Saturday, January 06, 2007

End of Torchwood!

The trouble with Torchwood is that it's not really clear who it's aimed at. It contains swearing, blood and sex, yet still somehow feels like a children's programme. Thirteen-year-olds should love it; anyone else is likely to be more than a little confused. Which isn't to say Torchwood is bad. Just bewildering. And very, very silly.
Charlie Brooker, Oct 28, 2006 The Guardian

I said this all along - a series that was ideal for my three except it has a few adult add-ons. Quite quickly I realised I'd get little peace unless I did them a version and so every week for the last three months I've dutifully copied the MPEG2 transport stream file onto my laptop (captured straight from the BBC Freeview mux - see Media Portal in my previous entry) and cut it down (using Video ReDo - again see previous entry) into a version I'd be happy for my seven, eleven and thirteen-year olds to watch. In most cases it's been very easy - just the Father Jack language (¨arse¨, ¨feck¨, ¨girls¨!) - I know they hear it all the time at school and on the bus but the youngest does have a habit of picking up what he sees on the tele and I want him to stay a innocent just a bit longer!

Episode 6 - ¨Countryside¨ was the most brutal (check out the cut-list, right) involving cannibals and required a bit of work to make the story hang together and yet keep it out of nightmare territory! Still - I think as far as cutting a P as B goes it worked out well and we made our own set of DVDs of the whole series (with annimated title screens etc.) which has proved very popular with parents of school friends! If only I had access to the rushes I could do a proper CBBC version!

Now, I could cut some of the extracted Torchwood footage into the Sarah Jane Adventures to make a late-night BBC3 version of that show!

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