The auteur of Torchwood

All this time and I have barely given a mention to the one person who will probably be the most responsible for the Torchwood vision. Sure, RTD is listed as the creator, executive producer and head writer for the new show. However you must admit the guy has his hands full these days with Doctor Who and it could just be that we see his name plastered all over Torchwood for its marquee value.

Source:http://www.bbc.co.uk

James Hawes will be the lead director and producer on Torchwood and for all we know is running the whole show. He directed the two-parter that marked the debut of Captain Jack on WHO last season and is doing a few more episodes for Season 28. His 2006 work calendar looks like it will be all Torchwood. So far no other directors have been announced for the program.

Hawes has directed a large variety of TV dramas and documentaries over the past decade. One of the most interesting things on his resume is Lawrence of Arabia: The Battle for the Arab World. You can see him interviewed about making this documentary look at T.E. Lawrence at the film's PBS site. Before it was trendy, he dealt with terrorists and weapons of mass destruction in the middle east in his thriller A Line in the Sand.

For those of you who enjoy supernatural crime dramas, he directed the first few episodes of the BBC Scotland's Sea of Souls. Shows like that certainly aren't my cup of tea but its good to see that the BBC has included a skeptic's response to the show's ridiculous subject matter on its official site. Unlike American networks who tend to promote their fictional shows by sending out press releases claiming their imaginative tales are based on reality.

Well the reality is that we are now just a few days away from the Hawes-directed Christmas Invasion, which will obviously give Woodvians loads more to talk about. Whether anybody wants to listen, that's another story.