Torchwood is a spin-off of Doctor Who, a British series that has a fan following as fanatic as Star Trek's. It has been around since the sixties and after a long time off the air, it was recently revived to great success under the skillful guidance of Russell T. Davies, best known for creating Queer as Folk (the original UK version).

Doctor Who is about a time traveler from another world who jumps back and forth saving the universe, with blatant disregard for the butterfly effect and on a fairly low special effects budget. In the second season of the current revival, the Doctor ran into Queen Victoria, who set up an organisation to keep an eye out for this strange character. Scrabble players may note that Torchwood is an anagram of Doctor Who.

Torchwood quickly broadened its scope to secretly studying all sorts of freaky phenomena and alien encounters. There are various incarnations of the organisation in different parts of England (and - of course - in alternate realities), which are working "outside the government, beyond the police"k according to the opening credits. The Cardiff team stars in this series and they are lead by the literally immortal Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) who has his own past with the good Doctor. Then there are: Gwen (Eve Myles), a policewoman drafted into the organisation in the first episode, Toshiko (Naoko Mori), a tech wiz, Owen (Burn Gorman), a doctor, and Ianto (Gareth David-Lloyd), the office administrator/concierge/handyman.

Torchwood is deserving of the "wood" in its title, both in the sexual meaning and with regard to the acting. When there is a choice between overacting and underplaying, the cast rarely goes for the latter. Worst offenders in this regard are unfortunately the two leads, Barrowman and Myles. I like Barrowman because the actor is an openly gay charmer, known for flashing his apparently impressive naughty bits on set. And there is an anecdote he tells with enthusiasm, about highkicking on stage towards the audience, while he had diarrhoea. Feel free to fill in the messy blanks. But as Captain Jack he often comes over as smarmy where he should be likeable. Eve Myles has a tough job, as her character has violent mood swings in between episodes and sometimes even within an episode. Gwen is supposed to be "the caring one" but regularly makes bad judgement calls and can be alarmingly irrational. Nevertheless, Gwen has at least four guys who really, really fancy her over the course of the first two seasons (26 episodes).