TV: Torchwood - Season 2, Episode 3

To the Last Man by Helen Raynor

The second season of Torchwood just goes from strength to strength, and one of its main strong points is variety. Episode one was a suitable season opener -- it was light on plot, just a simple MacGuffin chase designed to facilitate a display of characters and the show's style, with suitable amounts of humour, violence, language and snogging present. Then there was Sleeper, with its creepy sci-fi mystery and apocalyptic ending working alongside a strong character-based plot.

Now we have Helen Raynor's latest contribution to the Whoniverse (after last season's rather good Ghost Machine and Doctor Who's rather bad Evolution of the Daleks two-parter). The characters are even more central here than in Sleeper, and, where last week's episode gave the great part to a guest star, here it goes to Tosh. It's nice to see Naoko Mori at the centre of an episode again as, with the exception of last season's Greeks Bearing Gifts, Tosh seems to be mainly relegated to a supporting technical role. Here she's front and centre, in love with a World War One soldier who's awake for just one day every year... and who she must send back to 1918, to face certain death.

It's a decent sci-fi plot, actually, with a nice explanation involving scrunched up paper. But where Sleeper's sci-fi story was the main thread and the human impact a subplot, To the Last Man reverses things -- in fact, the mystery is so reduced that the solution is literally handed to the team in time-sealed orders from 1918. But it's the execution of those orders, tied inextricably to the relationship we've seen develop between Tosh and Tommy, that provides the drama of the story's climax. Both Mori and Anthony Lewis as Tommy give excellent performances, creating moments of intense happiness and sadness in such a short space of time. There are no easy answers to the dilemmas they face.

It's this, and the downbeat ending that develops from it, which makes Torchwood a show for grown-up audiences this week. Yes, some episodes may use the adult-focus remit to provide violence, gore and sex, but when others use it for affecting human drama it's clear that the show can be, and now often is, a lot more than some would care to give it credit for. In an earlier review I expressed hope that they keep up the level of variety and experimentation; on the evidence of this opening salvo of episodes, and the trailer for next week's, I'd say they're doing a good job. Long may it continue.