The Medium is Not Enough

In the UK: Wednesday 16th January, BBC2, 9pm
In the US: Saturday 26th January, BBC America, 9pm ET/PT

There is a movement that suggests that Murray Gold, erstwhile rubbish composer of the incidental music for Doctor Who, did his best work with the Torchwood theme: it’s spooky, dynamic and mercifully brief. I’m not going to argue with that.

However, it became abundantly clear during series one of the Doctor Who spin-off that is was massively inappropriate. In fact, to my mind, there is an existing tune that matched up completely with the tone and feel of most of that series: the classic football chant, “You’re sh*t and you know you are”, which also has the good fortune to be sung to the Village People’s “Go West”.

Which was a shame really, since the opening episode of the first series was quite promising, as were some of the later episodes by people who weren’t called Chris Chibnall.

Series two started last night. Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang*, written by show-runner – oh no, surely not – Chris Chibnall, was quite a revelation. It turns out that a man formerly associated with awful plots, terrifyingly bad dialogue and characterisation that makes you wonder if he’s only ever spoken with online chatbots before now is actually capable of writing something halfway decent and that doesn’t make you feel like your eyeballs and eardrums are being sandpapered. Will wonders never cease?

Continue reading “Review: Torchwood 2×1 – Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang”