The Bedtime Hour

CBeebies has suddenly established a toe-hold in our house.

Tom – just a month a way from his first birthday – has developed an attention span which now makes it worthwhile to allow him a little bit of kid’s telly each day. Hence 6pm to 7pm is now officially The Bedtime Hour.

At this time we all gather round the telly and whilst simultaneously feeding Tom his tea we watch Chris Jarvis and Pui Fan Lee talk joyously about big pink milkshakes, throbbing moon rockets and furry teddy bears without a single trace of irony or even the smallest of smirks. Kid’s telly is a very serious business indeed.

Of course it is a well known fact that grown-ups have children solely to be able to watch kid’s telly without feeling embarrassed about it. Kid’s telly is feel-good safe telly and it puts everyone in a good mood regardless of their age. If I was being charitable I’d say that this effect was achieved simply by the fact that the stories and jolly cartoons carry us back to an age of unsullied innocence where worries about rising mortgages, soaring food prices and the police finding that body under the patio were things totally inconceivable to our young unformed minds... but the reality is that we enjoy watching kid’s telly just so we can take the P out of the hapless presenters as they caper about pretending to ride invisible mopeds or have fairy cake tea parties with an assortment of plastic charity shop toys. Oh how their mates must rip the hell out of them in the pub later...

Of course the fact these people are on about 35K a year means that they have the last laugh but as they are endlessly chuckling and laughing anyway who’s ever going to tell the difference?

One of the best things about kid’s telly though is the occasional celeb they draft in to read the stories or narrate the animations. I’m currently marvelling at the theatrical gravitas that Derek Jacobi manages to bring to his voice-over work on In The Night Garden... phrases like “Here comes the nankynonk” and “Oh no, Iggle-piggle has spilt his nonky-juice” (I kid you not) are delivered with such earnest aplomb they could have been written by Shakespeare. Or “Shacker-nacker” as he would undoubtedly be called in the show.

Best of all though is that this week Keeley Hawes is reading the bedtime story.

Ah. Keeley. Keeley. Keeley.

I feel a shiver of excitement run up my... er... back every time she turns her liquid eyes to the camera and croons “And now it’s time to go to bed...”

My jim-jams positively jump with delight.

Jacking Off

The new series of Torchwood lit the blue touch-paper last night and flared up for another run on the BBC.

Straight away we were presented with a rather well mannered, well spoken, red blowfish driving a snazzy sports car around the windy streets of Cardiff. He didn’t exceed the speed limit, used the brake in plenty of time and seemed intent on following the Highway Code. He was even urbane enough to let an old lady cross the road in front of him. All this before he shot some poor innocent home owner in the gut and taunted the Torchwood crew members for their namby-pamby prevarication. The Torchwood team admittedly looked at a loss as to how to react without their AWOL leader, Captain Jack Sparrow, sorry, Captain Jack Harkness around to tell them what to do... But all was not lost. Suddenly Jack reappeared and shot the blowfish in the head in a scene reminiscent of The Fifth Element. “So, does anybody else want to negotiate?”

Welcome to series 2 of Torchwood.

A rather uncomplicated plot then unfolded involving Captain John, one of Jack’s old flames, played by whatsisface who played Spike from Buffy looking for some radio-active canisters inexplicably secreted around various Cardiff locations... a plot that was rather silly and shallow but was nonetheless rather entertaining. It served no other purpose than to re-introduce or, perhaps, try to reinvent the Torchwood regulars... attempts are being made I believe to render them “more likeable”. It’s early days yet to say if that is working or not but the major players are all interestingly interconnected in a bubbling web of sexual tension, lust, sarcasm and camaraderie that is certainly full of potential and could bode well for future episodes.

Basically Torchwood is Doctor Who with lashings of sex and attitude. The only members of the team who seem to buck this trend are Ianto Jones and Toshiko Sato... the former is far too wet and limp to be a believable love interest for Captain Jack H and Toshiko is well, Velma from Scooby-Doo.

However, I like Toshiko and am hoping the writers will develop her character further in this second outing of the show and give it a bit more of an edge. The potential is certainly there given her brief lesbian liaison in Series 1...

And then there’s Gwen. It’s taken me a long time to make my mind up about Gwen. It’s the annoying voice and the gap-tooth. Is she a fox or isn’t she? She’s got va-va-voom in spades but there’s something of the fishwife about her too. Or should I say “tidy wife”? The will-they-won’t-they tension between her and Jack is more annoying than an entertaining tease. I wish they’d just get on with it and move on. It’s hardly of the same calibre as Mulder and Scully. It doesn’t warrant this long, contrived abstemious delay. Get ‘em out, whop ‘em about and then show us some more aliens.

That would be a show.

But much as I enjoy this tour of sexed up sci-fi, shouldn’t there be more to Torchwood than just adult content? Shouldn’t there be more to it than all this inter-species spooning and inter-office bed-hopping? Doesn’t there need to be?

Good sci-fi needs to press a few intellectual buttons among the hi-tech barrage of flashy effects and glistening cleavage. Otherwise it runs the risk of being all gimmick and no content. And that is bad.

Torchwood has potential. It has legs. But it needs to think about the direction it’s walking towards. Sex and violence – shallow hooks as they are – are admittedly nearly always behind a great story. But there needs to be depth too. There needs to be philosophy and a message. There needs to be content.

After all, isn’t great sex supposed to originate in the mind?

Just Because It Amused Me...