Torchwood: Children Of Earth
After a physically and emotionally exhausting week, I can say I loved it. Absolutely loved it.
(This isn't a review post; I've been doing all that malarkey here )
I loved it as a spectacular and gripping, shocking and traumatic piece of television. Big and bold and pressing all my anti-authority buttons. With high production values, great casting and acting, relentless direction, and with a 5-day format that blew me away with how well it worked. The fact that the alien threat turned out to be sleazy smackheads was actually rather delightful, because they weren't the Big Bads of this story anyway.
It even retained a few lovely plotholes and contradictions which made me feel nostalgic for my Torchwood.
Because this wasn't myTorchwood, the show I fell in love with from the first minute against all my expectations. I almost didn't bother tuning in for "Everything Changes" because I'd hated Torchwood One in Doctor Who with a fiery passion. I once described TW1 as UKIP on acid and I had no idea dear old TW3 would be so very different in scale and ethos. I embraced it gratefully, warts and all - plotholes, characterisation wobbles, the not-sure-where-we're-going-with-this feel of much of S1. It didn't matter, somehow. Some people groused about unlikeable, dysfunctional characters - I adored them all, for all their failings. I don't know how to explain it, I just did.
TW: CoE wasn't my Torchwood, not by the end. And no, not because it was magnificent! How very dare you! Torchwood was the Rift and Cardiff and strange bits and bobs of alien tech and weevils and the Hub and the Water Tower and not having to put up with ghastly UNIT and hearing little or nought about the powers that be...
I'm not against change. With the success of the big scale and scope I'm finding it hard to imagine ever going back to the smaller, self-contained set-up should the BBC decide to invest in it further.
But I mourn the passing of my Torchwood and I know for certain that my DVDs for the first two seasons will be worn to frazzles long, long before S3's shiny disks have to contemplate their own demise.
(This isn't a review post; I've been doing all that malarkey here )
I loved it as a spectacular and gripping, shocking and traumatic piece of television. Big and bold and pressing all my anti-authority buttons. With high production values, great casting and acting, relentless direction, and with a 5-day format that blew me away with how well it worked. The fact that the alien threat turned out to be sleazy smackheads was actually rather delightful, because they weren't the Big Bads of this story anyway.
It even retained a few lovely plotholes and contradictions which made me feel nostalgic for my Torchwood.
Because this wasn't myTorchwood, the show I fell in love with from the first minute against all my expectations. I almost didn't bother tuning in for "Everything Changes" because I'd hated Torchwood One in Doctor Who with a fiery passion. I once described TW1 as UKIP on acid and I had no idea dear old TW3 would be so very different in scale and ethos. I embraced it gratefully, warts and all - plotholes, characterisation wobbles, the not-sure-where-we're-going-with-this feel of much of S1. It didn't matter, somehow. Some people groused about unlikeable, dysfunctional characters - I adored them all, for all their failings. I don't know how to explain it, I just did.
TW: CoE wasn't my Torchwood, not by the end. And no, not because it was magnificent! How very dare you! Torchwood was the Rift and Cardiff and strange bits and bobs of alien tech and weevils and the Hub and the Water Tower and not having to put up with ghastly UNIT and hearing little or nought about the powers that be...
I'm not against change. With the success of the big scale and scope I'm finding it hard to imagine ever going back to the smaller, self-contained set-up should the BBC decide to invest in it further.
But I mourn the passing of my Torchwood and I know for certain that my DVDs for the first two seasons will be worn to frazzles long, long before S3's shiny disks have to contemplate their own demise.