Good evening, and welcome to Watch With..., our regular kind-of-weekly-ish feature delighting in, dissecting and digesting a different piece of television every week, in real time. So like a bit like television review, but live, and faster, and less considered, with fewer clever bits (um - in a good way).
This evening, we'll be watching Torchwood on BBC2 from 9-10, indulging in a bit of the Doctor Who spinoff that probably keeps wishing we'd stop calling it that. So what will happen? Will there be thrills and spills and the fighting of aliens? Or will it mainly be sex, sex, sex, like last series. And most of the first episode of this series. Only time, and us, will tell.
8.30: Ok, so usually - although not always - Watch With... concentrates on reality TV and one-off event television, which is slower and easier to blog, content-wise. However, we've always wanted to do drama as well, we just haven't had the chance often enough. As drama moves faster and is, of course, dependent on an intricately plotted script (generally) - this obviously won't be a blow by blow account, as that wouldn't give the writers or directors credit. Therefore, we'll be looking more at general impressions, observations, and perhaps a tally of exactly how much snogging goes on.
Because I'm not sure if I was getting weary at the end of last week's episode but I'm sure I remember the quote "Well, there are various ways of saving the planet, we could either transmogrify the upsydownifier and untangle the whojamaflipion, OR we could just all have a big orgy!"
Or maybe I made that up after seeing the rest of the episode. I think I might have snogged one of the cast members at a party once, by the way. No, that doesn't count toward the tally.
8.55: I know it's not started yet, I'm watching a completely different channel (Relocation x3, obviously) but there was just an advert for 'Eva Cassidy's Songbird 2008' - now, I know this has nothing to do with media section and everything to do with music section - and, I guess, the obits page - but hasn't she been dead for basically her whole career? I mean, she died in 1996, was dead when the compilation Songbird came out in 2001 and went to number 1 and all, and, to my knowledge, is still dead now. What's the point of a reissue with added date? There's not going to be any new material, is there? Sorry. Tangent. Got bored waiting.
9.04: (by my watch) - "The 21st century is when everything changes", says captain Jack, "Torchwood is ready". Well so are we. We have been for four minutes. Come along...
9.05: In a 'you won't sleep very well tonight' opening, a couple happily asleep in bed are woken by a pounding at a door, men with balaclavas burst in, start pounding on people, and then the noise of a drill. Brilliant. Luckily, I have sleeping drugs. Not too many though, of course.
9.06: Torchwood arrive, and check everything out. Because I suppose it must be vaguely alienny, for some reason. I cannot hear what they are saying, because I am too busy shouting 'That's the one! That's the one I think I might have snogged at a party once!' at my frankly not-impressed-enough partner.
No one (on screen) has kissed yet, and nothing particularly scary has happened.
9.10: After the deathbed confession of a very Welsh burglar ("The woman in the flat! Keep'er away from me! Boyo!" he said, I think), they drag the terrified house-woman in, and question her, showing her photos of dead burglars with funny marks on their heads.
"Here, fast, funny, and Very HOTT" (it had to be with two t's, I'm sure) "It's Torchwood", said the continuity announcer before this started. Hot?! Hott? I'm sure Grand Designs on C4 right now is hotttter. Well, how could it not be? It has Kevin McCloud in it.
No one's snogged yet.
9.15: There is an alien! In fact, Captain Jack is also trying to persuade the nice lady she is an alien - it makes sense, she seems to be made out of a completely impervious material, and is letting off electromagnetic waves - but she says she doesn't believe in aliens, so can't be one. He shows her another alien, and then offers to probe her.
Finally! Finally it's getting Hott in herrre!
9.17: The people are probing the nice lady - through her brain, which allows them aparrenenty the 'deepest' access, and asking her what kind of alien she is.
She keeps insisting she isn't, while Captain Jack (John Barrowman) keeps shouting 'Go DEEPER! GO DEEPER', in a very slightly lascivious fashion.
Suddenly, they hit upon a hidden flap (in her brain) and find an alien. Who will only give their name, rank, and serial number. The woman is unaware that the alien is in there. but Captain Jack ...
"I know who he is, and why he's here ..."
Well why didn't you bloody say so earlier, then, that's taken us 21 bloody minutes! I could have watched the first 8 months of a disasterous house-build by now. With Kevin McCloud.
9.23: There is much focus on the human tragedy of someone finding out that they're really an alien and part of the sleeper cell, and that all their memories are fake, they're a mass murderer, and will one day disappear as a human completely once they've gathered enough information to kill humanity and take over the world.
This is not Fast, Funny OR Hott. I want my money back from the continuity lady please.
9.26: You know what the best game to play with Kevin McCloud is? It's the 'which way will he walk off screen after his closing platitude' game. I've made so much money on that.
