Spoilers

Returned to Ashenden, Andy Davidson refuses to give up – even if everyone else does.

At the end of episode 5 I did wonder how on earth James Goss was going to wrap all of this up in one short instalment – but as ever, all of the clues were there, both in the flashback episode 4 and, particularly, in what Norton Folgate was up to in episode 2. As Andy and Lizbeth know, Norton always has a plan – and if they’d trusted him (the one thing that Andy particularly was advised not to do) then… well, this would have been a one-hour (or maybe 90 minutes with the flashback) story. Norton’s penchant for apparently crying wolf has always been part of the character’s flawed charms but this time around, it nearly costs everything.

And Norton is doing what he’s doing for the best of reasons. Nothing to do with saving the world – that’s a nice by-product. No, it’s for love – the love of the one person he genuinely gives a damn about, and there’s some great work from Samuel Barnett in his later scenes with Joe Shire. This is the episode that Shire comes into his own for this six-parter, demonstrating a cruel streak in Gideon that you suspect is there buried deep and brought out by the eels, both towards Norton and Andy. Tom Price is similarly great, utterly refusing to accept the inevitable (and this is Torchwood, after all, where really bad things can happen), while Dervla Kirwan has some unexpected moments.

Verdict: Scott Handcock’s direction, Blair Mowat’s score and Peter Doggart’s sound design have elevated an already strong script and performances into a classic Torchwood story – one of my favourites from the range in some time. 9/10

Paul Simpson

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