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Adrift

19TH MARCH 2008

(50-MINUTE EPISODE)

After the huge story arc about Owen’s death and the show about Gwen’s wedding, here Chris Chibnall takes us back to basics. Gwen Cooper originally came into the Torch-wood team as an outsider, and no matter how tightly knit the group seems to be now, her compassion and her empathy still set her apart from her colleagues. And, far more often

than not, Gwen’s endearing qualities serve the team well. Adrift is a frightening example

of when they don’t.

“What if the rift doesn’t just leave stuff behind. What if it takes?”

Half the plot of this story is summarised rather succinctly by the quote above. Having been roped into joining the search for Jonah Bevan, a missing teenage boy, by her former partner (in more ways than one, it seems) PC Andy Davidson (Tom Price), Gwen uncovers a glut

of disappearances in Cardiff that each coincide with what Tosh calls a ‘negative rift spike’. Before long Gwen manages to work out that the rift is picking up people and transporting them to distant corners of time and space.

“We can help them. We don’t have to be this hard. It’s not a badge of honour.”

But here comes the rub. The others will not help her try to find these missing people. In fact, Jack goes out of his way to block her investigation. But of course, Gwen won’t let it go. And the more Jack tries to hold her back, the more obsessed she becomes.

Of course, Gwen soon discovers why Jack was trying to block her investigations. Ianto leads her to a secret medical facility on Flat Holm that Jack set up to care for the missing people that the rift took and later returned. Amongst the patients she finds Jonah, forty years older than when he was taken and badly burned. Despite Jack’s dogged insistence that she not inform Jonah’s mother, Nikki Bevan, Gwen brings her to the island to be reunited with her lost son.

 “Promise me you won’t do this to anyone else.”

For me, the real heart of this episode is Nikki. Ruth Jones, familiar to millions as Myfanwy

in Little Britain, Magz in Steve Coogan’s Saxondale, and of course as Vanessa in her self-penned sitcom Gavin & Stacey, is outstanding here in a straight role; I could not believe just how convincing she was. I know most comic actors are competent all-round performers, but even so, when you are so used to seeing someone in a particular type of role it is inevitably surprising when you see them excel in a completely different niche. The scene towards the end in Jonah’s ‘cell’, for example, is absolutely heartbreaking. To see Nikki go from denial

to reluctant acceptance in just a few minutes is painful enough to watch in itself, but to see her then witness her son enter what the Doctors call his ‘downswing’ – twenty hours of solid screaming – is just tragic. I guess that’s what happens when you’re transported through time and space by a rift, dropped on a burning planet and then forced to look into the heart of a Dark Star.

Eve Myles gives one of her best performances to date here. Her scenes with Nikki are gut- wrenching enough, particularly towards the end of the episode, but the ‘domestic’ scenes are even worse.

“You save the world. What for? So people can live their lives. Real life. And if you’re starting to think

that your shit is more important than real life, then we’re not going to last very long either.”

In the first series Gwen treated Rhys appallingly, but since their engagement and marriage she has clearly been trying hard to do right by him. The tragedy is that, no matter how hard she tries, Torchwood is always there like a great rift between them. When she tries to let

him into the clique, his life is put in danger. And, in stories like this one, where she tries to push him away and bottles her work-relating feelings up, she ends up exploding in such a vicious way that if it were anyone other than the long suffering Rhys on the receiving end,

they would chuck her in a heartbeat.

Suffice it to say then that Adrift is certainly one of Torchwood’s more stirring episodes. The episode is not without its lighter side though - I enjoyed Andy’s jealous and rather cruel jibes about Rhys’ weight; jibes made all the funnier by Rhys’ ruthless aggression demonstrated when trying to prise a plate of toast away from Gwen. I could have done without such a vivid insight into Jack and Ianto’s naked pastimes though, mind.

In the end, the only real criticism I could have of this episode is the writer’s bland choice of title. Whilst Adrift is certainly an accurate and an abrupt billing, I think that something like 20 Hours of Screaming would have better captured the viewer’s attention - the screaming is certainly the one image that lingered in my mind long after this episode had finished.

Copyright © E.G. Wolverson 2008

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