I realised something.
Has anybody else seen (or are they aware of) Noir?
Torchwood is a lot like les Soldats in that show. They're both ridiculously powerful organisations founded ostensibly to protect humanity that have pretty much no meaningful oversight. They both have two branches that we see, one very large and scary-seeming but ultimately pretty ineffectual due to its byzantine bureaucracy and the other small, presenting itself as a group of quirky [insert here: radicals/purists/reformers].
They even have similar monologues.
Torchwood. Outside the government, beyond the police. Tracking down alien life on Earth, arming the human race against the future. The twenty-first century is when everything changes. And you have got to be ready.
Those who survived took an oath. That they would take revenge on the world. Saving the weak and the abused, spreading justice around the world. Absolute secrecy and an oath of loyalty. That was how Soldats was born. The blood of the Soldats will spread through the wilderness, and flow into the great river. Those who took the oath spread throughout the world, and hid in the shadows of society.
Cosmetically pretty words, yes, but it all depends on the interpretation.
This is what Torchwood gives us.
TORCHWOOD IS DOING GREAT THINGS! Mainly because their enemies are as a rule almost cartoonishly evil, but whatever!
This is what Noir gives us:
A nightmare from the far reaches of time...the two hands of the Soldats...
I personally would contend that Noir is a better show than Torchwood and its LGBT themes (among other things) are better-handled and less exploitative. But this really the only way in which there's actually a basis for a comparison to be made outside my own preference. Of course, the main immediately apparent difference is that in Noir the big shadowy group is presented as less evil (if only because Breffort at least knows that he's...really not an aboveboard person) and the splinter sect as batshit insane, whereas Torchwood reverses this. But to me (and this may be just me given how much my views on these things tend to look like knee-jerk iconoclasm) Jack starts looking pretty bad pretty quickly anyway, so that may be more 'intent' and less 'result.'