I’m not that surprised that there’s a close correlation between being a perv and being a Doctor Who fan. The revival of the BBC favourite by Russell T Davies imbued it with enough style and coolness to appeal to grown-ups and kids, and its combination of free-wheeling fantasy, geekiness, and the prospect (albeit now sadly past) of Billie Piper in a short skirt being abducted by aliens has guaranteed it a firm following among fetish folk.
Naturally, therefore, a lot of the same people will have keenly anticipated the arrival of Davies’ spin-off series Torchwood (BBC3, 10pm, Sundays). Not least because of its promise to put an entirely new, post-watershed ‘adult’ spin on its subject matter. Doctor Who with sex, eh? What could be better than that! And so, three episodes into the series, what do we think of it so far?
Well, chances are that if you liked Buffy, Angel, Lexx or any similar type of American televisual fantasy, you’ll like this. Although, to be fair, the basic idea — of a group of dedicated alien-hunters who have to stop other-world types coming through a gap in the space-time continuum and messing with our planet — is more of a straight cross between The X-Files and Men In Black than anything else.
Originality may not be Torchwood’s strongest point. But it aims to overcome this by brazenly plundering from so many sources that you can’t keep count. And also by being set in Cardiff (which, for my non-Brit readers, is a city in Wales, which is a country next to England). And I don’t just mean set in Cardiff, I mean wilfully set in Cardiff. It doesn’t just take place in Cardiff, it rubs your nose in Cardiff, from every possible angle, but not least from above. You could easily persuade me that BBC Wales, who make Torchwood, spent 90 percent of the entire production budget just on helicopter flights for the show’s CSI-style aerial views. But I’d be less surprised to learn that this unrelenting exercise in municipal product placement had been funded by the Welsh Tourist Board.
The distinct regional flavour of Torchwood extends to having many of the supporting characters, and even the show’s female lead, speaking with that sing-song Welsh lilt that I personally find attractive, but that might be a bit of a gamble if you’re trying to sell your show to Americans. And let there be no doubt that Torchwood is out to woo America. The most obvious clue is that the handsome boss of this secret alien-busting organisation, Captain Jack Harkness, is, by all appearances anyway, an American.
But while this follows a time-honoured rule of British B-movie-making — the one that says your male lead character must, however inexplicably, be American if you’re to have any hope of US distribution — Torchwood’s producers have cheated by having their American hero played by an actual American (Scottish-American actor John Barrowman, left) rather than the more usual ex-pat Canadian. This must have been as galling to the programme’s co-producers, Canadian TV network CBC, as to the large and powerful British Union of Canadian Actors Willing to Prostitute Themselves by Playing Americans in British Television and Films, or BUCAWPTPABTF for short. What is this country coming to when a Canadian can’t rely on getting a job playing an American any more, eh?
The other thing, apart from Cardiff, that Torchwood rather rams down your throat (if you’ll pardon the expression) is its ‘modern’ sexuality. And for ‘modern’, read ‘non-hetero/bisexual/polyamorous’. Presumably to please creator/executive producer Davies, the writer of each episode so far has included some substantial affirmation that there’s more to human sexuality than is dreamt of by your ordinary heterosexual breeder. This in itself would be fine were it not for said messages being dropped into the plot with all the subtlety of fluorescent Post-It notes stuck to the script and inscribed “insert example of alternative sexuality HERE”. Already we’ve had an alien pheromone spray that led to two straight boys snogging (shock!) and an alien entity that feeds on the energy of human orgasms while (horror!) being watched on CCTV by a masturbating security guard. Oh how very grown up.
Then there’s the, ahem, mystery of Captain Harkness’s own sexuality. He’s camp enough to need his own Lloyd-Webber soundtrack, but with his plasticky good looks and toothpaste-ad smile, he seems certain to become the lust object of the team’s doe-eyed Welsh heroine, police-girl-cum-reluctant-alien-chaser Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles). On current evidence there’s not much chance of Captain Harkness developing a personality, so to keep things interesting, my money’s on his coming out as gay by episode six at the latest. Not to worry though; police constable Cooper will almost certainly have discovered her inner fag-hag by then.
Ultimately, I think, Torchwood is trying too hard to be everything to everyone. Its attempts to be post-modern sci-fi with a twist miss as often as they hit. And it’s way too smug for a show that’s set in Cardiff. But, just as cheesy props and creaky plots endeared successive generations to Doctor Who, so Torchwood’s cheeky appropriations from different styles and sub-genres will probably secure it an audience every bit as dedicated. Far from perfect it may be, but I’ll still be watching every episode.
