TORCHWOOD? MORE LIKE DEADWOOD

Lets step back a year. Russell T Davies announces that (not satisfied with resurrecting Doctor Who, giving it a beef injection and leading it onto the screens of over 8m regular Saturday night viewers in an age of multi-channel, multi medium viewing where the most successful programmes are happy to bring in half as many eyeballs), he is to produce a late-night, adult spin-off of Doctor Who. BBC press releases don't get better than that. And it was called Torchwood. An anagram of Doctor Who, for those eagle-eyed readers. Clever. Brilliant. Smart.

But that is where the party ended. For what has been created is so embarrassing to watch, with its hammy acting, lifeless extras, dire script and flaky direction, that its hard to accept that its got Russel T Genius's stamp on it.

The premise - a black ops "outside of the government, beyond the military" operation that investigates seemingly paranormal, but in fact extraterrestrial activity on earth. Nice. Mulder and Scully meets spooks. That's pretty much my perfect show. But not when the premise is ruined from the opening scene (they're black ops but the average bobby on the beat knows they exist and what they do), not when the script is so jarring in its attempt to make the most of its post-watershed slot (you can't just throw in two shits, a fuck and a spurt of blood and expect it to appeal to the 10pm BBC Three audience), and most importantly, not when not when your lead actor plays the hard-arsed tri-sexual (he'll "tri" anything) alien time agent role like Dick Van Dyke in a trenchcoat (but without the poppins cockney accent ... that would have been just plain silly).

And that, bizarrely, is where the woodrot first sets in. With leading man John Barrowman. I say bizarrely because I'm a big fan of the man. He's an accomplished all rounder - actor, presenter, entertainer, Canadian, the list goes on. I first remember seeing Barrowman as the number three on Saturday morning kids show Live and Kicking. Fresh-faced, fun, that thin endearing smile ... He was the slightly cheeky adult one next to the sweet and innocent Philip Schofield and Sarah Green (or have I got that mixed up with going live? Feel free to clarify). Potentially dangerous, slightly subversive, a glint in the eye. And he retains and displays all of those qualities for Torchwood ... but as if he's still on that Saturday morning television centre set, about to be gunked or congratulate Matt Goss and Carol Dekker on the fantastic mime they'd just performed (think poor lip-synching, not Marcel Marceaux). He and his crew are playing it for kids in a show made for adults that only the least discerning viewer would find compelling. And that's not what I want from my BBC. Especially not my BBC Three - the channel that BBC Two would have been if digital had never arrived.

Barrowman did Torchwood's mother-show proud as Captain Jack in the final five episodes of new Doctor Who's first series. He was one of my favourite incidental, accidental tourists, and I can't wait for his Doctor Who comeback next year. But as the lead of his own show, trying his damndest to carry a gap-tooth welsh newbie and her pals from the Dame Sylvia's freshers school for wanabee actors, Barrowboy struggles. He's a good looking but tasteless soft-boiled egg served up on a damp bed of bad script, poor special effects (The Mill have massively disappointed on this outing) and childish, poorly executed plotlines.

The major problem would appear to be the woefully poor budget. Did Russ T and his comrade in Dr Who arms Julie Gardner gamble it away during an ill-advised strip-scrabble evening? Or were the finances lower than Paris Hilton's pants during a poorly lit home movie filmed from a mini dv cam poking out of a millionaires sock draw? The latter, I believe.

In TV, money doesn't just translate into bad special effects, cheap cast and happy-go-lucky writers. It also means the script treatments get less attention, the producers are rushed, the director doesn't have the liberty of multiple takes, dramatic tension and character development loses out to clock-watching.

Which is odd, as Torchwood's marketing budget would appear to have been hugely disproportionate to the cash spent on the show itself.

Maybe if they'd spent more time developing darker, more adult scripts with a Captain Jack to match instead of spending time throwing cash on the side of buses to get people watching, people wouldn't have, er, stopped watching.

Viewing figures have more than halved since the first night double-bill. While the gob-smackingly awful episodes one and two delivered BBC Three’s most successful viewing figures ever, viewers have been switching off in their droves ever since. I am one of the 1.5 million who have ditched 'wood. Are you?