I watched the first episode of the new BBC sci-fi series, Torchwood, on BBC3 last night. Plus a bit of the 2nd episode (until I felt knackered and had to go to bed. Wuss. I recorded it, though.)
It's billed as a Doctor Who spin-off but the whole vibe is very different. Captain Jack Harkness (the guy who was in some of the episodes of the 1st series of the new Doctor Who when Chris Ecclestone was in it, and was then in an extremely crap programme called The Sound of Musicals which only my wife liked) is the lead. He runs this special institute (called Torchwood) which operates outside the law (even outside the standard "outside the law" agencies, if you see what I mean) and investigates extraterrestrial phenomena (of which there are a lot running around Cardiff, where the series is set. Well, that guy from the Manic Street Preachers never was found...)
The first episode revolves around a policewoman called Gwen who accidentally stumbles on the Torchwood goings-on, and then finds herself part of the operation due to an unexpected staff vacancy. The second episode revolves around her first day in the job, where a gaseous alien lifeform which inhabits a human host and lives on 'orgasmic energy' is accidentally released. In fact sex was pretty high on the agenda all through the one and a half episodes I saw. Also, almost no-one on the cast was over 35 years old, and a high proportion were under 30. Furthermore, they seemed to spend most of their time in nightclubs. This is pretty much the standard BBC3 show format and it may be that to get a broadcast slot the producer (Russell T Davies, who also does Dr Who) has to sign a contract saying he'll put a quota of this stuff in every week. Anyway it might get a bit repetitive seeing all these beautiful people after a while - as with Lost, for example...
That's not to say Torchwood is bad though. It's pretty silly for sure but then it's a rare sci-fi series that isn't. And some of the humour was good. The scene where the guy thinks that an alien is a guy in a rubber suit - and then gets his head bitten off - had me laughing for about 125 seconds. Potentially it could recapture that peculiarly British sense of scientific investigation of the unknown - I'm thinking Quatermass, or the early John Pertwee episodes of the original Dr Who. But there's also quite a bit of Hollyoaks or similar 'youth soaps' in there - it's obvious the BBC is gunning for the 20-something audience with this one.
Anyway I dare say I will watch the whole series - Sunday at 9pm is a good time slot for me. Even if it isn't I can bung them on the old DVD recorder and then watch them at Christmas along with the backlog of David Tennant Dr Who epiosdes that I haven't got round to watching yet. Plus I'm hoping that someone will buy me the 2nd series of Battlestar Galactica as the 1st, which I got for Xmas last year, was quite simply a live killer, and I'm hungry for more. I'm really caught in two minds with all this sci-fi TV stuff though. Half of me thinks it's a golden era and there's more good stuff coming out than there's ever ben. The rest of me thinks that we're just being sold umpteen variations on pre-packaged plots with the entire cast profile carefully handpicked to maximise the 'viewing demographic' - there is big money at stake, and as with films, spontaneity has gone out of the window. In fact it's worse than with films as at least it's theoretically possible for someone to put a one-off, totally uncommercial film together on a shoestring budget; but TV series are just that - series - and dozens of episodes have to be made and the same set has to be re-used again and again and you can't alienate too much of your demographic, and you can't show certain stuff before the watershed, but after the watershed you must have a lot of sex and people saying "fuck" if you want to get on BBC3 or More4, and... and... I've lost it completely. But anyway, there is a lot of good TV around, but it's all product at the end of the day if you see what I mean. Fodder for the DVD players... anybody splashed out for Blu-Ray yet?
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4 comments:
Torchwood is what "Men in Black" would have been had it been set in Cardiff. Half-arsed handle-turning twaddle.
I think that's too harsh! Now I realise it didn't have Noel Edmonds in it but he can't be in every programme, you know. Even if he does have a helicopter...
p.s. Did you actually like Men In Black? I thought it was OK.
I thought Men in Black was OK... no better, no worse. Torchwood is just lazy.
And it wouldn't suffer from a bit of Noel either; he's based in the west country I believe, so nipping up to Cardiff for the five minutes it must take to conceive of each episode shouldn't be beyond the realms of possibility.
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