A woman discovers her husband is missing, presumed dead, just before Christmas. And sets about ensuring that her children – his children – have the best festive season ever. It’s a situation that could play out all kinds of ways. Broadly speaking, approaching it in fiction, there are two camps. In the first, you’d emphasise the alleged reality of the situation, and concentrate on the grim emotional aftermath of the loss of a father. In the second, you instead sidestep the issue and keep it in the background by putting something else front and centre.

The first route is what a lot of people believe to be the responsible one. It lends itself to the sort of stories that newspaper reviewers get excited about, perhaps because commenting on other peoples’ stories is an inherently frivolous way of making a living and that by imbuing it with apparent moral seriousness it can seem to be a job worthy of the name. The second route takes us into the realm of the imagination, which serious types find deeply suspect when it’s employed to its full. We should be reading worthy novels by emotionally constipated puritans and nod to ourselves how right they are about the short and painful lives we lead. Yes, keep our heads bowed, and don’t look up. Up to the skies, where you might just see reindeer flying, and a TARDIS whizzing past.

The scenario with the putative widow and the fabulous Christmas is this year’s Dr Who festive special. And what a treat it was. Bringing together elements of Narnia and eco-fable, it once again brought home that the power of love wins over everything. Even, in this case, the possibility of death. The lost airman returned, but his flight home was won and won truly through the faith and love of his wife and children, who lived their lives to the full in his absence and discovered that he was at the other end of their adventure on another planet. Had they done what most grown-ups recommend you do, and get all serious and tearful and wear black, they’d have been so involved in that indulgence they wouldn’t have allowed themselves to enjoy the possibilities that imagination presents.

Fiction allows us to explore the possible through presenting the impossible. Sure, you’re unlikely to ever explore another planet in the course of your grieving…but approaching your future as an astronaut is going to make life rather different than wearing sackcloth and ashes. The Doctor is special because he’s not bound by conventions of time and place that happen to have emerged through historical accident and got taken seriously by people who prefer things that way because doing what the others do saves them having to exercise free will.

After my brother died, my mother went to a grief counsellor who could have stepped straight out of an Anne Rice book. All in black apart from a single red rose affixed to her, she insisted that my mother talk to her about the details of Nigel’s death. She didn’t know some of the particulars then, and doesn’t now. Therapeutic orthodoxy has it that you have to confront the truth. At any rate, that version of the truth that’s sanctioned by bleak conformity. Mum had the sense to back away from the vampire, and choose to live her own way. Not that it was an easy choice, but it was the right one for her. Twenty years on, people say she’s looking and acting years younger than her age…she used her imagination to find a way forward that was preferable to the one that was offered by someone who wanted her to stay in the darkness.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

You may be aware that this site is folding pretty soon; with the next entry in fact. Fear not, it will live on. New site writebyyourside gives you the chance to buy a downloadable anthology of the best of the pieces here, along with previously unavailable material selected to support writers. And there’ll continue to be articles and reviews as here, with an expanded remit including interviews and a focus on prose. See you there!

The idea of Hugh Laurie playing a wiseass American doctor held zero appeal when I first heard of House. And when some smart people whose opinions I have time for started to sing the show’s praises…I continued to ignore what I was hearing, this time because of a petulant refusal to check out what some clued-up friends were recommending. Besides, I’d half-watched some episodes when they’d popped up on tv, and hadn’t been pulled into what was happening.

You’ll have realised that this stubborn unwillingness to enjoy something because others like it is exactly the kind of wilful against-the-grain behaviour that makes Gregory House such an interesting character. We’ve all got a bit of a refusenik about us somewhere in our character, and House has finessed that awkwardness into a way of life. It helps that he’s a brilliant thinker, teasing out the truth from situations that others are baffled by. And when those others are themselves a bunch of smart medics, who we as viewers are inclined to think are brighter than we, at least in the context of their professional skills, then it’s clear that this House guy is quite something.

That alone is quite an achievement. Often when writers seek to demonstrate the brilliance of their protagonists, they do so by surrounding them with numpty-heads. Not House. The character’s thought processes are front and centre of a thoroughly engaging drama that’s focused firmly on the many layers of an idiosyncratic healer who is by no means healthy himself. Quite the opposite; House is a wounded healer, and completes the shaman archetype by having undergone the experience of death and rebirth.

