After Sarah Jane's triumphant return to Doctor Who in School Reunion (an underrated episode overall, I reckon - the Mickey/K9/tin dog thing, Anthony Head, Sarah Jane vs. Rose: all great) we didn't have to wait long before she appeared in a pilot of her own series: The Sarah Jane Adventures, shown last Christmas. It *has* taken a while, however, for the full series to make it to our screens, but I think it was worth the wait.

The pilot was good-looking, funny, and large on ambition and, luckily, it seems that Lord Russell T Davies (give it time) has brought all three to the series proper. Yes, some may bemoan the return of the Slitheen (geek alert - I thought the whole family had been wiped out in Downing Street, apart from Blaine..?) but we have to be thankful to RTD for giving the kids clever, lovingly-made TV.

Perhaps writer Gareth Roberts expects a little too much prior knowledge of Doctor Who, or maybe he's just over-anxious to please the inevitable older viewers, but the episode opened with Sarah Jane trying to be a 'proper mum' to Luke (a boy almost literally born yesterday). The idea that SJ has been too hung up on the Doctor to create a life for herself may be lost on some, but it was a lovely touch for those of us in the know.

Little synopsis: the Slitheen have been giving money to schools around the world to build state-of-the-art blocks. But there's an empty space on the plans of all the buildings; what could be going on in there, I wonder? Could it be Slitheen technology, ready to destroy the world? Course it could! Mwahahahahaaaaa! Lucky SJ, Luke and SJ's 13-year-old neighbour Maria Jackson are on the case...

Gareth Roberts certainly has an RTD-style love of wit and in-jokes that kids may or may not get (something lacking from some of the Doctor Who writers, Stephen Moffat aside): in his first-day speech to the school, the headteacher - a member of the Slitheen family in disguise - had a snipe at Jamie Oliver and said "study hard, because I can guarantee that none of you will become pop stars." Fantastic.

This was the first of a two-parter, and also the first of the series, and as such a bit of setting up needed to be done. But they did get down to the action pretty quickly, and the revelation of a child Slitheen, three feet high, was pretty damn cool. No, it's not Doctor Who, but Elisabeth Sladen and the children are all great, it's had a bit of money put into it, and it's giving the kids what they want - while giving the adults what they want, too. [annawaits]