Bent TV
I was half way through this when events intervened. Late as ever.
Torchwood was almost life-changing TV. It nearly changed my life as it was almost enough to turn me homophobic.
I thought the first episode was ropey but pretty engaging, though I am just not enough of a fan of any TV programme to watch every episode (I have only ever recorded TV progs to use at work). I saw four or five episodes, I think and only really stuck with it because of the curious pleasure I derived form location-spotting. Most of them were worse than the pilot, being the same old sub-soap tosh that DR Who degenerated into. There was one episode that was great - real edge-of-seat-except-when-you-are-hiding-behind-the-sofa stuff - about a cannibal village. It was fast-paced, well-crafted, well scripted and miraculously free of poofs or soap opera twaddle about parental relationships. The other episodes I saw were all irredeemable shite. They were characterised by mawkish sentiment of the 'geek comes back from the dead to save Gwen's life before ascending to heaven' variety and riddled with facile erotica-by-numbers (small numbers). I watched three quarters of the final episode and could barely control my gag reflex. Russell Twee Davies must have got out the extra long casting couch (he presumably uses a short, concrete-reinforced one for all the short fat Welsh gay actors that pop in the series*) so he could road test another pert-buttocked yank with a square jaw and no evident acting talent to feature in the Jack-on-Jack rainbow love wankfest.
All the heavy-handed bi cockaganda would have been easier to swallow (snigger away, you know you want to) if there had been anything else to back it up with in the way of script, plot or character development. The clunkenly reiterated 'everyone is a bit bi really and in the late 21st century you will all be free to leer like Capt Jack' message grates because it is just as bigoted as declaring 'no one is really gay, they just haven't met the right girl/boy yet'. Owen was singled out as the potentially bad apple of the team as he was the only one who was straight and could act. Ianto was too wooden to be cast as the back end of a donkey and expressed profound emotion with a look of goggling, witless embarassment more appropriate for a man who has to go in to A&E and tell them that he's 'lost' his butt plug. Toshiko was almost as wooden as Panto Ianto and was presumably only there as the token ethnic geekette and to provide scope for another bit of girl-on-girl inaction. Gwen did little more than swish her terrible hair and emote and empathise all over the place like a Kwik Save No Frills Judy Garland. I almost gave up on the last episode when she started keening over her mercifully dead (and woefully one-dimensional) husband. I am glad I didn't, as then I would have missed the 'Jack as Jesus saving the world from Satan and coming back from the dead after Fairy Mary Magdelene had spent a night weeping over him' finarsle**. He actually made quite a convincing corpse because at least it stopped him scowling or leering which is all his attempts at acting ever amounted to. He'd managed to acquire neither depth nor charisma as the series progressed. The sub-Highlander gerontophilia-meets-paedophilia- episode where he wept over the corpse of his aged former lover was rendered even more hilarious by his mediocre performance. He handled her corpse with all the tenderness of a nativity play Virgin Mary absent-mindedly smearing snot over the plastic baby Jesus.
I wouldn't have minded so much if it had been on ITV or Channel 4 but I am horrified at the thought that I might have contributed to this over-hyped piffle via my license fee.
* I nearly got chucked out of the BBC Wales bar for suggesting to a bevy of Taffia loveys who were protesting about the racist refusal of English producers to consider them for roles that there probably weren't that many parts available for short, obese men with very strong Welsh accents.
** Finarsle (noun); a much-hyped ending that proves to be absolutely full of shite.
Torchwood was almost life-changing TV. It nearly changed my life as it was almost enough to turn me homophobic.
I thought the first episode was ropey but pretty engaging, though I am just not enough of a fan of any TV programme to watch every episode (I have only ever recorded TV progs to use at work). I saw four or five episodes, I think and only really stuck with it because of the curious pleasure I derived form location-spotting. Most of them were worse than the pilot, being the same old sub-soap tosh that DR Who degenerated into. There was one episode that was great - real edge-of-seat-except-when-you-are-hiding-behind-the-sofa stuff - about a cannibal village. It was fast-paced, well-crafted, well scripted and miraculously free of poofs or soap opera twaddle about parental relationships. The other episodes I saw were all irredeemable shite. They were characterised by mawkish sentiment of the 'geek comes back from the dead to save Gwen's life before ascending to heaven' variety and riddled with facile erotica-by-numbers (small numbers). I watched three quarters of the final episode and could barely control my gag reflex. Russell Twee Davies must have got out the extra long casting couch (he presumably uses a short, concrete-reinforced one for all the short fat Welsh gay actors that pop in the series*) so he could road test another pert-buttocked yank with a square jaw and no evident acting talent to feature in the Jack-on-Jack rainbow love wankfest.
All the heavy-handed bi cockaganda would have been easier to swallow (snigger away, you know you want to) if there had been anything else to back it up with in the way of script, plot or character development. The clunkenly reiterated 'everyone is a bit bi really and in the late 21st century you will all be free to leer like Capt Jack' message grates because it is just as bigoted as declaring 'no one is really gay, they just haven't met the right girl/boy yet'. Owen was singled out as the potentially bad apple of the team as he was the only one who was straight and could act. Ianto was too wooden to be cast as the back end of a donkey and expressed profound emotion with a look of goggling, witless embarassment more appropriate for a man who has to go in to A&E and tell them that he's 'lost' his butt plug. Toshiko was almost as wooden as Panto Ianto and was presumably only there as the token ethnic geekette and to provide scope for another bit of girl-on-girl inaction. Gwen did little more than swish her terrible hair and emote and empathise all over the place like a Kwik Save No Frills Judy Garland. I almost gave up on the last episode when she started keening over her mercifully dead (and woefully one-dimensional) husband. I am glad I didn't, as then I would have missed the 'Jack as Jesus saving the world from Satan and coming back from the dead after Fairy Mary Magdelene had spent a night weeping over him' finarsle**. He actually made quite a convincing corpse because at least it stopped him scowling or leering which is all his attempts at acting ever amounted to. He'd managed to acquire neither depth nor charisma as the series progressed. The sub-Highlander gerontophilia-meets-paedophilia- episode where he wept over the corpse of his aged former lover was rendered even more hilarious by his mediocre performance. He handled her corpse with all the tenderness of a nativity play Virgin Mary absent-mindedly smearing snot over the plastic baby Jesus.
I wouldn't have minded so much if it had been on ITV or Channel 4 but I am horrified at the thought that I might have contributed to this over-hyped piffle via my license fee.
* I nearly got chucked out of the BBC Wales bar for suggesting to a bevy of Taffia loveys who were protesting about the racist refusal of English producers to consider them for roles that there probably weren't that many parts available for short, obese men with very strong Welsh accents.
** Finarsle (noun); a much-hyped ending that proves to be absolutely full of shite.