Wow. Big stuff for a primetime tv show. And yes, it really is big stuff. I’m only as far as the third season at this point, and I’ve rarely if ever seen such a nuanced and three dimensional portrait of a thoroughly human character. So, he’s an irascible genius. And we know sooner or later he’s going to reveal softer elements…don’t we? Only, they’re an awful long time coming, and bound brilliantly with the structure of the series. House isn’t going to display his soft centre, if he has such a thing, without a struggle. And one episode captures that beautifully when he goes on a road trip with a patient he’s woken from a coma, and whose heart he wants to transplant into his dying son. That’s a powerful enough concept already: the patient knows he will slip back into a sleep from which he will never awake. And he’s a powerful man, not used to being under the thumb of others, so he regains his sense of power by forcing House to answer intimate questions about his past…the only circumstance in which House would do such a thing, and with real dramatic urgency attached because of the son’s life being at stake. Masterful stuff.

House episodes typically follow the same structure, in which a patient with a mysterious condition is first misdiagnosed before House and his team determine the correct prognosis. It works just fine, when the stories are as well crafted as they are. And makes the episodes that don’t fit that template all the more compelling. It’s a fascinating accomplishment, and one only possible in series drama: 20 regularly structured episodes and then a couple that go off-piste. Which they certainly do – those particular stories are breathtaking in the ways they deftly deal with matters of identity, ethics, and truth.

Personally I find those more idiosyncratic episodes more powerful than Christopher Nolan’s use of mentally stimulating material in his work – I get the sense with him first that he’s more interested in concepts than character, and second that he is referencing the brilliance of others rather than demonstrating brilliance himself. To reach for and surpass what Nolan is praised for in the form of a popular tv drama is a huge accomplishment, and brings to mind Michael Moorcock’s assessment of the work of science fiction novelist Philip K Dick, who had many of the same concerns as the House team: “Dick quietly produced serious fiction in a popular form and there can be no greater praise”.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

You may be aware that this site is folding pretty soon. Fear not, it will live on. New site writebyyourside gives you the chance to buy a downloadable anthology of the best of the pieces here, along with previously unavailable material selected to support writers. And there’ll continue to be articles and reviews as here, with an expanded remit including interviews and a focus on prose. See you there!

I went to my first party of the festive season last night. I have reached an age where there’s an equal number of children and adults at such gatherings. And that was interesting in all kinds of ways, not least when the matter of taking young children to see films came up. One couple were sensitive about their young son’s reaction to depictions of evil and moments of tragedy in stories. Not because they wanted to shield him from them. Their concern was about how to introduce him to the emotions that stories can provoke in a way that he could cope with. They wanted him to be affected, but not overwhelmed.

A lovely memory came out of the conversation, as the subject of a panto came up. Don’t know which panto it was, but bad magic was involved to do wrong to one of the good guys. At which point one of the kids had hysterics, and ran out of the auditorium…only to come across a fully-costumed Good Witch who – rapidly realising what had happened – stepped in with a promise to put matters right. Cue satisfied child, who was now happy to return with accompanying parent to the production.

All of this was discussed as children did their best to watch Merlin in a room where adults supped mulled wine and socialised. Noisily, at least as far as the kids were concerned. Didn’t they know important television was happening, and we were talking over it? No wonder kids think adults are hypocrites: grown-ups insist on smaller people being quiet when the news or soaps are on, but parents are happy to talk over key moments in their childrens’ favourite shows.

Meeting in the middle wasn’t going to happen. The kids were rightly absorbed in Merlin, which seemed to be a well put together show with high production values and a reasonable script. The main issue for some of the adults was a female character, who according to one of the party guests looked like a contemporary urban youngster wearing a Wonderbra. The kids were having none of it: she was a smuggler, run afoul of the powers that be, and caught up in a fight where Arthur Pendragon and Merlin failed to save her life.

And I remember my own childhood, and my demand that whatever we were doing on a Saturday, we got home in time for the latest episode of Dr Who. Much of the time we made it, and I don’t suppose I thanked my parents for their decency in honouring that request. But sure as hell I’d castigate them if we missed any of the episode.

Stories matter. They’re how we explain the world to ourselves, and ourselves to the world. Is it any wonder kids get upset when adults talk over their favourite programmes? Or that parents feel likewise when children interrupt theirs? And it’s this that I’m conscious of as I set about developing stories for what, if I’m lucky, will be a major part of what I do with my life in the next decade. A story that wouldn’t exist without all the other stories that I’ve read, seen, and been told one way or another. A story that has been brought to life with an artistic collaborator whose character designs have brought to life characters who in some cases were not quite known to me before I saw them in drawn form.

