, and stumbles and staggers melodramatically back to the Secret Underground Headquarters, where they discover that she has unnatural healing powers, but isn’t a Neuro. She is something else instead. They’re not really very sure what. And on we go from that point, with a new sub ‘X-Files’/'Fringe’/'Alias’ adventure every episode.

Could be worse, right? And indeed, it is!

For a start, there are the characters. Obviously, there is Jane, who comes over as a cross between ‘Babylon 5’s Ivanova and ‘Witchblade’s Sara Pezinni, but without any of their endearing qualities.

Her partner Maureen seems to be there to nearly get killed as often as possible.

There is the team leader, McBride, a steely-eyed father figure who turns up every episode in a new item of grey knitwear. That is the only thing that’s noteworthy about him; his jumpers.

Connor King, with his strong jaw and shaved hair is there to be manly. He’s been in the army, special ops, black ops, prison…

Riley is the techie, who sits all day and night in front of a bank of flat screens showing a variety of meaningless images and flashing lights, and Dr Carpenter seems to be confused by most everything they bring to him, but looks quite sweet in his white coat and scrubs.

There’s also Joe, who used to work on the subway, and now seems to do something similar for them.

A formulaic team doesn’t have to be a bad thing, but some occasionally passable acting is let down by scripts which are either a barrage of unoriginal one liners or chunks of exposition spoken by each team member in turn.

Even that could be watchable, if it wasn’t for the deeply irritating camera work: unexpected close-ups, needlessly shaky handheld POV shots, freeze-frames and slowmo reprises of salient plot points in case we weren’t paying attention.

Oh, and there’s the awful eighties synthesiser soundtrack.

And the voiceover at the end of each episode! Yes, just like they used to have in He-Man, and often just as patronising.

Some of the episodes are better than others, and some are even entertaining, if not intentionally. I found that the more you watch it, the more entertaining it gets, and it’s excellent for group mockery or drinking games.

‘Painkiller Jane’ is on SyFy, far too often.