The Who-iverse doesn’t have good form with me. Reviewing the last series of Doctor Who got me so annoyed with the programme that I vowed never to watch it again. But Torchwood has the trump card over me that I found the first series both ridiculous and tepid at the same time, so I can’t turn against it so much as simply continue a curmudgeonly grump about the whole affair.
So what can we hope to spot in the new series? Here are my biggest hopes:
– To promote his stadium tour, John Barrowman introduces a weekly musical number into the show. – Whatever monsters are introduced, more Angel-style attempts to show some kind of demon underworld exists in Cardiff, rather than just investigating weird shizzle happening like you were supposed to be about in the first place. – Lots of BLOOD and SWEARING and MILD SEX because Torchwood is for grown-ups! Yeah! But this is still the BBC, so don’t expect up-to-the-elbow fisting or owt. – Extensive abuse of Cardiff’s layout, where they will enter one part of the city and emerge from another, just to mess with the minds of the locals (see also: psychopsychogeography). This is a reminder to the writers that I used to live in Cardiff, so don’t bother with any geography jiggery pokery, as I will be all over it like hot fudge sauce. – Talking of Cardiff, probably fewer aerial shots of the city, because everyone took the mick out of it the first time around. Actually I’ll declare an amnesty to never use the ‘doesn’t it look like CSI:Cardiff’ joke that everyone used first time around. Even though it was quite funny.
– Loud laughter through the nation’s front rooms at the idea that Eve Myles is supposed to be somehow attractive. Look, Wales, I know you are desperate to force your own kind on the rest of the world all the time. But we can all see she’s a bit hairy, so please knock that one on the head. Tune back tomorrow for the first of the reviews. I promise I’ll be nice about it. Well, that’s not true; but I promise I’ll watch it. Or at the very least, get the gist of it off of the internet before writing 600 generic words on sci-fi gays.