Frances Grant: Doomed flight of fancy

Watching telly can be time-consuming. What do you do when you want to keep up with a favourite show but have only a minute between work and the gym? Watch the condensed version, of course.

In Britain, one pay network has already developed channels devoted solely to snippets of Big Brother and Celebrity Love Island. And in America, the Fox network has produced the mini-version of its action-packed thriller 24, one-minute episodes exclusively for broadcast on 3G phones.

Time is relative, after all. One person's real-time drama of 24 hours is another person's real-time drama of 24 minutes.

Back in the long-play world, TV2's Friday night move from the pampered inhabitants of blue-skied Orange County in The OC to the greyer, smoggier world of Los Angeles airport on LAX is a welcome shift in tone and venues.

At least people have jobs at the airport and realistic fuller figures, although The OC's favourite accessory, the drinking problem, is also employed in this new workplace drama.

LAX appears most notable for the return of the ever-attitudinal Heather Locklear, although it's somewhat strange to see the original "because I'm worth it" blonde coming in on the ground floor, as it were. Locklear's usual role is to rescue flagging shows mid-flight and put a bit more fuel in their tanks as she did with Melrose Place and Spin City.

Setting an American drama at an international airport seems a brave move, given the way that nation feels about homeland security these days and how the nervous feel about flying in general.

Indeed, the show reportedly took off in the wrong direction to begin with before altering the flight plan.

As Locklear said, audiences weren't keen for an airport dramedy and you can appreciate her point.

Ally McBeal-style whimsy and surreal flights of fantasy probably don't mix well with harried airport traffic controllers, drunken pilots or planted bomb storylines. The dramedy factor wasn't quite killed off however, as the main tension is between Locklear's character, Harley Random (head of runways) and Blair Underwood's Roger De Souza (head of terminals).

You get the picture from the heavy-handed names.

Harley comes with a racing stripe and maverick flair. Roger is conservative, impeccable and constantly plays the charm game.

The two were vying for the top job only to learn they had to share it between them. He's black, she's white and they both have romantic disabilities ...

Roger: "That's why you can't have a relationship that lasts longer than six hours."

Harley: "At least I can be faithful for more than six hours."

Yes, there's a love-hate, will-they-won't-they relationship going on between them, although so far it has produced only pedestrian exchanges, such as the above. Still the snippiness is a nice change from the fraught, overly serious relationships between the teens on The OC.

LAX's main challenge is to come up with something unpredictable. After all, those reality airport shows have already taught us that there can be no greater nightmare than a bunch of Mancunian birds off on a package holiday wearing T-shirts with the legend "Slappers on Tour".

In the first two episodes we've already had the Asian bride immigration scam, the drugs smuggler in a coffin, the drunken pilots and - the best touch so far - the commercially savvy Red Indian hawk man dealing to the bird hazard.

But a lot of the action, such as the arrival of the orphan flight from China and the stranded baseball team, dripped with sentimentality.

Perhaps that's why LAX, like a flight in bad weather, was cancelled after just one season. Terminated due to being inordinately wet.

Still, the Heather Locklear fans have something to look forward to: the condensed version coming soon to a mobile phone near you.