Thank goodness for that! Revenge of the Slitheen was like being poked in the eye with a sharp stick, but Eye of the Gorgon is far more recommendable. I can't think what must have happened last time to Alice Troughton, but here she's back on form.

There are lots of good things about this, which is not only better than its two predecessors but also superior to the New Who story it theoretically resembles, Tooth and Claw. (It's got nuns instead of monks and a gorgon instead of a werewolf, although to be honest I'm being facile here since the two stories can only be compared on a loose structural level.) Personally I'd say this is the first Sarah Jane Adventure that's more than just an efficient runaround. Invasion of the Bane is perfectly good, but I only watched it less than a week ago and yet I already can't remember much about it. Revenge of the Slitheen is an abomination. This story though is genuinely worth seeking out, with actual themes, some lovely actors and a memorable evil power for its monster.

The first thing it does right is to choose the best possible setting for screen acting: an old folks home. The story had me in the first 35 seconds with Doreen Mantle and a sinister nun. Nothing happens in the scene, but Mantle makes it brilliant. She's been in the acting business since 1965 and she could steal scenes in her sleep. In 1965 I wasn't even born! She's almost humbling to watch, but it's not even her we've come to see. No, the lead old biddy is Phyllida Law, who's also the mother of Emma Thompson (yes, that one), the widow of Eric Thompson (creator of The Magic Roundabout) and an actress who's been working since the fifties. That's seven decades. Does it even need saying that you could sail ocean liners through the gap between them and everyone else in the show? They lift it to another level. I'm almost embarrassed to be mentioning that Phyllida Law has also done a Big Finish audio, The Bride of Peladon.

That's not denigrating the rest of the cast, mind you. The nuns are hard as nails and convincingly evil by any standards. The manager of the old folks' home is played by a rather good actress who looks so much like Graham Crowden in drag that I was delighted and is in fact his daughter.

As for the regulars, they're well within tolerance levels. The children are growing into their roles and I didn't really have a problem with them, although Daniel Anthony's Clyde is still negative, whiny and hard to like while Yasmin Paige's struggling valiantly with some fairly heavyweight material. Her big bit towards her dad in episode two comes across as peculiar, repressed and offhand, but I didn't mind that. It's eccentric, but it works. No, I was more distracted by little things like her occasionally failing to differentiate between two beats in a line, or else that weird puffy face she has in her big scene with Phyllida Law in episode two. These aren't hanging offences, though. She's doing pretty well. As for Elizabeth Sladen, she's a strong lead for the show and always utterly immersed in what she's doing, but she'll occasionally find an odd line reading that makes me suspect she's basically operating on instinct. "Oh, I don't know." "Like I said, there's always a chance."

It's doing the Buffy thing of making the fantastical elements a thematic mirror of the real-life stuff. What's more, there's a three-fold symmetry. The Gorgon is thousands of years old, being carried around by nuns and (for obvious reasons) no one even wants to look at it. Originally there were three of them, but the others died long ago and now there's just one left. However if we turn to the old folks' home, again we have old people tottering around and basically being ignored by the world. Hardly anyone comes to see them and the ones that do come don't listen. Their stories aren't believed, even when they're true. Phyllida Law's character has Alzheimer's, which the episode not only discusses but goes so far as to make part of the plot. If Sarah-Jane can find a magic cure for monsters and science fiction, can't she find a cure for that too? This would be unexpected material to find being addressed in any branch of Who, let alone the one for children's TV, and I really like the way they handle it. It's sensitive without being overwhelmed by the issue.

Those are two symmetries. The third involves the subplot with Maria's Gay Dad and Vulgar Stupid Mum. The latter is obnoxious. There's nothing likeable or pleasant about her and throughout the first episode I was wondering what she was doing there and wanting her to go away. (Fortunately Maria's Gay Dad is thinking the same.) However in the second half she shows a flash of self-awareness and then ends up making herself look an idiot by being entirely in the right. No one's listening to her. She's exactly like those old ladies in the care home and it's a rather surprising tension, making us realise that we in the audience are being unfair to someone simply because we don't like them.

Those are the classier reasons to like this story. Now for the other stuff.

Firstly, nuns are cool and very possibly better than kung-fu monks, although the world would probably explode from awesomeness overload if Doctor Who ever had kung-fu nuns. The Gorgon is also a great idea for a monster. It's plugging into Greek mythology rather than aliens and ray guns, which is perfect for this series because the parents are less likely to complain about the show going too far and so you can afford to be scarier. The Gorgon turns people to stone! How cool is that? There's no violence involved, but it's still a really disturbing idea and easy for even a child to understand. It's perhaps a shame about her make-up job, but I liked her clawed hands and the snake imagery in her petrification attack.

The story's beautiful to watch as well, even more so than usual for this series. The abbey is gorgeous, both inside and out.

The plotting's perfunctory. All the ingredients are top-notch, but the connecting tissue is a load of getting captured, running around and convenient explanations. Personally I think it's a shame this series has locked itself so rigidly into doing two-parters, perhaps because this allows the option of editing stories together into Who-length episodes. Me, I'd like to see the odd three-parter, just to mix it up. It might help to keep the storytelling supple. I also think this show has a knack for coming up with top-notch cliffhangers, so the more of those we got the better. It's just a shame that they always plunge so seamlessly into the "Coming Next" trailer, which undoes the good work by making the ending seem less like an ending.

I don't know. I'm clearly going to have fun with the Sarah Jane Adventures, but I don't think I'll ever adore it. This is a genuinely strong story with lots of great stuff, but even so there's something fundamentally lightweight about the series. It's an amiable runaround with lead actors who aren't encouraging you to watch in much detail. I'm also getting a bit of a disjoint with the Maria's Gay Dad scenes, since he's getting quite a lot of screen time and yet unless there's a thematic reason for his scenes (as here) in plot terms, he's dead air. He doesn't know the truth about Sarah and I suspect he never will.

Oh, and since when are the Sontarans the silliest-looking aliens in the galaxy? Someone clearly slept through Revenge of the Slitheen, for a start.

However all that said, there's a ton to like here. I liked Maria's Gay Dad's joke about Greek statues, which ties both into the Greek mythology theme and his subtextual homosexuality. I liked Daniel Anthony's little facial expression at one point, which had me thinking I might had underestimated him. I liked not getting the reset button I'd been expecting. I liked "she only wants to go home to die", which is interesting whether or not it's true.

Above all though, I went crazy for the pensioners. They're thematically important, they're pushing the show's content a little further than you might expect from children's TV and they're a privilege to watch. "No one listens to you when you're old." The most important scene in the story for me was the one between Paige and Law, in which the teenager and the senile old wrinkly just sit together and talk. There's no one else with them. Sarah Jane would have pulled too much audience focus. No, the heart of this story is about the meeting of the generations and personally I think that's an important message. The show's ending in particular is charming enough that I'd like to do a quick re-edit and cut the "Coming Next" trailer, just to let Phyllida Law and all the love in the story enjoy their full weight. Impressive.