Torchwood Series 2: Fail

Torchwood is a spinoff of Dr Who, written by Russell T Davies. It was aimed as an ‘adult Dr Who’, and initially aired on BBC3 last year in its first series, starring John Barrowman.

I gave up on Torchwood after about 6 episodes, because although the premise was good (alien investigations on Earth – think ‘X Files’ set in Wales) it tried too hard to be an adult programme. The plots were frequently interrupted with needless sex, and an almost constant need for the main characters to try and shag each other. At least with Dr Who the writers were bound by the pre-watershed time and thus the hands were tied leaving a lot more time for plot. Anyway, series 2 started last night and in the absence of anything else to watch, we apathetically clicked over to BBC2 in the vague hope that this series might be watchable.

It’s not. For a secret organisation it’s remarkable that the first scene opened with some woman at a pedestrian crossing saying “bloody Torchwood”. The initial car chase (why do they have their 4×4 festooned with blue LEDs anyway?) led us to a poorly-scripted reminder of the roles of the main characters and the predictable entrance of Captain Jack. Hell, it was only 12 minutes in that we got the first gay snog followed by a fight between the principle character and the (presumed) principle baddie of this series, reminiscent of Oliver Reed and Alan Bates in ‘Women In Love’. More setups for sex later on in the series, a plethora of innuendo and schoolboy humour, and a crap plot terminating in the setup for the series story arc. At one point me and Nicky were looking at each other saying ‘ahhh, there we go!’ as predictable plot ‘twist’ followed predictable plot ‘twist’.

As a conversation last night went, it’s like Davies is trying to remind us every bloody minute that it’s Adult Dr Who, so it’s gotta have sex! He wrote Queer As Folk, so it’s gotta have sex! There’s no watershed, let’s have sex! Christ, man – do you not get any at home or something?

I won’t be watching next week.