Well, we shall see. I was lucky enough earlier in the year to secure seed money from an investor to develop that story into a form that makes sense in business ways. And he was attracted by that work to request a costed strategy for bringing the project to market. Which is what I and my collaborator Andy Tudor are waiting for news about as this year comes to a close. Wish us luck, and you’ll be among the first to hear the good news if and when it comes. And that might be soon, or could be weeks away. It doesn’t matter, in truth. What does matter is the journey, and the knowledge that we as children would be proud that the adults we’ve become are engaged in it on their behalf.

When I was a kid, I sometimes got confused when we went to visit my one grandmother because she’d tell stories that went on and on. I couldn’t distinguish between when she was talking about the latest goings-on among her friends and neighbours, and what she was relating about her favourite tv soaps. The whole became an ongoing stream of low-grade incidents populated by characters who didn’t stand out for me, all the stuff of narrative but none of the pull that it presumably had for her. She was relating stories, sure enough, but had no real sense of how to engage an audience, or at least this younger listener: I had no way of distinguishing between what was happening at the (Crossroads) motel and how her sister Dot was doing.

If she’d been a writer, you’d have said my gran had problems clearly establishing flashbacks and dream sequences from the main narrative she was relating. That’s something where there’s a clear distinction in, say, Billy Liar. Although young Billy is himself prone to fantasy, we the audience have no problem understanding when he’s fantasising and when life is more prosaic. Get this stuff muddled and the audience gets muddled too.

Somewhere along the line, Lost lost me. After a bravura opening, and some strong episodes in the first series, the piling on of weirdness on weirdness got too much. Having an air of mystery is one thing – the show’s writers being unable to explain the inexplicable is quite another. As timeslips and monsters and conspiracies accreted, my attention wavered. Lose the internal logic of a show to that extent, and it’s hard to care about the outcome. Same applies to hotly touted comic series Green Wake – when you’ve got not only an ambiguous setting but mysterious characters within it, it’s hard to form an emotional relationship with the story. When anything can happen at any moment, does anything matter?

I’ve mentioned my soft spot for amiable stoners Harold and Kumar before, liking these gently subversive and humane guys and enjoying the capers they get caught up in. They’re at it again with a new festive themed story, A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas, in the course of which they run afoul of a vicious Russian mob boss, turn into Claymation through the effect of hallucinogens, perform in a musical being staged at a cathedral, and shoot Santa in the face. Oh, and there’s a baby that develops a taste for Class A substances, a walk-on appearance by Jesus Christ, and a robot that makes waffles.

For all that craziness, there’s a solid core to the story, which however bizarre the circumstances never strays from two men reigniting their friendship under the threat of dire consequences if a Christmas tree isn’t found to substitute for one that the duo accidentally set in flames early on. That resolute focus on emotions and character held my attention in this, the third outing for the hapless duo. It helps that there’s some great humour and real visual inventiveness – but to get over my general distaste for drug stories the team putting Harold and Kumar together are clearly doing something right.

The ability to engage an audience with the plight of characters they care about is fundamental to your ability to tell a good story. Get that right, and anything else is possible. I’ve never experienced vast wealth, but found it easy to empathise with Howard Hughes in Scorsese’s The Aviator (contrast with the poor little rich girl in Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere). Never been pursued by supernatural forces, but have been at the edge of my seat in stories as varied as Blair Witch Project and The Omen. As humans, we’re equipped with the ability to empathise with one another. And can even identify with animal (Bambi, Lassie) and otherwise non-human protagonists (Wall-E, RoboCop) with ease. So please, when you’re writing a story, make it easy for us to do that. Get it right, and everything else will be fine.

There’s something you hear about sitcoms that you don’t tend to encounter so much regarding other genres. The claim is that such and such a setting is tired, or at any rate that it’s been done so well by a particular show that there’s no point anyone else having a go. Hence, who needs a family comedy after…whatever your preferred one is, from Malcom In The Middle to The Simpsons. Why hope for lightning to strike again regarding workplace sitcoms after Reginald Perrin/Scrubs/The Office? And what are you doing even thinking of attempting a student comedy after The Young Ones? For some reason the same thinking doesn’t seem to apply to cop shows or medical drama. Believe me, I often wish it did.

