For people who have seen the previous series of Torchwood and people who haven’t watched it before the third series, it is considered the best television in recent years on the BBC and still great after eleven years. Torchwood: Children of Earth is only a five episode series with one narrative but each episode is packed full of great acting, a dark plot and stellar scenes, some can be heart-warming but most of them are mainly heart-breaking. 

All anyone needs to know is that Torchwood is a group of people who hunts down aliens who have a secret base under Cardiff Bay. The team at the moment is Eve Myles as Gwen Cooper, Gareth-David Lloyd as Ianto Jones and the leader, John Barrowman as the immortal Captain Jack Harkness who are all over coming the grief of losing two of their previous co-workers last series. Over the five episodes, which are set across five days, this is Torchwood’s biggest challenge so far because of Children of Earth, the team has not had to deal with a global threat before. 

Creepily, the series opens with every child on screen standing still with blank expressions and over the course of two days. Conveniently, every child stops when everyone in the world is looking: when they’re going to school, break time and in the evening. The Torchwood team and the British government discover that the aliens known as the 456 have been to Earth before where the British government sacrificed twelve children in exchange for a cure of the Indonesian flu which was destined to wipe out 25 million people in 1965. When Torchwood makes contact with a new worker at the Home Office, Lois Habiba, they provide her with contact lenses to spy on the government, particularly Home Office Permanent Secretary John Frobisher, who Lois is the Personal Assistant for. While she wears the contact lenses, Torchwood can see what she sees live and is recorded. The Prime Minister has given Frobisher authority over the 456 event which he soon realises that was a mistake. 

After the 456 arrive in a column of fire over Thames House, and appear in an isolation tank which was built for them, they demand 10% of the world’s population of children to be handed over to them, or else they will destroy the human race. Obviously, everyone decided a compromised but the 456 refused by making the children chant a number equal to 10% of their country’s child population. Although the governments of the world were disgusted, they had no choice was to comply in secret. The next task was the most difficult, choosing which children was to be delivered. But before that, Torchwood decides to intervene by making Lois announce them still with wearing the contact lenses, threatening to reveal the 456’s demands and the government’s agreement to the world. After Jack and Ianto storm into Thames House, the 456 release a virus killing everyone in the building and tragically fan favourite Ianto. Fans were so distraught with his death; a shrine was set up in Cardiff Bay to honour the fallen character. 

So, with Torchwood’s failure and Lois in prison for espionage, the governments of the world must make the dreaded decision. To show how corrupt the government is that they would do anything to protect their children. Someone at the table suggests alphabetically, then another person points out “Oh yes, thanks Mister Yates”. Yates then says he does not have kids and then was called out for not caring since he will not suffer any consequences. Another suggestion was to take one child per family, or every second born child which then turned into every person’s families around the table in Downing Street being exempt from the ‘lottery’. The conversation then switched towards successful and failing schools. The schools that are producing graduates that will work in hospitals, offices, factories and similar professions are exempt from the final decision since they decided the successful children are needed. But then the failing schools, those full of the less able, less socially useful are placed on the cards. “Those destined to spend a lifetime on benefits, occupying places on the dole queue and, frankly, the prisons”, is how the chosen children are described and if the government couldn’t identify the lowest achieving ten percent, it would resort to the school league tables. The Prime Minister, along with his cabinet and a member from the US military decide to cover the UK’s actions as inoculation shots given at schools. If children were not sent into schools, the military would be called into homes and take children. 

While discussing the aim of having the children, the 456 grimly reveal that they use the children’s bodies to produce a chemical that they use as recreational drug, which they call “the hit”. In order to keep up the pretence of random selection, the PM has ordered Frobisher’s children to be taken as well which breaks Frobisher. To spare them the fate, he kills his two daughters, then his wife and then himself. The heartbreak does not stop there. Jack discovers an audio signal to stop the 456 but a child is needed as the focal point, so the only child Jack has immediately to him is his own grandson. With his pleading mother screaming behind a locked door, watching everything unfold, Jack tearfully sacrifices his grandson, which causes the 456 to painfully leave the Earth, unknowingly if it is dead or not. 

Meanwhile, the corruption does not end there. The PM suggests that they cover up the tragedy and place the blame on the US, but Bridget Spears, Frobisher’s direct assistant and Lois’s superior, has been recording the conversation with Torchwood’s contact lenses which Lois supplied her, and ultimately ends the Prime Minister’s political career. After losing his boyfriend and grandson and trying to rid himself of the guilt, Jack decides to leave the Earth to start a new life while Gwen stays behind with her husband since she is pregnant. Torchwood is officially no more. 

Torchwood: Children of Earth is available on BBC I-Player.