“The next six hours are going to be filled by boredom and monotony,” growled CIA agent Rex Matheson as he took his Torchwood captives on the long flight back to Washington.

And he was right – well, apart from the betrayal, the poisoning, the fighting and the attempt to create an antidote from cyanide and fluid syphoned from the plane’s undercarriage.

Yes, apart from that it was all fairly routine, really. (We’ve all flown budget airlines.)

The second episode of Miracle Day continued in the gloriously over the top manner of the opener. It’s like one of those old black and white Republic serials, but with a bigger budget and slightly more gay jokes.

It’s darker, too, and the main characters are complicated. They’re shades of grey rather than heroes and villains. The odious Oswald Danes is shaping up to be a first-rate nasty. Here’s a child murderer who blubs and begs for forgiveness on television, but his piety takes a bit of a knock when Oprah’s people come a callin’ after his tears make him someone to pity rather than fear. It’ll be fun to see where he heads over the coming weeks.

It’s much the same for Rex Matheson; one minute he’s smug and cocky, the next he realises he’s being played by some unknown puppetmaster. Someone somewhere has connected Torchwood to the miracle of immortality, and that someone wants Torchwood out of the way. Why? Who knows, but my money says the fat bloke from Jurassic Park’s got something to do with it.

We also learned a bit more about the immortality that has been bewstowed upon humanity. We still age, we still get sick, we can be injured, but we don’t die. But if that’s the case how come Matheson – who was run through by steel tubes just a day or two ago – appears to be completely healed? Seriously, you’d at least want a couple of days off, wouldn’t you?

This new series has been criticised for going all American, but I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing. Captain Jack’s always been American (no Englishman has skin and hair that good), so what’s the problem? The Americans have brought in a much bigger budget and given Russell T Davies more chance to stretch his imagination. Okay, so the main characters have gone to the US, it’s still no big deal.

Just as long as it doesn’t end with Captain Jack towing the earth back into place…