New 'Torchwood' - now with added Incredibly Subtle Literary References

1. Damn you, Robin Hood! No sooner do I have a hearty go at the show for being ridiculous, than they turn out a non-sucking episode! Good characters, good drama, no obvious anachronisms (I may simply not have noticed them), very evil plot resolution from the Sheriff - and just for a change the outlaws caper up to Nottingham for Yet Another Heroic Rescue, and achieve nothing. Bwahahaha! Why, it actually started to look interesting. I genuinely didn't expect Guy to have the tattoo - the only problem then being that I just couldn't believe he actually was who Robin thought he was. Credibility got stretched a bit there.
Of course, if they'd been doing the really interesting thing, Marian would have been rumbled about four weeks ago and gone on the run, she would have started suspecting something between Robin and the lady outlaw two weeks ago, and there actually would have been something between them, just for twist value. But perhaps I'm not thinking "family" enough.

2. Torchwood. Sod me, it's the Sex Alien episode again! Only this time it's been spliced with Unbreakable. Of the two Sex Alien episodes, I think I prefer this one. Still, though...
This was one of those episodes that seems pretty damn good at the time, but gets worse the more you think about it. My initial reaction was that this might be the second best episode (to go all Mrs Doyle for a moment) after Small Worlds - the dialogue needed a bit of work (and by "bit" I mean "lot") and the ending was far too abrupt ("Oh, I set it to "plot resolve" - byeeee!"), but overall it came across well. But how did the Sex Alien hide in Cardiff for two hundred years? Where does she live, and how does she buy her abundant supplies of eye make-up? And hasn't anybody noticed there's a heart-plucking serial killer on the loose? "I need hearts to feed this body." What, chips and sausages not good enough for aliens? "Well, I did a survey of how the humans live, and it seemed to me that their natural diet was each other's fresh, beating hearts."
All this and the ongoing horror of Gwen and Owen. Perhaps it's the lingering effect of his pheromone spray from episode 1?
And yet, having thought about it more carefully, I still think this might be the second best episode of the series, because whatever plot holes it has, the other episodes have 'em too, but with less glossy style to hide behind. Cyber-Woman and Countrycide are just a bit too straight-up slam-bang action to really make it past middling on my chart.
Now, next week's episode looks eeeenteresting...

Part 3 - "It made me happy."

And so to the weekend's television. Gorbless digital replay - it's like rediscovering VCR.

1. Robin Hood. This is an increasingly frustrating show. On the one hand, you get occasional flashes of something edgy, of the show this could (should?) have been - like when it turns out Marian's already helping the peasants, or when Roy gives himself up to the Sheriff's guards, or this week when the outlaws ride up to Nottingham yet again to save yet another (in this case thoroughly undeserving) villager in yet another daring raid, only to find the Sheriff's anticipated them and hanged the buggers an hour earlier. Little flashes of brilliance, but they're so, so rare.

On the other hand, all pretence at credibility has long since flown out of the window. The bulk of the series has sunk into formula, and features such absurdities as this week's merchant in a trilby and a bloody sheepskin coat! What, has Robin Hood been invaded by Only Fools and Horses? Are we to be treated, in a moment of astonishing daring, to a metafictional crisis that might actually explain the sheer laxity of detail? Never mind Robin's machine-made vest - a trilby! And I hate to say it, but - a black Christian Abbess in 13th century England in last week's episode? Will we see the Sheriff eating potatoes and smoking a pipe next week, perhaps?

And how disappointing that another rare flash, potentially a very bright one, should have been snuffed with such a god-awful cop-out. Robin's ridiculous plan to race back to Marian's house and slip that incriminating necklace into her hand just in the nick of time is doomed - he's too late, Gisburne's rumbled her, she's surely now going to have to admit everything to him! The whole show is about to change! And yet at the last possible second Robin does indeed turn up outside the window and slip the necklace into her hand, after the event but not too late to reset the situation. Bah, humbug.

So Robin Hood is now firmly relegated to the position of amusing guff. We'd still sooner watch it than most other TV programmes, but not that avidly.

2. Torchwood. Flippin' 'eck. A great episode for character work, but horrible. The doors are now open for jokes about the Countryside Alliance.

