If television is the idiot's lantern then the subjective opinions of someone unqualified to write about television must surely be the idiot's lectern.

Torchwood

Wednesdays, BBC2

I don’t know about you but I find trying to say whether Torchwood is a good thing is rather like trying to answer the question "Is the sky good?" I mean, what do you say? Torchwood is frequently embarrassing, frequently enthralling, frequently stylish, frequently infantile and frequently unique. And I know you should never qualify the word unique but Torchwood is an exception. To almost everything.

The pre-title sequence summed the series up in as good a three minute chunk as you’ll see. There were rapid cuts as the camera panned across an evening’s Cardiff. I’m sure they crank up the reds in those aerial shots to make Cardiff look like a living being with blood coursing through its veins. A car chase is underway – an extremely well made alien is driving a sports car. And this was a very well made alien. It races up to a crossing where an old lady prepares to shuffle across the street. The alien drives off – maybe it’s the sports car but we are left thinking ‘what a sexy alien fish creature’. For the first time ever, hopefully. The Torchwood team’s Mystery Machine races up and stops to ask the old lady directions. "Bloody Torchwood" she curses as they race off. Because the organisation so secret that UNIT didn’t know they existed are a running joke in Cardiff. Now that was funny.

So the team catch up with the fish because the angular faced one (the characters have names but don’t really need them – there is the angular faced one, the tall thin one, the Welsh girl and the girl we don’t describe glibly because someone would take offence) heroically climbed out of the Mystery Machine and shot out the fish’s tires. Does he fancy himself as the new Copperhead or what? They find the car but the fish is nowhere to be seen. Luckily he decides to expose his hiding place by shooting someone. It’s only a man with no lines so we won’t bother too much about him. His wife / girlfriend / transgender partner / adopted mother / adopted daughter / internet purchase / friend / dominatrix / fuck buddy is being held at gun point. There is a standoff as Torchwood look stern and butch with their guns trained on the fish. But the fish isn’t in the mood for serious tension – he wants an info dump. So he recaps season one for us with pithy sarcasm. He sums everyone up with a neat turn of phrase and cleverly avoids going into too much detail about sexual matters because they only have 45 minutes and 3 of those are needed for the trailer. It falls to the tall one to shoot the fish or not shoot the fish. Does he have the nuts? Can he do it? Will he risk hitting the human woman whose exact role is unclear except that she’s a human woman and therefore best not to shoot in the head? Can he save…

…but he doesn’t need to do anything. A bullet does to the fish’s brain what Mrs Thatcher did to the mining unions. Ianto Jones looks at his gun with astonishment as if it had actually fired without him noticing. But we cut to the doorway where Captain Jack Harkness stands, gun smoking, grin intense, and he says "Did you miss me?"

If he’d said something un-clichéd in such a clichéd situation I think I would’ve cried. I would’ve accepted "I’m back" but that is all. Whether it was a perfectly crafted piece of post modern genre pastiche or just a hack hacking away in a hack-like manner on a hack’s typewriter I couldn’t say.

Everyone was cross that Jack had been away. I actually didn’t remember where he went or why or whether we even knew what had kept Jack away from the Hub. It took a good twenty minutes to remember that he’d been in that other show with the guy and the guy from Life on Mars and that he’d been away for ages, most of which turns out not to have happened by the end. But just when they thought they’d got themselves one Captain Jack they find they’ve got two Captain Jacks. The new one is dressed like a shabby New Romantic and was last seen in a series in which a team of Scooby Doo like heroes fought monsters which came through a space-time portal and ran amok.

Jack and John went up the hill… no… they met in a bar and had a fight. First they had a snog, then they had a fight. Same sex kissing is both fine and dandy but as they inched towards each other I thought "Don’t kiss… don’t kiss… don’t kiss… ugh". I know Torchwood tries to shock us but we’ve already reached the Vince Russo threshold where shocks don’t mean anything because every week tries to shock us twenty times and it would actually have been more of a surprise if Jack hadn’t snogged John. A shock is supposed to be something unpredictable and sex in Torchwood is as predictable as waving on Blue Peter or peeing during adverts.

Initially, before Torchwood in fact, they tried to shock us with the news that the 55th century has no concept of sexuality – everyone is happy with everyone. Which is fine and entirely believable given that the ancient world of the classics had similar principles. Add in cloning and non-sexual reproduction and you have no reason what so ever to choose a partner on gender lines. Now they’ve decided to shock us again with the news that the same is true of the 21st century. Did you not know that? Apparently niche porn was right.

Torchwood is many things but it is rarely boring. It has its own rules and it sticks to them. It is a format capable of apocalyptic drama and situation comedy. It knows its silly and it gives you just enough silliness so you know they know it’s silly. Some will love it and some will hate it. I can’t argue with you either way. Torchwood is just different.