Ironically, given its foundation in numerical sequences, Touch leads with the heart rather than the head.
The behaviour of its characters – not least Martin Bohm (Kiefer Sutherland), a man who can make giant leaps of logic without the aid of a mental trampoline – is frequently so bizarre that if you tried to explain it without the help of the magical numbers conjured by Martin’s son Jake, you’d end up puzzling at people’s absolute inanity rather than marvelling at the elemental emotional force the programme unleashes.
If you want to be swept away by its poignancy – and who doesn’t? – it’s best to keep your mind on such important subjects such as the Amelia Sequence and ignore questions like: ‘If you want to keep your wingman secret from the other players at a poker game, why would you pull up outside the venue in the same car?’ or ‘How did Natalie’s blog get so much worldwide attention?’ or ‘Have you ever heard a more atrocious Australian accent than that?’
Push all such piffling trivia to one side and let the warm waves of wonder wash over you like a soothing bath for the soul. As long as Touch keeps hold of its essential tenets of hope, optimism, generosity and humanity, it transcends any criticism of the minor faults it occasionally displays.
Noosphere Rising (the noosphere being the sphere of human thought, Vladimir Vernadsky fans) is just such an episode where a modicum of faith is required.
At the end of last week’s instalment, Prof. Arthur Teller (Danny Glover) was found dead in his car. Whilst viewing CCTV footage of his last visit, Martin and Clea Hopkins (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) discover the professor gave Jake (David Mazouz) a key inscribed with the numbers 1188, which leads the silent, psychic statistician’s father to Logan (Eyal Podell), a lecturer trying to use Teller’s mysterious Amelia Sequence to win at poker. With little more than an embarrassed apology and a hoarse whisper – two things he delivers several times in every episode – Martin is joining Logan in a game of Texas Hold ‘Em that involves the worst set of secret signals since Tecwen Whittock helped Major Charles Ingram win Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.
Ridiculously, nobody notices, but Martin already has a more pressing problem at hand: his late wife’s sister Abigail (Catherine Dent), who wants custody of Jake and is prepared to use her considerable wealth and business clout (not to mention the free iPads computer tablets she doles out at will) to get it. ‘I came back here to protect him,’ she tells Clea, and it’s, er, clear that she knows more about the kid’s arithmetical powers than she’s letting on.
Elsewhere, there’s some horseplay in the bad badlands of Australia and a secondary plot pretty much unconnected to Martin Bohm’s activities – except via the numbers 1188 – involving a video blogger named Natalie (Amelia Rose Blaire). Nat is trying to help out a couple whose details she found on a memory stick in a youth hostel toilet, and while she doesn’t get Paolo and Celeste together, she does become an internet sensation, create a red-scarfed flashmob and cop off with Paolo herself at a restaurant named Kismet – Turkish for ‘fate’.
Factor in Logan’s love – eventually requited – for Stacey, his poker dealer, and you end up with another heartwarming happy ending and a big, blubbering grin on your face. Who cares about the head, anyway?
Aired at 8pm on Tuesday 1st May 2012 on Sky1.
> Order the Season 1 boxset on Amazon.
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