The Good Soldier

Torchwood: To The Last Man

Isn’t it funny how precious we get about certain television programmes? Sometimes I envy Joe Bloggs; not for him the obsessive poring over minutiae, the quiet grumbling about seen-it-all-before cliches and derivative plotting, the frankly out of proportion need to judge each new episode as though it’s on a par with rediscovering the Dead Sea Scrolls. No, just sit back, kick off your shoes and wait to be diverted from the general tedium and worry of your life for an hour or so.

watching Torchwood has become a far less teeth-grinding experience

Watching To the Last Man I think I managed to realise just how Joe Bloggs manages to enjoy his television viewing. For once I didn’t care that I’d seen a fair proportion of it all before, I didn’t fret that huge chunks of the plot made little or no sense, and I didn’t insist on sitting there with my Who dunce’s hat on, screaming for the head of Chris Chibnall as ‘my’ beloved franchise was once again torn asunder in the name of so-called entertainment and a higher than average AI figure.

No, I just sat back and enjoyed it. And d’you know what - watching Torchwood became a far less teeth-grinding experience as a result.

There’s nothing in To The Last Man that is particularly original, startling or likely to remain in your mind’s eye long after the end credits roll. But it is very well made television, and that’s something I’ve not found myself able to say very often in these circumstances. I think if Torchwood ever found its niche last year it’s fair to say that the quieter, smaller stories were the ones most likely to have qualified. Random Shoes and Out of Time are in particular examples where the tedious, gun-toting fuck-buddying shtick of much of Season 1’s major flaws are - if not completely absent - at least barely noticeable. So I guess it’s no coincidence that To the Last Man matches those brief surges of quality pretty much pound for pound. Doomed love story of lovers separated by time? Check. Quiet contemplation of the futility of existence and the precious time of those for whom such a thing is most finite? Check again. Deus ex machina coda in which a well signposted McGuffin brings a somewhat heavy-handed resolution to events? Well, nothing’s ever perfect is it.

No doubt Naoko Mori will be reduced to spouting technobabble again next week

But what To the Last Man lacked in sartorial style and thought-provoking narrative it tried to at least make up in character-driven drama and (a pretty rare one for this show) sheer, unadulterated heart. Central to this was the utterly charming central performance from guest star Anthony Lewis as the doomed Tommy Brocklehurst (on which note, do I make this three episodes on the bounce in which this week’s ‘special guest star’ gets to steal all the plaudits?). Some critics have claimed an innate lack of chemistry between him and Tosh’s lovestruck pairing, but I for one thought their fumbled and genuinely convincing Brief Encounter (on which more homagising later) to be one of the undoubted successes of the episode; at last giving Tosh some meat to a character that has been little more than techno-geek boffin or lesbo-love interest for more than a year now. No doubt Naoko Mori will be reduced to spouting technobabble again next week, but on the evidence here such character development was good while it lasted.  

And is it me or are Torchwood actually getting likeable all of a sudden? Even Ianto seems to have toned down the New Faces stand-up act, and Owen is getting positively pleasant; showing Tosh the kind of caring-sharing sensitivity which would actually have you believe the reasons that she had a crush on him last term. If there’s a poll for most improved character so far this year, then Burn Gorman deserves to take a large slice of the credit.

I so want to see the spin-off in which Brief Encounter meets Torchwood in a 1918-set tale of stiff upper lips and time anomalies

In amongst this gentle and rather touching story of doomed lovers, writer Helen Raynor has certainly done enough research on her subject to make last year’s Dalek-disaster seem more like a blip than a pattern. Following her layering of post-depression Hooverville misery for the inhabitants of New York, here she’s taking to the soap-box for the cause of World War I soldiers being branded cowards; as men who were little more than boys succumbed to shellshock and worse before being forced back into the trenches or shot. There’s a nicely angry moment where Tommy - poised to return to his pre-ordained fate at the hands of a firing squad - castigates Jack (and by extension Torchwood) for being little better than the generals of his own time; able to make the Big Decisions for king and country, but rarely willing to get their hands dirty themselves. This kind of subtle underplaying of the organisation’s frequently questionable methods has rarely been so well handled.

The direction’s top-notch too, all weird camera angles and - for once - a lack of reliance on sweeping zooms and dizzying pans in order to put across how slick and with-it this show is. The scenes of Gwen and Jack being menaced by ‘ghosts’ from 1918 are genuinely creepy, and as with last year’s more lacklustre episodes Andy Goddard manages to bring a sheen to even the most pedestrian of scripts. On which point (and just in case you thought I was getting soft in my old age) that whole McGuffin rubbish with the Griff manipulator really should have been dumped at an early redrafting stage. Along with the frankly unnecessary - not to mention rather silly - psychic projection business at the end, such moments where Torchwood reverts to type spoil what has been a more than enjoyable episode. And all I can add to that is how I so want to see the spin-off in which Brief Encounter meets Torchwood in a 1918-set tale of stiff upper lips and time anomalies. At least I think it’s the lips that would be stiff and upper…

Next Time: Meat is Murder, as Rhys (remember him?) takes centre stage and Torchwood risk alienating the vegetarian demographic.