‘The problem seems to be an American with no sense of timing or fashion’: Costume and national identity in Torchwood

This article focuses upon the telefantasy series Torchwood, which has existed as both a sole BBC Wales production and twice as an international co-production with first the CBC (Series 1) and then the American cable broadcaster Starz (Series 4). The series, a spin-off of British telefantasy series par excellence, Doctor Who, includes highly stylized costume for some lead characters, especially the males, which both function as metonyms for the characters themselves (much like comic iconography) as well as complicating simple readings of national identity of both character and series. These complications include the fact that a programme that was paratextually positioned as being Welsh had an American-accented, pseudo-RAF-uniformed man from the future as its lead and metonym, as well as how the costuming (amongst other aesthetic elements) changed and the change in how they were interpreted when the series moved production to the United States. Drawn from my Ph.D. research and including empirical audience data, textual analysis and interviews with both costumers associated with the series, this article will both use the series as a case study for how national identity can be discursively constructed, reinforced and analysed via costume as well as looking at the specifics of how a globalized (and glocalized) genre series uses costume.