THERE IS A NEFARIOUS PLOT aimed at Britain's children. If all goes to plan, by Tuesday lunchtime they should be gathering in playgrounds, silently standing still until reciting in unison: "We wanna stay up to watch Torchwood."
For this all-new, a
ll-action, all-week on BBC1 after the watershed Torchwood would seem to be continuing its parent show Doctor Who's mission of providing spooky scenarios that can be easily imitated in play – like the moving statues of the episode "Blink" or the Empty Child asking "are you my mummy?" Torchwood's new serial has the repeated image of ordinary children suddenly going blank and jointly saying weird, alien things in perfect timing – ideal for kids to copy, especially if they really want to annoy people. Yet it is scheduled at 9pm.
I don't think it's because of the show's supposed sexy reputation, which is always much more talked about than seen – Captain Jack's all mouth and greatcoat. There are a few gory scenes and though I admit that the last instalment wasn't yet ready at the time of writing, unless it turns out that the only way to battle the sinister threat is for all the Torchwood crew to have a mass orgy while screaming swearwords, there's no real reason for that time slot.
Whatever they say, Torchwood isn't really more "grown-up" than Doctor Who (less, sometimes) and it doesn't even take the opportunity to explore darker themes when they come up. For instance, it's mentioned that in the Who/Torchwood universe, the existence of aliens has recently been proved and as a result of this the suicide rate has doubled, particularly among the very religious who feel that "science has won". A potentially interesting idea, but the thread is dropped.
The expanded run does allow for some good character scenes, like Ianto awkwardly coming out to his sister or a fine performance by Paul Copley as a man haunted by a disturbing experience. But otherwise it's as the five-part Doctor Who serials of old: lots of running around, getting captured then escaping – and there's even a quarry.
Peter Capaldi's usual capable presence keeps it going through the inevitable midweek lag, playing a much politer government official than he does in The Thick Of It.
By coincidence, he's also directed Jo Brand's Getting On, a three-part comedy set in the NHS which could roughly be described as The Sick Of It. This is part of the BBC's new Grey Expectations season, dedicated to "understanding life's twilight years" as they embarrassingly put it – or, perhaps, to countering the perception that the BBC are obsessed with, like, yoof. Reducing its older cast members to mostly lie-on parts as they're confined to bed in a geriatric ward might therefore seem somewhat tactless, but Getting On is pretty good viewing for any age.
It shares the vérité style of The Thick of It and has a clever script devised by the three lead actors – Vicki Pepperdine as a faeces-obsessed doctor, Joanna Scanlan as a harassed ward sister and Brand as a nurse (having previously actually been one, she doesn't have to stretch her acting skills too far).
They are all struggling to cope with bureaucratic absurdities. A "poo on the chair" accident can't just be wiped away; it must be identified, logged as a critical incident, reported and finally collected into a "stool pot" – and meanwhile the chair sits around stinking. The patients mutter incomprehensibly, or stare sadly, or die, while the staff stagger on, getting through it on cake, cigarettes and nerves.
The humour is dark, obviously, but very funny. The only thing that stops it from being very, very funny is the horrified suspicion that maybe it's not all that exaggerated.
The jokes are much broader in Taking The Flak, another new sitcom whose characters are also in a stressful situation: they're BBC correspondents reporting from an African civil war. As in Evelyn Waugh's novel Scoop, the target is the ineptitude, ego and heartlessness of the reporters rather than the locals who observe them wearily.
This is new ground for a sitcom and, having been filmed in Kenya by news crews, it does have an authentic look (aided by cameos from real BBC journos). Voiceover veteran Martin Jarvis throws himself into it as an arrogant senior correspondent who is parachuted in to cover the breaking story he knows nothing about.
But the tone isn't as sophisticated as it would like to think, just cynical. There is an interminable joke about diarrhoea and the show lasts at least twice as long as it should do. Its target audience is hard to guess at, but for that rare viewer who enjoys smug Radio 4 comedy shows yet gets the references to cult YouTube videos, this is the show for you.
