'Wednesdays For Beginners' review [James Goss]

Jackie Tyler of 48 Bucknall House has been feeling lonely since her daughter flew off with a Time Lord, but now she has a stalker; tall, dark and American.

James Goss previously wrote Torchwood's 'Fall to Earth', 'Ghost Mission' and 'The Torchwood Archive'.

Spoiler Zone

The drama

Jack tells us that he used to hang around the Powell Estate watching Rose grow up. Here, we see him presumably waiting for the Doctor to bring Rose home.

Jackie is at her most sympathetic when we get hints of her loneliness with Rose in outer-space. Most of the time, though, she's being funny. The first fifteen minutes are simply Jackie talking to herself or being on the phone, and they aren't at all unentertaining, adding a bit of depth to the largely comic relief character. 

Jack only really appears after the fifteen minute mark, when we find that the Powell Estate is in a sort of reality bubble in which atoms are being converted into energy. Jack was similarly absent for a large part of 'The Year After I Died'. Will these be a recurring thing in this series? Jack is as great as ever, flirting with Jackie and being a technobabbling hero, leading Jackie to compare him to the Doctor. The two have an instant chemistry.

The aforementioned technobabble and the awfully convenient resolution allowing the Powell Estate to return to N-space (a mixture of the TARDIS and the vortex manipulator somehow fixed things; Jackie shrugs it off and so should we) but overall this is an enjoyable two-hander.

A good quotation

"Mrs Tyler, this is not investigating. Our link to your universe is diminishing with every second and you're staring at my chest? You are a woman after my own heart and I like that."

Plot holes and continuity

• Jack has been watching Bucknall House since Rose was very young and Jackie's only now noticing him?
• How did Jack know that the Doctor arriving in his TARDIS was the wrong one? How does he know that Tenth is the right one? What's not right about Ninth?

Cast

• John Barrowman as Jack Harkness
• Camille Coduri as Jackie Tyler