Tv time travel

I appear to have a thing for time travel. Is this common?

While as a child, I, like well probably pretty much everyone, loved Back To The Future and it's time travelling ways, It's only recently that I've begun to think that if you involve time travel in a TV show, it can't fail but win my heart.

For starters let's take Crime Traveller. This shortlived BBC drama series was the first post-Eastenders outing for Michael French before the doors of Holby called. Also starring Red Dwarf's Chloe Annett, it's eight episodes told the tale of Detective Jeff Slade (French), police scientist Holly (Annett) and her late father's Heath Robinson style time machine. The pair flirt a lot, but mainly travel back in time to help solve crimes. Although I've recently purchased the idea on DVD, I haven't watched it yet, so can't quite remember anything specific other than I loved the show. Unfortunatly it wasn't very popular, and no one I ever mention it to remembers it!

More recently of course, we have the ace new Doctor Who. Admittedly I've only seen Doctor 9 onwards episodes and fell asleep during the only old story I was shown (Robots of Death). But the other great time-travelling success of last year was Life On Mars. Although I didn't watch it live, I caught it a few months ago and loved it's mix of crime and comedy. If you've not seen it, John Simms plays DI Sam Tyler, a police detective in Manchester, who crashes his car, falls into a coma and wakes up in the 1973. Why, is unknown, but we'll no doubt find out. As he struggles to find a way back into his real life, Sam has to get used to the spectacularly different police world of the seventies very quickly with bullying boss DCI Gene Phillips and the only person he's told about his predicament, WPC Annie Cartwright. I'm not really sure what else I've seen John Simm in, but I think he's brilliant in this show. Alongside a great cast is an awesome set with a sense of the smoky, seedy sixties Manchester excellently created.

Today brings news that series 2 of the show will be it's last. While I don't want to spoil series 1 for anyone who hasn't seen it, for me it ended a little unsatisfactory. Although I'll be disappointed there won't be more episodes, perhaps it is best to resolve the mystery in a decent time span rather than dragging it out for years.

Finally, of course, we have new Doctor Who spinoff Torchwood launching on BBC Three on October 22. A bus with the giant Robin Hood advert replaced with Torchwood drove past our house on Friday and we all squealed with excitement. I've no idea what it's going to be like or whether I can get over the memory of John Barrowman snogging lots of girls in ...Maria a few weeks ago, but I enjoyed the character of Captain Jack so am looking forward to it. Will it be the Angel to Doctor Who's Buffy and end up way better than the parent show itself? At time of writing the Torchwood site requires a password to proceed but I don't know what it is. Any ideas?