Torchwood, as it is introduced to us in the opening credits, is an organization "outside the government, beyond the police. Tracking down alien life on Earth, arming the human race for the future." Torchwood is led by this guy, otherwise known as 'that guy who always plays Americans on BBC ', whose name for the purposes of this program is Captain Jack Harkness. Depending on what press release or episode you see, Captain Jack (aka Will Get You High Tonight) is a 50 zillion-year-old time traveler from the future, a former American World War I (or is it II? I didn't watch Ken Burns so I don't know) commander mysteriously become immortal or a hot-blooded omnisexual Lothario with an attractive person of either gender in every intergalactic port. Our eyes into this amazing organization is Gwen Cooper, a Cardiff, Wales police officer who wrong place/wrong times herself onto the Torchwood team by helping them uncover a murderer amongst one of their own.
Torchwood itself is a secret lab/base, located under the fountain of the Cardiff opera house, which despite having no government or police support has a very respectable armory and fleet of black cars. The plots are beyond ridiculous, as they should be, only occasionally making any kind of sense.
There was the episode where Torchwood's inexplicably non-Asian majordomo named Ianto attempts to revive his half-automated girlfriend in the secret basement of the secret base, causing a great deal of hell to break loose when it turns out that she's actually the False Maria robot escaped from Metropolis. Also, she's murderous, crazy, and wants to turn the world into an army of cyber-bots. Ianto has to kill her and it's all very sad, tears all around, except of course from Jack, who does not truck much with emotionalism. Unlike his alter-ego Doctor Who, careening through the universe with a devil-may-care, "isn't this all just the neatest" attitude, Jack is more of a "shoot 'em all and sort out the pieces later" type.
One of the fun things about Torchwood is its attitude about sex, which is to say characters in Torchwood seem to have sex and enjoy it without the requisite emotional breakdown or plot collision required by other television shows. Well, except for Ianto. That robot girlfriend thing didn't end well for him. In the pilot episode, Torchwood member Owen surreptitiously borrows some alien technology, cleverly disguised as an Old Spice bottle, which makes one totally irresistible. Leaving a bar with a young woman upon whom he has unleashed this power, they are approached by her enraged boyfriend ready to pummel Owen into a pulp. When angry boyfriend gets close enough to Owen's Alien Old Spice however, he shoves his girlfriend aside and begins snogging Owen himself. Owen then cheerfully hails a cab for the three of them. In the end, absolutely nothing horrible happens to Owen for using Alien Old Spice to manipulate a threesome, and why should it? I'm sure the aliens have excellent condom technology as well.
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