Following this episode, my opinion of Owen has taken a pronounced about-turn. I think on reflection the "Lynx effect" business in the first episode could be taken either as a sign that he's a rapist waiting to happen, or that he's just thoroughly irresponsible. His misuse of the time viewer in the third episode (significantly, to deliver vigilante punishment to a rapist), as well as his general behaviour since the season opener, led me to conclusion B. Now, however, I can't help but revert to conclusion A. Amazingly Gwen seems prepared to go along with it all, but I suppose such things and stranger do happen. Presumably the plan now is to attempt to make us care about Owen before he meets a painful and much anticipated death. You've left yourself a challenge there, Mr Chibnall.

I have but two questions, two disturbing thoughts that occurred to me:

• What was in those burgers the team were eating at the start of the episode?
• What if that last scene right at the end wasn't all in Gwen's imagination?

Part 2 - "I - can-not - hear - you! Let - me - hear - you - say - ex-ter-mi-nate!!"

Sunday was something altogether different - a concert of Murray Gold's music from the new Who, performed in the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and BBC National Chorus of Wales, and all for Children in Need. This was more than we were expecting in so many ways.

Sundry things were happening in the WMC during the afternoon. For one thing, as the letter we received earlier in the week told us, you could "have your face painted with an image from Doctor Who". What, any image? Could I have an establishing shot of a council estate daubed onto my cheeks? This turned out, we learned from the faces of passing children, to be a choice between the TARDIS or a Dalek airbrushed onto your cheek through a stencil. Still, we weren't there for the face-painting.

What we were led to expect was a sedate evening of Who music performed against a backdrop of Who images, followed by a Q&A with David Tennant, Russell T Davies and Mr Gold himself. What we got was David Tennant hosting a gala night of Who music performed against a backdrop of Who images in the midst of props and fragments of sets, while clockwork service droids, Daleks, Cybermen and sundry others larked about at the front of the stage and menaced the choir, to our great amusement. And the expected Q&A, cut off by a Dalek demanding audience participation and ordering the orchestra about. And some preview footage of the Christmas episode! (Which looked stunning, and amazingly hasn't appeared on YouTube yet...)

Random thoughts follow.

• The seats in the WMC were lovely and comfy, and our view from about four rows from the back was splendid, so hats off to the architects. Just one thing: stick up some bloody signs to the toilets. I gave up looking for the gents' and used the disabled, deciding that I was indeed disabled by a) not possessing ovaries (the ladies' was right outside the auditorium door and easily found) and b) not having the telepathic ability to sense where the gents' were.
• Arrays of mini-floodlights lit up in the direction of the audience at the end of each piece of music, to the point that I began to wonder if this was some kind of Pavlovian conditioning to get us to clap whenever we saw floodlights. It may simply have been for the benefit of the BBC cameras.
• It's not until you hear it in isolation that you realise just how much the music from the Slitheen episodes sounds like "Mission: Impossible". Presumably Murray Gold thought this was the right music for blowing up Big Ben and 10 Downing Street.
• Kids are willingly wearing suits because of DW! The world has turned upside-down!
• I honestly don't recall there being an electric guitar in half those pieces during the actual episodes. I mean, it added something, but I'm pretty sure hard riffing wasn't a feature of the TV series incidental music.
• Lovely to hear Melanie Pappenheim singing that haunting music from the end of Series 2 in person.

The final two pieces, though... These were the strangely popular "Song For Ten" from last year's Christmas special, and a song called "Love Don't Roam" from this year's. Sadly the programme does not record the name of the performer. He sang well, but the songs are very much in the line of Andy Williams ("Music To Watch Who By," perhaps) and the lyrics, once you get to hear them without an episode of Who going on around them, are utter pap. ("Bad Bond lyrics," suggested our pal Sarah. I just think someone's hit "fill in" on the Automatic Lounge Song Generator.) We were doubly pleased to get an encore of the Who theme at the end.

All in all, I'd be hard pushed to describe this event as anything less than fantastic. I dread to think what the auction props went for, though. (The Genesis Ark was going for five grand when we looked in at 2pm...)

Part 1 - "What you are about to see is considered safe."

