Everyone’s a little worried about St Helen’s Hospital. In many ways it is a miracle of the modern NHS. It has plenty to offer its patients. The problem is that a lot of them keep dying of natural causes in the night. And no-one can find the bodies.
People are beginning to notice. Questions are being asked. And there are rumours – the strange whispering figures seen at the end of the corridors, the electrical buzzing, the screams.
Also, Rhys Williams has come to visit his mother. Brenda’s had her hip done and is looking forward to a bit of rest and regular crumble. Rhys and his mam are in for a night they’ll never forget.
TORCHWOOD: VISITING HOURS
It’s interesting to watch the evolution of Torchwood characters. When the series started, Gwen was the audience identification figure – an ordinary woman thrown into a world beyond anything she thought possible. But as the series progressed and Gwen became a fully-fledged Torchwood operative, characters like Rhys and Andy stepped into that role. Here, in David Llewellyn’s “Visiting Hours,” Kai Owen gets to take center stage in a story featuring none of the “lead” characters. It’s gutsy to lead off the third series of audios with a Rhys story, but Llewellyn’s script more than justifies the gamble. Rhys is visiting his mother Brenda (Nerys Hughes, reprising her role from TV) in the hospital as she awaits a hip replacement. Naturally, strange things start happening – in this case, time traveling organ harvesters appear in the hospital to take patients away under the cover of night. Much of the story involves Rhys and Brenda fleeing their pursuers through the rooms and corridors of the hospital, something that would probably be irritating if not for the amazing chemistry between Owen and Hughes. Brenda is the clichéd elderly mother to beat all clichéd elderly mothers, but the performance is so appealing it’s difficult to notice. It’s also interesting to see how Rhys behaves when he’s pushed to the limit – the decision whether to bash someone’s head in with a fire extinguisher isn’t the sort of test he faced on television. And even the bad guys have depth: Mr. Tate (Karl Theobald) and Mr. Nichols (Ryan Sampson) are doing this work to save their families, something that makes their eventual fate all the more uneasy. Scott Handcock directs along with sound design from Benji Clifford and a score from Blair Mowat, and the three combine to recreate the quiet claustrophobia of a hospital late at night. Overall, “Visiting Hours” is a success. It doesn’t push any boundaries, but it gives us a solid hour with an underappreciated character and doesn’t put a foot wrong.
Highly recommended.
8/10