The body of Spooks with very little of the brains, the first episode of Sky1’s Strike Back: Project Dawn offers much in the way of nudity and action, but little in the way of a compelling narrative.
Sometimes, it’s the simplest things that are the most disturbing; and the single most grisly scene so far in Torchwood: Miracle Day is as uncomplicated as it is grimly effective.
Wow! Rani from The Sarah Jane Adventures has grown up, hasn’t she? Not so long ago, she was fighting aliens in Bannerman Road. Now, she’s all legs and seduction, stirring up Beaver Falls’ very own love quartet.
And so we finally get round to seeing some of Jack’s past that has so curiously been alluded to throughout the series. Not only that, it looks like the genesis of the “miracle” is explained too…
‘Torchwood’s gone,’ Rex tells Vera in the fifth instalment of Miracle Day. ‘It’s just a name, these days.’ Yet for a number of reasons, this is perhaps the most Torchwoodian episode of the series yet.
Three weeks in, and the show is avoiding some of the worse gross-out gags that plagued the first episode and is mining a new seam of sentimentality, thanks to that mainstay of teen drama: parent-child relationships.
In 1931, a young Jewish prosecutor at the central criminal court decided to force Adolf Hitler to appear as a witness at the trial of some brownshirt brutes accused of murdering innocent civilians.
Warning: this episode does not feature either Bill Pullman or Lauren Ambrose. As their antics have been some of the most entertaining aspects of the series so far, this results in the sixth instalment falling somewhat short of interest.
The Hour is never less than compelling television, but on the occasions when it really steps up its game, it becomes something rather unmissable.
‘Torchwood located,’ C. Thomas Howell’s nameless assassin announces at the beginning of ‘Escape to L.A.’ – and although, of course, he’s talking about the newly-formed team, he could equally be referring to the show itself.