TV reviews

Firstly, a quick word about the Torchwood reviews. Obviously, it’s all getting a bit tricky now that BBC3 is airing the next episode directly after the current BBC2 episode, and BBC America is a couple of weeks behind BBC2. So my general reviewing policy will be to review on Thursdays the episode of Torchwood that aired on BBC2 on Wednesday night. I’ll also keep the spoilers until after the turn.

I figure that people who can only watch the BBC2 episode will then be able to read the review the next day without having to hunt for it with the search engine; people who watched the BBC3 episode will be able to read the review on the front page as well, but the following week; and Americans, well, it’s probably search engine for you guys, but I’ll hopefully not be spoiling you. That’s probably the most equitable arrangement and it does mean I won’t have to stay up late to watch the BBC3 episode, but can watch it at my leisure.

Dead Man Walking then. I believe last week we left the official verdict at: 

Ahahahahah. I’ve seen next week’s. Ahahahahahahaha.

[Pause]

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

And that’s still a pretty robust verdict. All the same, far from the worst episode of Torchwood there’s ever been.

Continue reading “Review: Torchwood 2×7 – Dead Man Walking”

Way back when the writers and cast for this series of Torchwood were announced, people geeked out about a number of things and rightly so: James Marsters (woo hoo!) and PJ Hammond (woo hoo, but as if said by a ghost chasing after your very soul) are well worth the entrance fee, as they say.

I was probably the only person geeking out over the fact JC Wilsher was going to be writing for the show. Although he’s been confined to more mundane cop shows like Dalziel and Pascoe and The Bill for the best part of 15 years, he’s also the creator of the far better Between the Lines (What? You didn’t know I was one of the contributors to the standard Between The Lines faq?), which was one of the best cop shows of the 90s, despite an awful third series.

So I wasn’t particularly surprised that after a reasonably good episode last week, this week’s, which also took the trouble to introduce Doctor Who companion Martha Jones to the world of Torchwood and do something else that I won’t mention just yet, was actually pretty well written.

Continue reading “Review: Torchwood 2×6 – Reset”