Summer 2007 is fading, but not before marking a historic TV turning point. This will be remembered as the season cable’s original series vanquished broadcast television.
While the networks skimped with reruns and unscripted filler (“Big Brother 8,” “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?” and “The Biggest Loser”) cable lured crowds with the engrossing “Mad Men,” “Damages,” “Big Love,” “The Closer,” “Saving Grace,” “Burn Notice,” “Rescue Me,” “Weeds” and “Californication.”
Not to mention Disney’s record-setting ratings for “High School Musical 2.”
While cable audiences grew, broadcast networks saw double-digit declines in viewers.
This week we can add another hour to the list of cable’s deserving efforts: a funny-sexy sci-fi romp. Imagine super-secret DNA specialists, working in Wales, using the latest technology in order to solve crimes.
“‘CSI: Cardiff,’ I’d like to see that,” as one mate says.
You can see it, starting Saturday, at 7 p.m. on BBC America. The main difference between this and “CSI” is that the “Torchwood” crimes involve aliens. Supernatural forces stalk the port town of Cardiff. The technology is from the future. Additionally, the investigators operate outside the government, outside the police and beyond the United Nations. They make MI5 look like meter maids.
Russell T Davies, writer of the remade “Doctor Who” sci-fi drama, returns with “Torchwood,” a sci-fi cop show with a sense of humor.
It’s a welcome end-of-summer diversion before the American networks reopen for business.
Not only is “Torchwood” an anagram of “Doctor Who” – first devised as an internal security measure to disguise the 2005 “Doctor Who” tapes as they were being made and shipped. It’s a series the British press immediately likened to a Welsh “X-Files” or, as one aptly put it, the “Angel” to “Doctor Who’s” “Buffy.” That is, it’s darker, yet equally stocked with one-liners and monsters.
From Sunnydale to Los Angeles to Cardiff, there are strange forces at work.
Naturally, Torchwood’s underground hub is located beneath the Cardiff Millennium Center, on a rift in the space- time continuum. That accounts for some strange comings and goings as a disproportionate amount of space junk washes up there. How do you say Hellmouth in Welsh?
Enigmatic Capt. Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) leads a team of young investigators who tackle alien threats. They’re the first responders, whether to a meteorite crash or reports of an alien virus outbreak or sightings of extra-terrestrial technology.
Capt. Jack is mysterious. The team members know very little of his history, only that someone with that name disappeared in 1941. Actually, Jack is from the far future. (Devotees of “Doctor Who” will recall that Barrowman first appeared as this character in the first season of “Doctor Who”).
As “Torchwood” opens, a local cop becomes curious about the team. Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles) doesn’t understand the technology, science or weirdness at the center of the Torchwood project. Eventually she’ll bring a humanizing touch to the group. (On the home front, her relationship with her regular-guy boyfriend recalls Mary Beth and Harvey Lacey in the 1980s’ “Cagney & Lacey”).
The Torchwood team considers the police special ops unit mere amateurs. This team is in business to catch aliens and scavenge the stuff left behind.
This being cable and British, by the second episode, there’s plenty of talk about “snogging” and “shagging.” An abundance of imaginative space gizmos, cool photography and an unexplained pterodactyl mark the series as, well, different.
The supporting players are uniformly watchable. The team’s brilliant medic, Owen (Burn Gorman), is also a hedonistic party hound. Computer expert Toshiko (Naoko Mori, “Absolutely Fabulous”) is reserved. Receptionist Ianto (Gareth David Lloyd) has a role more important than his title suggests. And Suzie (Indira Varma) is an intense scientist obsessed with the alien artifacts.
Inventive and at times goofy, it’s a refreshing alternative to the latest “reality” games on network summer primetime.
TV critic Joanne Ostrow can be reached at 303-954-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com.
