Tony’s spending the
year dead for tax reasons.
Torchwood spent the vast
majority of its time dealing with aliens or things coughed up by the rift – it
was part of the programme’s remit that that’s what Torchwood was about: protecting the world from alien
or trans-temporal threats.
Which meant that when it
brought the evil down to a simple, pure, everyday human level, it scared the
living daylights out of us. Think Suzie. Think Countrycide. Think the
government’s responses in both Children of Earth and Miracle Day. Torchwood is
actually at its scariest when we are the bad guys.
Over the years, Big Finish
Productions has taken Torchwood forward to the far future, back almost to its Victorian
beginnings, and dropped in on a number of different Torchwood teams to the one
we’re familiar with from the TV version. It’s also been able to round up almost
all the original TV Torchwood team at some point or other, to expand their arcs
and give them additional stories. Even Indira Varma as Suzie Costello – the
team member who had to die in Episode 1 to make way for team regular Gwen
Cooper – has been back to Torchwood at Big Finish.
Almost all the team has.
Corpse Day is a bit of a
special release then, because it finally closes the loop on ‘original Torchwood
members coming back,’ as the multi-talented and ultra-busy Burn Gorman comes,
at least in spirit, back to Cardiff Bay as Dr Owen Harper. The headline to
which is that it sounds like he’s never been away. Gorman’s proved his mettle
many times on stage and screen since being killed off in Series 2 of Torchwood,
but listening to Corpse Day, you’re right back in his era of the show,
remembering how much fun the moany, seemingly world-weary doctor was to have
around.
The premise is pretty
straightforward – it’s ‘Urban Deliverance,’ or ‘City Centre Countrycide,’ an
ordinary day, if such a thing ever exists in Torchwood, goes spectacularly,
weirdly wrong and dark and ghastly during the course of routine enquiries,
leading to the majority of the story being spent in another world entirely –
the world behind someone else’s front door.
There are all sorts of
themes tangled together there; urban isolation, casual racism, how you never
know what goes on behind the smiles of your neighbours etc. But Gorman’s Owen
has a deeper, more existential journey to go on in this story too – revealing
and to some extent resolving the seeming contradiction at the heart of his
character in Series 2, the ‘world-weariness’ that sits alongside a fierce
determination to live, to survive, because for Owen, with the unique
perspective of a dead man who won’t die, that’s all there is.
He’s helped on this
journey by being paired for the first time with Tom Price’s PC Andy Davidson,
dealing with ‘Corpse Day,’ a typically grandiose title for a bit of grim filing
work, a very Torchwood idea from James Goss, and the two together give the
first quarter of the story some solid light relief, Andy’s generally
open-minded joie de vivre first clashing, and then blending well with Owen’s
stark appreciations of life, people and much of the universe. There’s a great
gag early on which we won’t spoil for you, but which will sing to anyone who’s
ever been on a diet, and these two work well as a kind of Odd Couple of
attitudes to life in general and Torchwood in particular. Once they’ve
disturbed Nigel Betts’ Glynn in the middle of putting up a spice rack though,
their lives are destined to change significantly, at least in the short term,
and they enter a world of grief, loneliness, violence, brainwashing and oh, oh,
oh the grimness.
TV Torchwood only rarely
went as dark as this, so be prepared for a white-knuckle ride into domestic
horror as Corpse Day threatens to earn its name, revealing layer after layer of
appalling detail of what human beings will do, what they’ll condition
themselves to, in order to survive. The existential journey for Owen though
shines through the writing and Gorman plays it not as a road to Damascus (that
would be far too jolly) but as a final-analysis scorched earth understanding of
why, for instance, he’s right for Torchwood, and why perhaps PC Andy isn’t.
Along the way, we also come to realise explicitly a few things we’ve only ever
really suspected about Owen’ character before, so the story delivers value for
your characterisation-money. Meanwhile, PC Andy, on the same journey of
self-discovery with Owen, more or less travels it the other way, as questions
of life at any cost or life in circumstances of utter grimness are put. You
could claim this story puts the sides of the pro-life/pro-choice debate (though
it would be moderately ironic to harp on that angle, given that the characters
who take sides in it are both male), but it’s never overtly foregrounded or
preachy, it’s too busy focusing on the sweaty, claustrophobic drama of a
messed-up situation into which our Torchwood team simply stumble by virtue of
their own curiosity. It’s horror movie meets real life long-term kidnap story,
a simple world spun out to madness behind a perfectly ordinary front door.
Burn Gorman shines
throughout Corpse Day, not just because of the novelty of hearing him as Owen
again, but because he’s able to invest the character’s journey with enough
light, shade and doubt to keep him interesting all the way through. Price,
while inhabiting the seemingly more straightforward character of PC Andy, also
gives us plenty to listen to, digging beneath the surface of everyone’s
favourite ‘ordinary bloke’ to uncover both conscience and judgment. Betts as
Glynn is hugely believable, dancing on the line of ‘nice old bloke’ and
‘demagogue of his own world’ – a line genuinely walked by many older men who
‘rule’ their households. And Hannah Maddox, Alex Tregear and Rhian Blundell, as
the three ‘daughters’ of Betts’ domestic King Lear, deserve special mentions,
each frequently and rightly stealing the show with the power of their
performances, and their ability, when needed, to turn on a dime.
Corpse Day is not by any
means an easy listen – there’s kidnap, torture, a degree of humiliation, strong
inferences of cannibalism and an uncomfortable background of sexual slavery over
the course of this one-hour story. But as a re-introduction for Owen Harper
during his ‘Dead Man Walking’ phase, when he’s learning how important life can
be, it’s a triumph. You will re-listen to this one, even when you know all its
twists and turns and gruesome revelations. You’ll re-listen for the quality of
the acting from practically every voice in the story, for the philosophical
pondering and the dark wondering about what you’d do that it will force on you,
and for the sticky dark energy of the whole production. You will re-listen to
Corpse Day because it’s both dark and funny in a way you can only really get
with Dr Owen Harper.
And now he’s back.
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