But we're not watching that, we're watching this. They are cryogenically freezing the nice lady until such time that they can stop her from being a nasty alien and make her a nice lady for ever more.
However, the freezing of her seems to unlock another sleeper alien, somewhere else in Cardiff. It is a businessman whining about his journey home, who suddenly gets the alien buzzing in his arm, breaks his wife's neck, and walks off. A paramedic does the same. A woman with a pram (has anyone heard about the upcoming BBCThree series: Pramface Mansion? Seriously?) does the same.
All over Cardiff, aliens are waking up. It's seems that perhaps the time has come. They have learnt all the need to know about Cardiff and have come alive to destroy the world (or the bits of the world that are enough like Cardiff.
No one has snogged yet.
9.32: The frozen alien has come unfrozed (not a word, like it anyway) and marched straight out of the highly secure Torchwood secret bunker. They have no idea where she's gone, but decide to pass the time by snogging. Not really. No one has snogged yet.
9.34: Ah, bless, she woke up to go and see her husband, tell him she loved him ... and then stab him by mistake with her enormous extending stabby arm. Oopsies.
Across Cardiff, the aforementioned people are wandering around killing people, possibly not indiscriminately. The leader of the city council, for example. And they've taken out a fuel line. And the phone lines!
My GOD, people, they're taking down Cardiff, step by step! We must STOP them, otherwise things will happen that mean we won't have Cardiff or any of the things that one GETS from Cardiff anymore! Seriously!
9.37: The nice-lady-alien has just revealed she can track the remaining member of the sleeper cell. Again, possibly a bit later than might have been good, but whatever.
9.39: There is fast but careful driving, out to a deserted farm outside the city, where, apparently, the government is storing 10 nuclear warheads. Yes. Ok. I get that that's an important plot point, and am not going to say any more about it.
So they have to go there, and do a thing, and it will all be alright.
Back at the Top Secret Secure Torchwood Bunker, they discuss the possibility that this may well be the end of the world.
"Let's all have sex." Says one, fast. Mildly funny, and a bit hott. Looks like my refund'll be a while coming through from the continuity department of the BBC.
They attempt to kill an alien - the businessman-alien, he's called David - by running him over. This doesn't work.
9.44: The alien threatens to set off all the other sleeper aliens, then, when his forcefield is reduced, you know, Captain Jack's charm and wily ways, blows himself up with a big button.
No one, I'm getting bored of saying this, has snogged yet. I'm going to have to change the name of this damned post.
9.47: After more emoting about the nature of humanity and memory and the pain of losing both of these to an alien sleeper cell hiding in your hidden brain-flap, the nice-ladien commits suicide-by-torchcop by taking the pretty Welsh one hostage and threatening to kill her with her go-go-gadget stabby arm.
9.49: "Do you think we've stopped it?" Asks the pretty Welsh lady (Gwen) "We just don't know", says Captain Jack, without snogging her. "We'll just keep doing what we do."
Well, no, you Won't, because I was promised snogging - certainly on last week's form, and there has been NONE.
Booooo, etc.
Oh, it's finished.
9.51: Right, well I'm contracted to be here till ten. I'll fill you in on any important Kevin McCloud news while thinking about 'What we've learnt' tonight. - He's in a weirdy bungalow. - The living room looks like a Bond hideaway. - Kevin should wear suits more often and not worry at all about that thinning patch on the back of his head because it looks very distinguished.
Oh, hang on, I'm supposed to be thinking about 'what we've learnt about the other show. Torchwood. Give me a tick.
10.00: So, as is conventional in this feature, we ask ourselves "What have we learnt from this particular hour of British television?"
1. Far from all the critical carping, Torchwood is not just snog, snog, snog. 2. Apart from last week, which was. 3. It may not be easy being green, it may be sometimes hard to be a woman - but oh so much harder is it to be a woman, and then suddenly realise that you're actually green. Or a kind of greeny-grey, being as you are, in fact, an alien. 4. The writing is snappy in parts, the pace perky. It's not risible by any means. Though I'm not sure it's settled itself yet. Though it has had a series and a bit. So, you know, chop chop, eh? 5. There are alien sleeper cells in Cardiff - which may or may not be an attempt at topical metaphor - and we have not seen the last of them this series yet. 6. At least one person from my drama school is doing well for themselves, which is lovely to know. 7. 'Fast', 'Funny' and 'Hot' (or even 'Hott') are relative terms, apparently. 8. I'm still unsure why everyone apparently finds Captain Jack so devastatingly irresistible unless perhaps he keeps some kind of snack food in his pants and no one's mentioned it yet.
Boy, I'm hungry.
Thanks very much to all, and good night. Back next week with something or other.
(And Kevin walked off to the left, in case you were wondering)
