Torchwood One faces three of the worst Mondays ever…

The Torchwood One series has rapidly become my favourite part of my favourite Big Finish line. It’s The West Wing with added murder and aliens, a clear-eyed look at good people trying to do good things and the daily armageddons they deal with. This set is, for 99% of its running time, the best the series has been, possibly ever. We’ll discuss the 1% too.

James Goss’ ‘Dinner for Yvonne’ (from a story by him and Joe Lidster) kicks the series off in familiar territory and does so with the sort of blood-slick farce that he excels at. There is something about Tracy-Ann Oberman’s luxuriant Yvonne, Timothy Bentinck’s cheerfully squalid Tommy and Gareth David-Lloyd as the world’s most competent school-leaver that is just instantly very, very funny in domestic situations. They’re ably supported here too, as Goss throws Yvonne into the terrifying arena of a supper club on the night something terrible is in the skies above the UK. The ‘Who’s on First?’ energy is immaculate, especially Tommy’s surprise gourmet bona fides. The supporting cast are great too especially Ian Abeysekera and Lesley Ewen as polar opposites on the social skills scale. Gerry is a monstrous ball of feral Matt Berry energy and swagger. Kiki is a sweet, kind and open woman who is a book Yvonne has read from cover to cover. No one is going to have the night they expect.

It’s a tight, funny script that tells two stories and also puts Yvonne under a very different light. There’s pathos here as she tries to do what the sort of people she defends for a living do. The pathos sharpens when you realise Ianto and Tommy are probably the closest she has to actual friends. It’s Abigail’s Party with added killer gas, and Oberman is typically great. Scott Handcock’s direction is pacy, the big cast all hit their marks and it flies along like a Sopwith Camel on a mission from God. Or Yvonne Hartman.

Then at the end of the story, Ianto gets a call. Humanity intrudes and everything we’ve seen before becomes even more sharply focused.

‘By Royal Appointment’ is even better. Isabella Pappas all but steals the show as Poppy Greenleaf, the lady in waiting notionally in charge of Torchwood who decides to take a hands-on approach and spends the day regretting it on a near cellular level. Yvonne and Tommy are rarely more fun than when they’ve got a mouse to bat between their paws and Oberman and Bentinck have a whale of a time here. The key to the story however is Pappas. Poppy gives as good as she gets and on a day which begins with a coffee and ends with an invasion, Poppy Greenleaf is the hero Torchwood needs but perhaps doesn’t deserve. The moral ambiguity of the organization is explored once again here as well as some lovely, chewy spycraft. The phrase ‘holographic tarpaulin’ sets up a brilliant final gambit that builds on top of the previous story as well as resolving this one. There, Yvonne Hartman was an individual. Here, she’s the embodiment of Torchwood, armed, caffeinated and staring down the end of the world with her duty in one fist and her phone in the other. If the first story is a great character study, this is both a great character study and a great action episode. Also a fantastic turn from Gareth David-Lloyd again as Ianto returns to work from a family bereavement. The final scene here is heartbreaking as Ianto becomes who we see in the show by dealing with his emotions the only way he can: with stationery. It’s a great scene, David-Lloyd playing a very young Ianto who is too furious and heartbroken to understand that Yvonne and Tommy genuinely care about him. Even if he’s also a useful asset.

‘Nerves’ is even better. On a routine delivery mission, and it’s implied, being eased back into things, Ianto accompanies Tommy out of the city. Ianto is grieving and can’t see it. Tommy is drinking again and can’t be bothered to hide it. Neither of them are okay. Neither of them are watching the road. Joe Lidster cuts between amiable truck driver Pam (Lu Corfield) and increasingly stressed rep Harvey (James G Nunn) and the Torchwood Boys in a manner that feels apocalyptic long before it is. We’ve seen Casualty. We know how this goes. We still aren’t ready.

There’s an extended sequence here where I honestly thought we were about to lose Tommy. After the crash, Ianto is terrified, Tommy is seriously injured and no help is coming. The jeopardy is utterly mundane, very real and terrifying. You want to stop listening. You can’t. As the situation evolves, Pam and Harvey become vital and Lidster peels the layers away to reveal the reasons everyone had for being on that road.

Bentinck and David-Lloyd are stunningly good here, raw and emotional without being showy. Tommy and Ianto are very similar men, even at this stage in their lives and seeing their bond evolve into something distinctly familial is as heartbreaking as it is sweet. But again, the supporting cast are who really register. Nunn’s Harvey gets the best line of the episode, a thunderous admission that is the most heartbreaking, open beat the show has ever done. Corfield’s sunny Pam gets pushed to the limits and rises to the occasion. They’re all walking wounded and not just from the crash and the ending here is a slow, precise, peeling back of their mortality that’s unbearably tense. You expect none of them to make it, even knowing what you know and that’s an incredible achievement.

But now we need to talk about the 1%. The fat jokes in this episode, extraordinarily good as it is, are so out of place and cruel it almost sinks the good work done everywhere else. Pam’s fat, and she knows she is and she’s okay with it. No one else is. At one point, after referring to her as ‘fat lass’ constantly, Tommy sends her to get snacks to raise people’s blood sugar because ‘she looks like she has a lot of snacks in her cabin’. She responds, ‘I want to argue but it looks like a branch of Woolworths in there’. She’s the one who gets tired, constantly, in the climactic scene. She’s the one who is defined not by who she is but what she looks like. She’s as nuanced and interesting as the others but because she’s fat she’s also painted as being weak, as being an outsider. In any show that would be outdated. In Torchwood it feels positively, pointedly cruel. Especially in a story that deals with grief, suicidal ideation, isolation and bereavement. Those topics are dealt with with real kindness and grace. The fat character just gets punched down on. Constantly. For no reason besides the fact she’s fat.

I don’t want to editorialize because it’s not my job. But my job is to review these stories honestly and this is not okay. It’s cruel, persistently so, and for no other reason I can see besides the desire to throw a few fat gags in. The fact it’s in there is bad enough. The fact it’s at the end of an astonishing piece of work doubly so. While the ending that follows is as impressive as what came before, it’s impossible not to view it through a lens tainted by cruelty. This series should know better. Its fans do.

Verdict: This is one of the best Big Finish releases in years until this moment. It’s clever, kind, wickedly funny and desperately sad. You should listen to it. But if you’ve ever been bullied, especially for your weight or your gender, then go careful around the ending of ‘Nerves’. I wish you didn’t have to. But here we are. 8/10

Alasdair Stuart

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