Why is Torchwood such pants? Dr Who is absurd and overblown but somehow you can suspend disbelief and just enjoy it - most of the time. Daleks towing planets around the universe just didn’t cut it for me. Daleks in general are just daft – always have been and always will be.
Torchwood by contrast is more rooted in normality being based in Cardiff but it somehow never manages to traverse the credibility gap which the best sci-fi does to make it plausible. The things they have at their disposal all work – and brilliantly. Why doesn’t the super computer need rebooting every episode? How could this government department have survived the general government cuts of the past three decades? Where is the man from ‘ofTorch’ who should be in every week to check on their performance standards and advising them of another 5% cut to the budget for 2010?
Admittedly I could watch Eve Myles (Gwen Cooper) undulating around deliciously for most of the hour unencumbered by any storyline but that’s not quite enough for a good programme. The problem for me is John ‘two expressions’ Barrowman, the man who makes Roger Moore look deep. He’s either jolly, flirty and ready for sex or he’s broody, serious and hiding some terrible secret from his past. What an actor! And his ‘relationship’ with Ianto just doesn’t work at all. I always struggle with any smoochy stuff because it tends to be unnecessary but the amount of kissing they indulge in smacks of someone in the production team’s personal fantasy rather than any serious attempt at depth. The first series was punctuated by as much gratuitous foreplay between the good looking cast as they could shoehorn in but you would have hoped things would have improved. I am an old fuddy duddy when it comes to such matters as it seldom helps any sensible plot to see the characters sharing fluids.
I’ll certainly be tuning in this evening to see how things pan out (will the guys save the world with just a hint of darkness underlying the victory? Will the evil Prime Minister get his comeuppance? Will the gorgeous PA, Lois, be the key to the problem? Will we end on Captain Jack looking meaningful even as they celebrate?) but I’ll probably be surfing the web throughout or sorting out my ornamental shell collection at the same time, whereas I’d be glued to David Tennant’s more complex ‘simplistic hero for our time’ as he simply puts it across better. Whether the New Romantic new boy manages the same feat in the TARDIS remains to be seen.
Hey ho, maybe I’m just growing up but it would have been nice if a little less time had been spent on the bells and whistles in Torchwood and a little more time devoted to characters and plots.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Torchwood is pants??
Are we watching the same programme?
Well, you might be referring to 'Torch Wood', the daytime programme in which Kate Humble and Bill Oddie go out and about in the countryside and set light to bits of fallen trees. I was referring to the John Barrowman vehicle which, yes, though diverting, is pretty poorly thought through and suffers from, er, John Barrowman.
Post a Comment