Torchwood: Art Decadence

Art Decadence is the first episode of the tenth Torchwood Big Finish season.

Art Decadence has completely new and one-off characters and starring Simon Kane as AC Forster, Wilf Scolding as Reginald Dellafield and Timothy Blore as Peter Janks.

Released in July 2024, written by Ash Darby and directed by Scott Handcock.

This is set in London in the 1920s and it presents Sir Reginald Dellafield, an aristocrat and his butler AC Forster and they worked for Torchwood.

The title Art Decadence is a pun with it a combination of the Art Deco artistic style of the 1920s with the decadent, high-society lifestyle of the Roaring Twenties in London where as already stated the story is set.

Also in this episode is the Mara, the snake-like entity from the Doctor Who stories Kinda & Snakedance.

Within Torchwood itself, Jack mentioned the Mara in Small Worlds.

The presence of the Mara in Art Decadence was immediately made known to the listener when the Mara in its snake state was depicted with the Torchwood logo on the cover.

In Art Decadence it starts with Reggie and Forster concluding their latest case for Torchwood and the Mara eventually comes into this episode when Reggie went into The Serpentine Club (hardly a subtlety to the listener) and what happened when he came out of it.

Art Decadence makes for an intriguing episode in having the Mara encountering 1920s Torchwood although I can't say the characters here are ones I like or want to revisit but quite surprising how this episode ended.

Interesting interviews afterwards.

This included how the relationship between Reggie and Forster was like that of Jeeeves and Wooster.

I got all of Jeeves and Wooster sometime prior to listening to Art Decadence but have yet to start it so I am not able at this juncture to appreciate that comparison.

Kane said that being a Doctor Who fan himself had been familiar with the Mara from Kinda & Snakedance prior to doing Art Decadence.