Tag Archives: BBC Wales

Doctor Who, General, Movies & TV

Torchwood So Far

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Since various people have been asking what I think of the series, and indeed my brother-in-law commenting on the fact that I hadn’t commented!

Interestingly when Charles made his comment, I answered that we were quite enjoying it – not the best series ever, but not bad. That was before the show on Sunday, Countrycide, which was truly dire, and only served to amplify some of the issues I’ve had with the show since the beginning. Countrycide was essentially going for the horror genre, but really missed the mark, coming over as a cheap imitation of numerous B movies. It started off with the classic blonde alone in a car getting got, and went down-hill from there.

In terms of the other episodes, we’ve quite enjoyed Ghost Machine and Small Worlds, with Cyberwoman being a bit disappointing.

The biggest issue I have with the series is that for a top secret organisation, it seems decidedly non-secret. For example the team quite often walk into places by saying that they’re Torchwood. They get past the Police in a similar way, and yet in the Christmas Invasion this organisation was apparently so secret that the Prime Minister wasn’t supposed to know about it, and yet everybody in Cardiff seems to know about them. Having said that, if you were driving about in a vehicle that looks like theirs, complete with ‘Torchwood’ stencilled on the side, it’s probably not a surprise that they’re well known. However in terms of the concept, it’s like James Bond driving around with ‘007 Licence to Kill’ written on the side. Considering their hidden base, you would have expected that their vehicle would be a lot less obvious – plus the amount of time they spend rushing around waving guns would again attract decidedly more attention than a secret organisation would want.

Doctor Who

Hopefully the series will pick up a bit later on, as the actors and writers get used to the characters, otherwise I suspect it might well only last a single series.

If you’re in the mood for a bit of Doctor Who though, I’d recommend taking a trip over to the BBC Wales Radio Player to listen to the excellent Doctor Who – A Celebration, a concert of music from the series in aid of Children in Need. Just enough to whet your appetite for the upcoming Doctor Who Soundtrack methinks.

Life on Mars, Movies & TV

Life on Mars

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Tonight the BBC kicked off probably one of the most eagerly awaited TV series so far this year, Life on Mars. The programme is another production of BBC Wales, the part of the BBC that returned Doctor Who to screens last year, and it is fair to say that Life on Mars might not have come to the screens with such publicity had it not been for the success in getting the new Doctor Who of the ground. Indeed the team behind the show first pitched it to the BBC seven years ago, before Channel 4 picked it up and then got cold feet. Two years ago it ended up back at the BBC and was given the green light.

The show is a strange mix of traditional police show, but with a good deal of weirdness thrown in. It starts with Sam Tyler, a policeman in 2006 involved in investigating a serial killer. He does things very much by the book, and when his girlfriend, also a policewoman decides to go off on her own to follow her hunch after he tries to take her off the case, and then gets taken by the killer, he is frustrated and upset, and narrowly avoids hitting a car driving back to the police station. He gets out of his SUV in shock, and with Life on Mars by David Bowie playing on his iPod, is hit by a car going the other way.

Here is where it starts getting weird, as when he wakes up, he is in exactly the same spot, but over thirty years in the past, in 1973. He’s still a policeman, but things are very different – or are they? As the episode goes on whilst the methods may be radically different, it transpires that the crime that the police in 1973 are investigating is very similar to his case in 2006, indeed it could be that the murderer is one and the same man, released from prison in his own time, and picking up where he left off.

But the big question is whether he really is in 1973, or whether he is actually stuck in a coma. At one point watching the Open University on TV he realises that the presenter has stopped talking about geometry, and is talking to him, trying to wake him up. However against that is the accuracy and detail of the apparent fantasy world he has created, and the fact that he is in an era where he was a child. Like many of the best fantasy dramas there are hints being dropped, and also a fair few red herrings I bet, but I guess we won’t find what is really going on until a lot later in the series.

Of course the great strength of the series seems to be that if you’re not keen on the sci-fi aspects, there is a good old police drama to get into too, plus being 1973, a good dose of nostalgia for those viewers who are old enough to remember the early seventies.

Certainly it was a strong first episode, and I’m looking forward to the rest of the series.