Saturday's bit o' culture - away to the cinema to see The Prestige. Well, I had to applaud at the end, because Christopher Nolan has performed the magical act of transforming Christopher Priest's very literary book into a very filmic film. Yet without forcing the effects in our faces (a little doubling up of actors, a spot of Tesla lightning) he's managed to keep the air of a Victorian ghost story - the subtle horror of the situation rather than the unnecessary gore of the modern horror story. In fact, by just changing one small aspect of the central premise he's actually taken the horror of the original story one step further, and all the other changes between book and film follow entirely naturally from that one small change. Clever old Nolan.

Acting's top notch as well. I'm not quite convinced by Christian Bale's accent, but it's just brilliant to see him and Hugh Jackman outside their respective superhero flicks and giving it everything they've got. I think the real revelation, though, is David Bowie as Tesla. What a restrained performance! Admittedly the only other film I've seen him in is Labyrinth, playing himself, so I was expecting "eccentricity", but wow! Proper acting!

I'm still not entirely sure which, if either, is better - the book or the film. They're both great in different ways. Still, I think Nolan could win me over if he, perhaps, were to make a film of Priest's The Glamour, hint, hint.

We sing in praise of PJ Hammond

Always good for a surreal image, is Mr H. And I think we're all agreed round this neck of the woods that that was the finest episode of Torchwood yet. It had depth, it had subtlety - that's the first time I've been able to believe in Jack Harkness ("Clap if you believe in Captain Jack, children! Clap!") as a person rather than just as a high-octane action hero. I think this episode could have stretched out to a mini-series in its own right, there was so much material crying out to be unpacked and developed. In a series purportedly of stand-alone episodes, this one truly stands alone. (Although I have, of course, been pretty fired up about it for months now.) I mean, last week's was fun, but not exactly meaty.

There's just one thing I'm a bit confused about, and that's where Jack the Eternal Soldier in 1907 Lahore fits in with Jack the time-travelling con-man. Perhaps he overshot on his way back from that space station.

Saturday was quite a day. We got to London in spite of, rather than thanks to, the car we rented from Hertz. Hertz in their wisdom took our online booking for a four-door car with room to seat five and presented us with a two-door car with room to seat five dwarves, and an engine flooding problem. Still, we'd allowed enough time and, dropping all other plans for London shopping, got lunch and took our seats for Spamalot, one of the most astonishing things I've seen in a while. On the one hand it takes my happy memories of Monty Python and the Holy Grail and, as I'd expected, buggers them thoroughly. On the other, there's more than enough new material, and some very interesting use of the stage environment, to make Spamalot a wonderful work of culture in its own right. It's the Monty Python film remade as half big, gaudy Las Vegas show (the musical numbers, the chorus girls, etc) and half pantomime (the fourth-wall stuff towards the end, to say nothing of the Beast of Caer-Bannog). We spent the whole time racked with laughter. It's more than the sum of its gags; it deserves to be a phenomenon.

Remember, remember...

...you're a Womble. Ah, Guy Fawkes Night (and the fortnight either side of it), when the good folk of England are expected to endure the sounds of heavy shelling in memory of a Catholic fundamentalist terrorist. On the positive side, oooh, pretty shiny lights.

One day, it is my fond and fervent hope, Marvel will actually publish a book I want to buy. Something that the editors are sufficiently confident about in its own right that they won't feel obliged to shoehorn in guest appearances from Spider-Man or other "fan favourites" after three issues in a craven attempt to inflate sales. Paul Cornell's Wisdom looks promising, very promising. Stan Lee Meets emphatically does not.

So, Torchwood! Torchwood came here to chew bubblegum and kick ass, and it's aaaaall out of bubblegum. At last, a post-watershed Cybermen story! Not that it didn't have some massive holes, such as why the conversion machine apparently spends the first two or three minutes in operation waving its blades about to absolutely no effect, or why Cyber-Lisa should think that the Frankenstein business at the end of the episode would persuade Ianto to become a Cyberman (the "That'd look cool" syndrome in both cases, I suspect). But still, a passable episode. We did think for a few minutes there that the whole team might self-destruct before the end of the series. Even if he hasn't gone, I'll expect Ianto to be thoroughly traumatised for the next few weeks.

But I'm still more excited about next week's! It's P J Hammond! It's evil fairies! What could possibly go wrong?!