Well, good as The Young Ones was, that was twenty years ago. And just as writers Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong did a brilliant twist on the formula of antagonistic friends living in the same place with Peep Show, so too have they demonstrated that the student comedy is alive and well in the form of Fresh Meat. They created the series, though other writers were involved with its first eight episodes. I’m sure Bain and Armstrong kept a close eye on every story, and would be interested to find out how much the directors had in shaping the material. Certainly on the basis of the ones I noticed were directed by Annie Griffin, there’s a sense of continuity with her other work – well-observed and beautifully performed comedies such as The Book Group, the curious and overlooked New Town, and the film Festival.

The final episode ran a couple of hours back, and demonstrated just how well thought-through Fresh Meat is, expertly setting up character arcs for all the members of the ensemble cast and bringing them home with skill and compassion for the finale. What works so well is that each of the characters is simultaneously repellent and appealing – human, in other words – and each of them has aspects that we can recognise and identify with. It’s a mature approach, and one I’d like to see more of.

There are six primary characters, each expertly drawn and with facets, though like all of us they have aspects they exhibit more. First mention has to go to resident toff, none-too-bright public school boy JP, who for all his Tory Boy cringeworthiness turns out to be as vulnerable as anyone else beneath his bluster, exploited by his supposed pals but connecting with his housemates through his dad’s death. The situation brings out the best qualities in some of the gang, and none more so than in geeky Howard, who takes humiliation on himself to protect someone who’s truly vulnerable. That sounds worryingly noble, so if I tell you it involves a video of Olympic standard masturbation you’ll breathe a sigh and realise this is comedy we’re dealing with.

The biggest mystery is Vod, who came across hard (if naive) at the start of the series and still hasn’t shown a softer side by the end. She’s a tough nut, and the dynamic between her and Oregon is interesting. The latter is in reality a very posh young lady, whose biggest trauma is the death of her horse, and who revels in having an affair with her tutor. Oregon would love to be as street as Vod, and seeks to support her when Vod is threatened with expulsion from university.

That leaves Josie and Kingsley, perhaps the most normal members of the crew. They’re recognisable, and more interesting for being less extreme than their housemates. Kingsley was a virgin when he became a student, Josie – fancying herself as a sophisticated seductress – offered to relieve him of his burden. Only, a flamboyant girl from Kingsley’s drama course (he transferred from geology, and heads back to that safe haven) beats her to it, and the two have been to-ing and fro-ing in awkward style ever since.

As you’ll gather, I’m hooked, and can’t wait for a second series. Kingsley was seen leaving the house after Josie jumped into bed with PJ after the party following his dad’s funeral. An oversight on her part, and bad timing on his. Let’s hope they patch things up, while allowing room for further exquisitely funny moments in the future.

It’s taken me quite a while to catch up with two of America’s biggest heroes. Years after everyone else was praising the series, I’m still only into the second season of House. Masterful stuff, Hugh Laurie’s portrayal of the wiseass doctor making him one of tv’s most compelling leading men. I’ve been on board with Jack Reacher a while longer. Lee Child has been chronicling the adventures of the maverick ex-military cop for some years now, and I’m currently thrilling to the latest — and 16th — book in the series, The Affair.

Greg House is a partially crippled doctor with a genius for diagnosing difficult conditions, his focus on uncovering the truth and challenging lies responsible equally for his professional brilliance and his personal and interpersonal difficulties. Jack Reacher is a wall of muscle with a surprisingly cultured worldview and a resolute commitment to justice — not in the abstract but in seeing it through, whatever the cost to himself.

For all their differences, the two men are as one in being maverick loners. No great surprise there — it’s an archetype that goes back to the oldest stories. What stands out for me is that both men win through because of their remorseless belief in — and application of — logic. Not something you’d think would make for contemporary heroes, but both Reacher and House achieve their extraordinary results, saving lives regardless of what it means for them personally, through the laser application of impressive mental capabilities.

Now, there’s no shortage of smart heroes. But typically we’re told that someone is smart, and get to see its impact. What we don’t normally experience is the thought processes of the intellectually adept protagonist. And that’s exactly what we get with the doctor and the vigilante. Each is characterised by precise mental rigour that we as audience can track when they’re doing what makes them special.

