TV episode review
UK airdate 5 March 2008 (BBC3); 12 March 2008 (BBC2)

Gwen gets bitten while hunting down a shape-shifter alien just before her hen night. She wakes up on the morning of her wedding to discover she is heavily pregnant. Jack suggests that she postpone the event, but she insists she wants to go ahead and marry Rhys whatever obstacles are thrown in their way. What she doesn’t know is that the alien baby’s mother is on the hunt for her child…

This is the comedy episode of the season, and – perhaps contrary to expectation – it’s hilarious.

The best bits come courtesy of Eve Myles’s exasperated face-pulling and Ianto’s deadpan one-liners (by now a highlight of the show). The ‘wedding fairy’ aside, guest star Nerys Hughes (playing Rhys’s mother) makes a strong addition to the comedy. And the sequence in which Rhys acquires a chainsaw is almost like something out of Peter Jackson’s Braindead! There are one or two terrifying moments that threaten to tip over into gross-out horror-comedy, and these only strengthen the tone as a whole.

Whether you like this episode or not may well depend on what makes you laugh. But if you’ve got a liking for offbeat self-parody in an otherwise serious programme then this is likely to make for a nice (if abrupt) change of direction after recent episodes dealing with Owen’s death. Brigid Cherry

VERDICT: 8/10

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