Written by James Moran and directed by Scott Handcock.

Torchwood monthly range release 29.

Spoiler-free verdict: A burst of concentrated fanservice which never quite manages to unite its disparate elements into a deeper meaning, but is far, far too much fun to care.

Recommended pre-listening: None.

***

Where to begin with Torchwood fandom? Well, perhaps where this story did in its promotion, with a single copy left for whomever might claim it at a shrine devoted to Ianto Jones on Mermaid Quay in Cardiff. The popularity of Ianto and his relationship with Jack Harkness is a powerful core of Torchwood‘s reception, and continues to dominate fandom conversation to this day, particularly in terms of shipping and fanfic.

What that means is, when it comes to an easy sell of a Torchwood audio, official Jack/Ianto fake-married comedy is utter gold, the easiest success story since some bright little guy decided to tell the story of how the two shacked up in the first place. Serenity is a perfectly-engineered tactical strike in getting the approval of anyone who considers themselves a Torchwood fan.

As a Torchwood fan who eats this stuff up, but also a bit of a miserable git of a critic, that puts me in an interesting position. Serenity is genuinely, thoroughly delightful. The first 30 minutes or so are some of the most fun I’ve ever had with Big Finish, and that’s alongside competition as stiff as Jackie Tyler, singing killer Muppets, or the Grel (if you don’t know that last one, you haven’t lived… or laughed). The pleasures come quick and hit the mark beautifully, with a wonderful wave of innuendo and mundane passive-aggression perfectly capturing the horny hell of suburban repression. There’s a few things to take away from this, most importantly that Gareth David-Lloyd as Ianto is utterly incredible at playing this material, his seething rants about the “Best Kept Lawn” competition and “spit-roasts” adding up to, for my money, possibly his best performance ever. He attacks this tremendously witty script with gusto, with incredibly rewarding readings to every line.

Similarly rewarding is the pathos in plonking Jack and Ianto down in a domestic situation. The script wisely keeps this from being perfect fluff; fanservice without in-character frission somewhere along the line can feel a bit empty. Instead, there’s always a sense of this being an awkward fit for the characters, with Jack dumping Ianto in this life 24/7 while skipping to and from the Hub being a particularly delightful source of tension. But that sense of tension makes the amount of joy they get from this life all the more rewarding; small moments like them washing a car together, with Ianto eagerly ordering Jack to take off his shirt, combine with the tension to create a properly lived-in sense of domestic bliss. Their arguments also provide a source of external relationship commentary from neighbor Vanessa (Ellie Darvill), whose monologue about losing her husband and the value of loving each other in every moment perfectly hits the balance between the angst of Torchwood fans knowing Ianto’s fate and the joy of them seeing the moments they’re happy together first. In short, this is a sharply done relationship study that knows exactly which buttons to press to get the crowd going wild.

But the fanservice also ticks a different box in the return of a monster from the Torchwood TV series. As with Broken, Serenity shows Big Finish saving their big Jack/Ianto monthly slot for the return of a writer from the TV series, in this case James Moran, author of, most notably, Children of Earth Day Three, but most relevant to this audio, of series 2 episode Sleeper. This is, it has to be said, functioning on an entirely different register of fandom consumption; certainly, my experiences with Torchwood fandom has rarely produced people interested in discussing monsters of the week as the draw. Most conversation about Sleeper I’ve seen have revolved around Ianto’s sass and the “let’s all have sex” line. And in my view, it strains the pleasures of the audio somewhat.

That is not to say the Sleepers aren’t a good fit. They are, for the themes of this story, a fantastic fit. But the tone of this story entirely changes when they arrive, emphasized by Blair Mowat’s excellent score, which shifts from the glib suburban new compositions of the front half to bringing back the thrilling motif composed for Sleeper on TV in the back. Much of the first half of the story sets up a world and characters that ultimately matter little to the final thrust of the story, and the comedy quickly dies away into action-adventure. Structurally, a lot of this mirrors the TV episode, which went from an intimate personal drama to a budget-breaking action movie midway through. But whereas that episode higned itself around one woman’s quest to hold onto her human identity, this just isn’t interested in the question; Bob, Kelly, Vanessa, all the neighbors are not valued much by this story once the invasion switch is flipped, and their personas are never heard from again. While the deneument does make a nice parallel between the Sleepers and Jack and Ianto as people who can sit in this suburban ideal but never quite stay a part of it, it never quite makes deeper connections I’d long for between this suburban world and the invasion lurking underneath.

Most notably, the climax features the Sleeper formerly known as Bob (Joe Shire) lecturing Jack and Ianto about how the violent tendencies of humanity will doom it, which is itself a strong, weighty idea. And this story does provide evidence of that destructive evil in the suburban world it creates. For me, one of the most expertly-written and overall memorable moments is the thinly-veiled homophobia in Bob’s reaction to Jack and Ianto winning the lawn award, which is just the right amount of pleasant external packing on underlying evil to be so, so human. But the thematic connections never quite materialize, which feels like a missed opportunity; for all the teases of Bob’s crushing on Jack and potential swinging, the story’s handling of destructive sexuality never quite erupts into anything, and franky, I feel cheated out of more swinger comedy, because that was gold. Contrasting the Sleepers with Jack and Ianto is as far as the script overtly goes toward thematic resolution. The big ideas are juggled, and they are good, but they never quite get there the way I’d like them to.

But then, maybe that’s just because Jack and Ianto are just too big to do anything else with, and maybe this story is just clever enough to know it. The biggest dramatic moment doesn’t come from the Sleepers themselves, but from Ianto shooting Jack to prove he is him. And similarly, the heart of this story doesn’t come from the neighborhood that Jack and Ianto let get blown to smithereens, residents included, for dramatic effect, but rather the moments we get to spend with them trying to make a life work there, just for a little while.

Perhaps Serenity doesn’t entirely get where it’s going on the big monster plot. But it knows what matters most to Torchwood fans, and goes for the jugular. And they, like me, will love it.

8/10