'Wales is insane!'

Even though Henry and I are mightily enjoying BBC4’s Kinks night, I have had something rather taking the zing out of my gin and tonic since yestreen. Namely, ‘Torchwood: Miracle Day’ episode one, which aired on BBC1 Thursday at 9pm.

Now, I am all for a harmless romp through time, a la Doctor Who; and Torchwood, when it started, was Doctor Who with a lot more harmless homosexuality. However, in the last series of Torchwood they killed off all my favourite characters. When they announced the coming of the next instalment, I was surprised. The Welsh woman character could hardly hold up her end of the bargain when Captain Jack was off gallivanting with the local male-model community.

I think my main problems with the new series, apart from the blatant Kentucky-isation of it, are as follows:

1)   The dialogue is absolutely appalling. Honestly, I could write something better with my other end, with a piece of charcoal and a tatty bit of loo paper. Worse, the actors overacted to compensate. I can’t help but imagine the director being absent from filming due to an urgent need to attend Delia Smith’s yachting holiday with the Pope, where some very kinky things happen, such as sage-and-onion Paxo stuffing being served with pork.

2)   A rather high-up CIA officer in this series, played by Mekhi Phifer, apparently does not know that Wales is not an island, even though I would bloody well hope he could draw a map of the world by memory and free-hand no less. Just because you had to cross a bridge to get to Cardiff does not mean that the rest of Wales is not attached to England in a rather serious way. Whilst we’re on the subject of bridges, why is he completely surprised that there is a toll bridge in existence? There are far more than a few toll bridges within America. Though I’d rather not talk about it, I am not a complete stranger to the other side of the ‘A’ in NATO. Also, while we’re on the subject of the Severn Bridge, why on earth is this character even driving along it? A) If heading from London Heathrow, is this really the best way to go? Into the South West and then up, instead of straight across and down a bit? B) If the British armed forces were co-operating with the CIA to the extent that they would greet Mr. Phifer at the airport and hand him a handgun gratis as he arrives, then why did they not give him a lift? Say, in a helicopter? I doubt very much they would say, ‘Afternoon, we realise the fate of the world hangs in the balance and time is of the essence, so here’s a lovely Heckler & Koch 9mm semi-automatic for you, and over there at the end of that rather lengthy queue is a friendly Avis Rent-a-Car man. Have a nice day.’

3)   I wonder if any of my ‘legal eagle’ friends can help here. The Mekhi Phifer character then tracks down the remaining members of Torchwood and proceeds to have them extradited…from their own country…to his…even though only one of them had ever been to America…committing no crime that I am aware of. Unless of course Jack was in a Southern state when being his usual ‘vibrant’ self. I don’t think this is an ‘extradition’ at all, let alone legal, CIA code numbers notwithstanding.

4)   I am also slightly disturbed by at least two hardened and trained secret agents just crying at the drop of hat. I don’t even cry when Henry has walked off the battlements. It’s common and I’ve been trained against it. Well, he would insist on a wee midnight stroll.

5)   Captain Jack. Ah, you were once so mysterious and deep. However, now you are reduced to a seemingly unending series of grand entrances that do not connect up logically. You also spent the whole episode drugging people and complaining that you’ve managed to hurt yourself. Just put an Elastoplast on it, you daft man.

6)   What NHS hospital could afford, and moreover be willing, to buy the nurses’ station a ‘Mac’?

7)   Last, but by no means least, is the general gaping plot hole of the entire premise. The ticking plot-time-bomb is that no-one can die (even with the severing of the head from the body) and that this will inevitably lead to world famine and a ‘dog-eat-dog’ environment over a loaf of bread. Yet, surely, if no-one can die, then ipso facto no-one can die of starvation.  Hello?

As some of you know, before my husband inherited Airnefitchie and the baronetcy, he used to be something quite high up in the television business, and I assumed he would have an even longer list of ‘notes’ than I did.  No, he replied, just one.  One?  ‘Yes,’ Henry said. ‘It would be, “I look forward to seeing this when it’s finished”.’

Russell T. Davies, if that is your real middle initial, this series premiere could have been so much more. When you write the next series, get in touch. We have much to talk about.

Thanks, but no thanks.

I was wondering how I would start my ‘blog’, and whilst doing so I happened to be listening to Radio 2 when a chap called Brandon Flowers started singing about being caught in the middle of a crossfire, which I doubt very much.

Now, I am no writer of music or lyrics, as the SWRI will confirm, but a few points about this song forced themselves to my attention.

1)    ‘Let me inside, no cause for alarm/I promise tonight not to do no harm/Yeah I promise you babe, I won't do you no harm’

Would you, if you were by yourself at night in your house during a storm, let in a strange man saying ‘Let me inside, no cause for alarm’? I bloody well wouldn’t. Anyone saying that is probably armed with frying pan ready to knock you out and steal the family silver. This tends to be supported by the fact that he then says, ‘I promise tonight not to do no harm…I won’t do you no harm.’ I am a firm believer that punctuation saves lives (viz. ‘Let’s eat, Grandma’ vs ‘Let’s eat Grandma!’) and that the expulsion of double negatives and the correct word order could well be the key to saving the universe one day. This is a man blatantly telling you that he’s probably moved on from the frying pan and is clearly up to no good. Not doing no harm is his way of saying he’ll do you some harm. Just because this (un)grammatical construction might make him ‘down with the kids’ or popular in his street gang of miscreants, does not detract from the fact that he means harm and will have more than just the family silver if you are not prepared to grab the 20 bore from the gun safe, at which point, let’s just say that the beads being drawn are not limited to the Devil’s fiery arrows.

2)    ‘There's a still in the street outside your window…I forget all about the storm outside…’

First, let us assume that he is not talking about a fifty-gallon pot still, which would be a matter for the Customs & Excise enforcement division. Probably, he is referring to stillness.  Yet, it’s impossible to ignore the glaring contradiction that, when he knocked on your door to steal the silver, and commenced watching you undress, he was allegedly searching for shelter from a storm allegedly already in progress. This ruddy pervert cannot give you a straight answer about the weather even though you are both looking out the window. Poetry be blowed, this is lunacy.

3)   Fifteen times does this man say ‘Lay your body down’, before finishing off with ‘Next to mine’. If he meant for me to LIE MYSELF down he would, no doubt, have said so. The use of LAY leads us inescapably to assume that I am carrying a body, and am to place it next to his.  But next to his OWN body, or a fourth body that HE is carrying? Quite a party, isn’t it? By God, I would have called the police by now, not to say emptied my 20 bore into the blighter’s chest and called it self-defence. Not to mention that any usage of the word ‘body’ in a love song is simply disturbing and brings to mind any number of gruesome murder and auto-erotic asphyxiation stories where the ‘body’ was found face down on the bed with a ball-gag in its mouth…and that’s just what you hear around the Conservative party.

4)   ‘Watching you dress as you turn down the lights...’

I do not dress before going to bed, I undress, and what are you doing watching in the first place? Oh yes, that’s right, you’re a pervert.

5)   I now draw your attention to the chorus ‘We're caught up in the crossfire/Of heaven and hell/And we're searching for shelter…’. You’re already inside you daft man. This is probably why you’re having so much trouble figuring out what the weather is doing.

The net result, Mr Flowers, if that really is your name, is a song that seems not so much as written as blurted out. And the effect is rather creepy.