Logic on its own is not always captivating. If it was, Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell would feature as comic book heroes. But logic allied to principle is inspirational. It enables us to see how that principle is attained in life, rather than merely being held up as something to cherish. For House, the notion that people lie is ingrained. It informs the foundation of his questioning, guides him through the layers of lies that people tell each other and, more toxic still, themselves. Reveal the truth, and healing can take place. But House himself is the wounded healer, a true shaman — a key episode late in Season One reveals that he has died and been reborn — and as such walks (hobbles) outside the bounds of society, which needs his brilliance, but cannot bear his x-ray insight.

Reacher’s compass is different. He is guided by morality. To do what is just. And in the course of righting wrongs the former military cop employs a world class mind to see him through difficulties. One of the great pleasures of the books is to be in Reacher’s head as he calculates how to take out a group of enemies. He is frequently outnumbered, never outclassed. The decisions he makes are outlined with clarity, uncontaminated by emotion. He knows exactly how to relieve you of a weapon, to break your arm, to kill you without breaking sweat, and will do whichever expends the least energy to achieve the most rational result in pursuit of his objective.

Neither Reacher nor House are men you want to be around for long. Sure, they’ll put matters right for you. But being around men whose cause is just, like paladins of old, is not comfortable. It shows up your own weaknesses, and that’s not easy to live with. Which is one of the reasons that heroes like this never settle. Reacher is forever on the move, in search of the next adventure. House is physically static, but his mental agility unsettles those around him. And always, unable to switch it off even if they wanted to, minds that notice and compare and assess and conclude, while the rest of us stumble semi-conscious through a world that we don’t understand, and fear in the fuzz of our incomprehension.

Oh, BBC3, you are so transparent. Faced with creating a drama series designed to attract a youth audience, how do you go about it? Well, in the absence of anything that smacks of genuine originality, let’s do a drama that’s not too far away from yoof hit Misfits, which itself was a product of crossing teen-hit Skins with X-Men. Only, instead of borrowing from the world of superheroes, let’s bend in the direction of urban horror, itself a genre on the rise.

Which is how we end up with The Fades. And it’s actually a pretty decent show, once you get past the way the wiring shows. It’s there in the premise, and it’s there in the writing, with one of the lead characters — a young black wannabe horrror filmmaker — namechecking his influences, which include Alan Moore, more beloved of ‘hip’ BBC commissioners than the young characters at the heart of this Frankensteinian creation.

You could argue that by referring to Moore, the films of Wes Craven, and other signifiers, writer Jack Thorne is effectively doing a ’shout-out’ in the manner of rappers. You get me? And actually, Thorne for the most part does a reasonable job at creating a contemporary urban horror tale. Horror used to be a business for the upper classes, whose mansions had corridors suitable for headless horsemen to canter down. Here, predictably and effectively enough, we’ve got derelict buildings and tunnels, and a cast who one way and another seem be connected with the school that our leads go to.

There’s nothing wrong with The Fades. It just smacks of being commissioned to fit a very specific vision about spooky teenagers, zombies, and modern urban Britain as cobbled together by someone who’s read Hellblazer, watched The Ring, and played Silent Hill. Nothing wrong with any of that — and those examples — but the influences are a lot more apparent than any truly personal vision.

The Fades is very competently executed, but the nearest it came to presenting a surprise was the image of a nun with a gun. Now there’s something you don’t see every day. Hopefully the forthcoming episodes will reveal that there’s something more idiosyncratic going on here than overly art-directed urban noir with allusions but little in the way of substance.

For all that, I can imagine that The Fades will have gone down well with at least some of the inhabitants of the student house in Fresh Meat, written by the team who did such an excellent job on Peep Show, Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong. Based on the first episode, they’ve come up with something that’s just as excruciating to watch, in all the same deliciously awkward ways as their other show.

You could accuse the writers of using stereotypes to make their job easier, but that just means we’ll go on to be impressed as we get to know the characters better. Besides, if there’s a generalisation that you can make reasonably safely about first year students it’s that they’re trying painfully to fit in, and are often inclined to adopt some kind of stereotype in the mistaken belief it will make life easier if people can sum them up in a soundbite.

In some respects, there was more horror in Fresh Meat than there was in The Fades. When the house incumbent shows the newbies round, and points out one place as being particularly good for crouching in fear, there’s no sense that the character is being ironic. This is someone who really does have a special place to crouch in fear. And there’s something scarier about that in a comedy than the revelation in a horror drama that zombies dwell in dark places.

