16 years ago, PC Andy Davidson and his colleague DI Priya Sharma opened a case relating to the death of Martin Binns, a troubled Welshman found dead in his bath.

The first person of interest they interviewed in March 2010 was Martin’s colleague Daniel Swanson, and on the police recording of their interview what can be heard is a man yet to emotionally process the loss of someone he know, and is becoming increasingly distressed due to the tapping. Andy says that nothing can be tapping on a third-floor window, and nobody else can hear it. He’s right. Wait, is that a dripping tap? Oh no, I can hear it through my headphones. Oh no. Oh no.

Cue titles.

The opening scene of The Flawless Man, the 97th release in Big Finish’s main range for Torchwood, sets the tone perfectly and makes it clear this is going to be the audio equivalent of a horror film. And the tropes of the genre do actually transfer very well to a visual-free medium. Even the jump scares.

After the titles, the focus is primarily on Andy and Priya, collating evidence on who Martin was, who would have a motivation for murder if his death was not accidental or suicide, listening back to their interview tape and watching Martin’s VHS tapes of the horror film he made at film school in the 1990s. Those seem to link to the “He is coming” messaged written all over the walls of his flat.

Daniel has a valid alibi, so is ruled out of suspected murder (at least of Martin), and it is clear something bigger is at play. But after all evidence is collected, and Andy is still searching the flat, Priya asks if he’s now looking for vibes to move the case forward on. That’s not how the police does things, but the unspecified ‘vibes’ are, of course, Andy looking for the kind of things that the Torchwood Three team would investigate.

And once they split their attentions on the crime scene, a tapping can be heard….

Scene cuts are used effectively to ramp up the tension then bring the characters back into normality, albeit a bit shaken, and the story switches between the crime scene, Andy and Priya revisiting the tapes and recording while in the office, and then disrupting each other when one of them is too immersed in the recordings. It’s hard to tell at times if they’re actually in the flat or rewatching evidence due to the cuts, but that reflects how immersed the pair are in the evidence.

Later on, another character is brought into play, Sara Davies, who was approached by Martin when making his student film and during his mentally troubled times following that. Their film was about a bunch of students who made a scrap scarecrow, pretended it was a monster, then thought the monster into reality — and it began killing them off, one by one. A tulpa.

And seemingly, after they made the film, that is what has happened in the real world but over a longer timespan. And Daniel was one of Martin’s friends who helped make the film…

There’s some pretty graphic moments to visualise later on, but this is Torchwood and is also paying homage not only to the found footage horror genre but also the iconic 1973 British folk horror film, The Wicker Man. A dead woman whose throat is stuffed with mud and reeds? Horrible, but it fits the story perfectly.

The way horror movies, particularly of the found footage/student film sub-genres, conclude their plots is usually everyone dying graphically, one survivor who has to witness the graphic deaths so is traumatised forever, or a conceptually loose ‘banishing’ of the monster that has been summoned.

Thankfully, this story keeps the intense tone and feeling of horror without swapping its story for scaling up the death count. In fact, it becomes a multi-faceted analysis of the flawless man and each broken man it has ruined the life of, and Andy is not one of those broken men. Well done PC Andy for staying sane while solving crimes committed by non-human entities.

The star performance in this story is Matthew Woodyatt as Daniel, as he portrays someone who is being broken more and more by the psychological and literal horror taking place. He brings proper emotion, particularly nervousness, to the role.

2026’s first Torchwood release also begins with horrors on the third floor. In this instance, it’s an ordinary morning at London-based business Matthews and Small until they hear everyone upstairs die.

Soho’s sneakiest Torchwood operative Norton Folgate arrives to tell them the story title: Everyone’s Dead on Floor 3.

For Norton fans, this is a worthwhile purchase with another great performance by Samuel Barnett that at the end exposes how his camp, friendly persona hides a manipulative man who will go the distance for the good of the Empire but also will protect himself at all costs.

The staff at Matthews and Small consists of the boss Robert Matthews, played by Davros actor Julian Bleach; typist and office manager Angela Carr; Robert’s timid nephew Timothy Small; and the womanising William Ledbury. Over the course of an hour, they have to confront their own prejudices against each other, and find out what caused everyone on floor three to be killed by a suspected time bomb.

Angela is the cleverest of the bunch, meaning she strikes off Norton well, while Robert initially cosies up to him once he hears that Norton works for a higher power but then turns against him after realising nothing can easily be hidden from a Torchwood operative. Timothy is a very odd character, seemingly owning up to acts they didn’t commit, and seems to be hallucinating whenever he goes to collect the post. Turns out he was properly traumatised by World War II, but is used to seeing dead bodies.

But with Norton’s suspicion that any one of them could have been responsible for the deaths of everyone above, the story becomes akin to a game of Cluedo. It doesn’t feel like there’s much truly at stake, given the time bomb has already gone off.

One way the plot moves forward is once the name of the business on floor three is revealed, which ties this story far more closely to Torchwood and therefore puts more of the focus on Norton and whether his presence about more than just playing murder detective and office flirt. And the flirty dialogue truly is great.

Bleach has to play a wide range of emotions and different types of vulnerability in the story’s third act, which shows his brilliance as an actor, while it’s Angela who remains the character that meets Norton at his own level rather than be caught out by him. Having a gay man and a woman be the assertive leads in a story set in a London office in 1954 makes the other characters look even more feeble as each effectively bows out of the narrative.

Norton does know far more than he’s letting one, which sets up the last scenes, and throughout there are nuances in the script as the character dynamics and trust levels change. Will Norton successfully make the staff turn on each other to find the murderer? Will they all turn on him? Or is there another way to conclude this case?

It would be spoilers to reveal that, but the scale of threat does increase again late on, the time bomb remains important in multiple ways, and since Big Finish is soon to end all of its Torchwood ranges, it is satisfying that Norton’s possible final appearance ends with him getting his job done in the most Norton way possible.

The Flawless Man and Everyone’s Dead on Floor 3 are available now from Big Finish.