Torchwood hit our television screens earlier this week, with the new Doctor Who spin-off garnered BBC3’s biggest ever audience, with 2.5 million people tuning in on Sunday night. It sees the mysterious organisation ‘Torchwood’ seeking to track down alien technology to defend humanity against whatever nasties slip through the Rift in time and space that runs right through Cardiff.

I quite enjoyed the first episode, Everything Changes. Like the first episode of the revived Doctor Who, we see a young female who encounters strange-goings on and an enigmatic figure, who she tracks down before entering his amazing science-fiction home, and through a slightly perfunctory B-plot gets invited to join the adventures. But instead of Rose Tyler, the Doctor, his TARDIS and an Auton invasion, we get Gwen Cooper, Captain Jack Harness, the Torchwood Hub and a serial killer. Oh, and swearing and snogging thrown in to the mix as well.

Episode 2, Day One, was about a sex-addicted alien gas, and was every bit as awful as you’d expect from such a hackneyed premise. There were glimmerings of interest in some of the scenes where Gwen settled in to the Torchwood team, but overall was cringingly embarrassing to watch. It was the kind of lurid, half-baked story you’d expect from an overexcited teenager who thinks that swearwords are somehow terribly sophisticated.

The trouble with Torchwood so far is that the inclusion of sex, blood and profanity, far from being adult, has so far been incredibly childish. Rather than being there to serve a mature and intelligent examination of more sophisticated themes, the so-called “adult” elements in Torchwood have thus far largely been mere titillation and attention-seeking.

While one of the things I like about Torchwood is that it shares something of Doctor Who’s sense of humour, that rather knowing sense of fun feels somewhere out of place in a show that apparently aspires to probe the darker side of life and of humanity.

The other problem with Torchwood is that it’s all rather derivative. Even without the Doctor Who connection, it “borrows” heavily from what’s gone before in the genre from Angel to Men in Black and Captain Scarlet. The teaser for next week’s episode looks a bit more promising, so hopefully the stories will get more interesting and hopefully the series will become genuinely adult in sophistication, rather than just aiming for an 18 rating.

Some fellow bloggers have also shared their thought on Torchwood over at Claire’s blog and at Coffee and PC.