Torchwood: Series One

Torchwood was announced to the world in late 2005 as a spin-off from Doctor Who, only to stumble, blinking, into the neon-lit streets of Cardiff barely a year later. It was conceived as an "adult" take on the Whoniverse, starring John Barrowman as Captain Jack Harkness. The first episode introduces new recruit Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles) to Torchwood, an elite group of alien hunters based beneath Cardiff city centre, under the radar of the British Government. Extraterrestrials are fought while the members of Team Torchwood battle their own morals and relationship problems over 13 episodes. A schizophrenic series that annoys as much as it entertains, the perceived need to justify its post-watershed slot means that what at times seems to be a treatise on what it is to be a thirty-something in noughties Britain (how do you maintain a healthy work-life balance while fighting aliens for a living?) is often lost in a mire of soft-core titillation and half-baked plots. In its defence, episodes such as Out of Time and They Keep Killing Suzie do punch above their weight, while the performance of Barrowman is nearly always note perfect. [Jonathan Melville]