Oh, Torchwood. You are such a tease. For a while there, when the ten-parter kicked off, it looked like we were in safe hands. That the promise of the preceding five-parter would be realised on an even larger scale. An American joint venture, with American money and well respected American writers like Jane Espenson…ooh, you whet my appetite, and serve up the world’s biggest curate’s egg.

So, which parts excelled? For a start, you can’t fault Russell T. Davies and co for lacking ambition. Suddenly redefining a fundamental of human existence by cancelling death…that’s big stuff. And the writers explored a variety of facets of that situation very well. Having an international stage for the adventure to play out on was good too, with China and Argentina — or facsimiles thereof — involved to give an epic feel, and drawing your attention away from that curious mix of Wales and the USA where the majority of events happened.

The new American characters were a plucky and well-played bunch too, and served the useful function of helping American viewers new to the show to feel at home. Which considering it often came across like a blend of 24 and X Files wouldn’t have been difficult. Besides, having a dose of Americana running through things works well for Torchwood anyway — the notion that everything happened in Cardiff was harder to swallow than some of the weirdness the team investigated.

Sadly, we now come on to the aspects of the show that didn’t work. Like, primarily, what the hell happened for death to take a holiday. There was much handwaving — and, to be fair, you’d expect that — about morphic resonance. And maybe it should have stopped there, because every time there was an attempt to add detail, things just got messier. Floor tiles with ancient runes that could rewire basic settings for what it is to be human in ways that seemed massively convenient for the writers but otherwise baffled. A cleft running through the Earth that seemed to be the nearest Davies could come to writing God into the script? Sure. But to faff about in the final episode with Captain Jack and his CIA buddy needing to be at opposite ends at the same time for the plot to resolve…it all came across as convenient babble.

And that’s a shame, because there were flashes of brilliance throughout the story. The sequence where Captain Jack is murdered, again and again, by the Italian Catholic inhabits of early 20th century New York. The sheer bravado of a story which sees governments worldwide creating ovens to burn those who won’t fit in with the bright new shiny future. All the more unfortunate that tired old conspiracies were brought in, taking the form of three sinister families who — unfortunately — seem set to be betes noires to Captain Jack in future stories. In which, by the looks of it, he will be accompanied by an equally immortal former CIA agent.

That whole end piece, with Captain Jack facing what seemed to be real death, was powerful television. A pity then, that he not only had his immortality restored by story’s end, but shared it with his new friend from the CIA. Which, practically speaking, gives the show’s makers wiggle room to create Jack-free adventures in the future. And I have a horrible idea I’ll be watching them, at least in a cursory fashion, to see if the show regains the power that made the five part ‘Children of Earth’ such a powerful piece of television. Sadly, I suspect the reality of Torchwood is that it’s a piece of genre tv no better than most of the other examples out there, proponents of which could doubtless all make a case for brilliance which is lost on the casual viewer.

Oh, Torchwood. I remember how excited I was by the concept of a Dr Who spin-off designed for a more adult audience. And I remember even more how disappointed I was by what resulted. Only, something happened, and the last season — Children of Earth, which was on every night for a week — was a first class piece of event television. Sure, it gained something from its scheduling, but that’s part of the skill of putting a show together. And now it’s being followed up by a ten parter produced in conjunction with American partners, and I’m lapping it up just like I did last time round.

The American input isn’t just financial, though that aspect alone means the series is working on a grander scale than it ever has before. Our heroes are wanted by the CIA, thought to be involved in some miraculous happening that has rendered the human race immortal. It’s a big big situation, and I’m impressed by the thought that the writers have put into the scenario. People are surviving whatever’s coming their way, and there are some interesting consequences — not least in hospitals, where the emphasis in A&E is now on patching up people who can be sorted out quickly, to buy time that can be spent on those who are seriously injured but who are going to stay alive no matter how appalling their condition gets.

There’s moral meat to chew over, and none less palatable than the paedophile who was sentenced to be executed and, having survived his death sentence, has made a genuine apology for his evil. It’s a sign of our times that the greater evil still is represented by a PR woman. But hey, this is Torchwood, so there’s still plenty of room for biffing, flirting, and innuendo. Done badly, it’s the sort of thing I can get sniffy about, but there’s real relish about the way Captain Jack and Gwen Cooper go about their business.

It’s tricky pulling this kind of thing off. The thing is to remind your audience what they like about their characters, but not to overdo it. So, as ever, we get a hint of Captain Jack’s past. This time it’s a reference to a boyfriend he had in the 18th century. On a recent Torchwood radio play the revelation was that he is an admiral. It’s a shtick basically, and the fans can’t get enough of that sort of stuff with the characters they love. Someone somewhere is assembling a chronological list of the Captain’s feats, and I’m willing to bet their list is more detailed than the one in the Torchwood show bible.

