The world is ending in rapture. So why is Norton so worried?

James Goss’ latest visit to the post-World War 2 era of Torchwood sees you coming. It starts deceptively slowly, and small scale, as Norton, Andy, Gideon and Lizbeth work a case involving rapture events where people disappear. Goss gets to write Torchwood as detectives here, with Andy under deep (and worried cover), Lizbeth and Gideon working different leads and Norton good-naturedly bullying his way around White Hall.

Then, all of a sudden, it stops working in the most interesting of ways. Torchwood Soho, we realize, are professional cynics at this point, people who’ve seen it all. They’ve never seen this before, and as the impossible happens, the team, and society, find themselves on very different sides of a problem bigger than they can imagine. This is where David O’Mahony comes in, directing the huge cast with the same sense of space and depth, regardless of how major the characters are. Naana Agyei-Ampadu, Ali Bastian and especially Jamie Baughan as Father Dinsdale excel as normal people caught up in the most abnormal of situations. We see the team through their eyes, see them as just like us. Fragile, flawed, human. Endangered.

That tension ramps and ramps and ramps across the story. We get answers, all the answers we could want and more and what you think is the finale is actually episode 4. The hour that follows catapults Ascension onto the same level as Children of Earth. Goss uses this unique team of characters and time period to express the deep-seated social rage that Torchwood at its best excels at embodying. There’s a moment here which echoes the stomach-churning line about league tables in Children of Earth. Another where we see Norton make the sort of difficult choices another, more well know senior Torchwood officer once did. Best of all is an extended sequence where I was genuinely convinced we were about to lose three quarters of the principal cast. The stakes here are intensely personal and absolutely vast, Goss arranging Torchwood Soho as a series of lenses to look deep into the character of the British and find out just what’s wrong with us and how little we want to do about it. The ending in particular is both hopeful and stunningly bleak, Norton embodying the rage so many people feel when faced with the sort of rule we’ve only just got out from under and, being Norton, extracting a little vengeance as well as some restitution.

This really is a six part story and it benefits from that space. Samuel Barnett, Tom Price, Joe Shire and Dervla Kirwan are exceptionally good and head a cast that’s uniformly excellent. O’Mahony’s direction is witty and subtle, as is Shane Byrne’s sound design and the world of the series feels different after this inventive, humane, horrifying story is done.

Verdict: Superb work all around, the best Torchwood Soho has ever been and one of the best the series has ever produced. 10/10

Alasdair Stuart

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