Ianto Jones is Torchwood – and has been ever since Cardiff was deserted. So it really is down to him when a distraught woman arrives claiming her parents have been taken by aliens…

Alfie Shaw’s debut script for Torchwood focuses firmly on Ianto, and for a lot of the time is a two-hander between David Gareth-Lloyd and Laura Aikman as Abigail, who cannot understand what has happened to her parents. She has no memory of what they looked like, and they’re not in photographs where you’d expect to see them, such as at her graduation ceremony. In a near deserted Cardiff, her only contact is her neighbour Mrs Evans – and she too has problems with her nearest and dearest. It’s a clever idea, and as listeners we’re with Ianto in not being able to work out how the disparate pieces join together – unless there’s something a lot bigger going on.

Gareth-Lloyd and Aickman work very well together, and there’s a nice callback to elements of Ianto’s character in the first series of Torchwood (and the reappearance of a Jurassic Park feature that I must admit I’d forgotten about). The explanation when it comes makes sense and the solution nicely plays with a conversation that many people will have experienced, but in a very different way.

Verdict: A clever mystery for Mr Jones. 8/10

Paul Simpson

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