There’s a touch of 24 to the proceedings this time round. Frantic movement, often for no certain reason, as if the kinetic quality of the camerawork ensures that the audience is captivated. And, fools that we are, it works. First, we’re at an airport. Then we’re at CIA headquarters. Then, aboard the plane. Ooh, some mysterious communications between people at the CIA. A fight aboard the aircraft! And then an airport again — the same one we left from, really, only we’re to believe the Atlantic has been crossed. Sure, I’ll fall for that if you keep tossing me action, info, and nods to Torchwood tropes. Gwen being feisty and showing pride in her Welsh heritage? That’ll do nicely.

It’s all done consummately, so that the appearance is one of ease. In practice, the achievement of getting the show to look and flow like it does takes a great degree of effort. But it has the trick that Spooks has of slipping down easily, and resembles the spy show too in its request for the audience to suspend disbelief, all the better to entertain us. A lot of people look down at popular entertainment that can achieve what Torchwood does. But never mind them — there’s another eight episodes to come, and I want to find out what happens next.

Well, that was interesting. I spent yesterday at Leeds University at an event about childrens’ tv drama. It felt like a campus comedy, academics meeting people active in the world they were studying. But, to be fair, the intent was to make the day helpful for those of us eager to write scripts for younger audiences. And to some extent it succeeded. What it couldn’t do was change the realities of the situation…

After an effusive talk by an academic who has been studying the methods BBC Scotland use to come up with programming for kids — much talk of the effort they put into being creative and empathising with children — there was a dose of reality in the form of the input of a senior CBBC exec. At which point things started to seem alarmingly similar to an event, perhaps also in Leeds, when the BBC’s continuing drama boss John Yorke held court about the five-act structure that he cherishes so much.

See, I have no problem with people using five acts to construct their drama. It’s a perfectly valid way of doing things. What I do have a problem with is someone who doesn’t actually write telling me how I need to go about creating scripts for the channel that he commissions for. Back in the day, creators like Dennis Potter, Ken Campbell, and Alan Plater created inventive popular drama for the BBC and did so without having execs hovering over their shoulder to see if they were doing it ‘properly’.

Unfortunately that’s exactly what happens these days. And it’s just as true with CBBC. While castigating American tv for creating formulaic shows whose producers do PowerPoint displays with graphic diamonds depicting the way the stories hold together, the CBBC exec was happy to show us a PowerPoint display with some far more inventive circles outlining how he liked his shows.

The sticking point for me was the insistence that writers send in scripts with a child protagonist, since 6-12 year olds can empathise with their peers and blah blah blah. Hmm. So much for the long tradition of children enjoying stories about adults, which arguably form part of the way they learn from role models. So much too for the long tradition of shows like Lone Ranger and Flash Gordon which kids have enjoyed for generations and feature grown-ups doing their heroic thing. And never mind superhero comics, beloved of young readers and featuring older characters getting into scrapes they surmount through prowess and right action.

What’s really dumb here is that the BBC’s biggest show, Doctor Who, is beloved of children worldwide. And he doesn’t have a kid sidekick in the TARDIS for young ‘uns to identify with what’s happening more easily. No need for one. And if the argument is that Dr Who is different because it’s produced by BBC Wales and not CBBC, then so much for a distinction that seems arbitrary and profoundly unhelpful.

Sure, there’s some good drama for children being produced under the current regime. There absolutely is room for shows with child protagonists like Tracy Beaker. Not denying that for a moment. But it seems ridiculous to assess the scripts offered to CBBC primarily according to whether the protagonist is 12 or less. No chance of CBBC having its own Indiana Jones then, or Luke Skywalker. And female friends suggest there’s a real lack of inspirational adult female characters for girls in their own experience, and that of their daughters. Girls look up to teenagers and pop stars, but other than Captain Caveman’s sidekicks the Teen Angels one friend couldn’t think of female characters she was into when she was young.

The way our minds work, it’s easy to identify with characters of any age and culture. So why the emphasis on protagonists the same age as the kids watching them? Children don’t go to football matches expecting to see their peers, or pop concerts to witness kids they could be in class with. Imposing that standard on tv drama for children is a real limitation, for audiences and creators alike.