BBC America president Garth Ancier is here in Los Angeles for the Television Critics Association January tour and after he presented panels for BBC America's latest offerings, I had the chance to ask him if he had an air date for Torchwood: Children of Earth on BBCA. He didn't yet have a firm air date as BBC America is waiting for the BBC to finalize their date, but he was fairly certain that it was going to be the first part of this summer, possibly late June or early July.

He also said that not only would BBC America air the five episodes on consecutive nights as they are doing across the pond, but that they would also air in the U.S. the same day as they did in the U.K. meaning American audiences will have almost no lag time in seeing the series. (The U.K. is five hours ahead of the east coast of the U.S meaning the delay should be about that give or take). Ancier said the series might also air in High Definition, a first for BBCA.

Torchwood go to Geneva where Martha Jones, ex-time traveller, is now working as a doctor for a UNIT task force at the world’s biggest physics laboratory, CERN. Deep in an underground tunnel, a giant particle accelerator is about to be activated for the first time. But something strange is happening. Scientists are hearing voices and collapsing with a strange illness. Is something lurking in the underground tunnel? Do the dead ever really stay dead.

Afternoon Play: Torchwood: Lost Souls

2.15pm, Wednesday 10 September

"Somewhere out there in that chaos of darkness and light, of science and protons, of gods and stars and death... somewhere there's an answer."

The Torchwood Institute was founded by Queen Victoria in 1879 to protect the British Empire against the threat of alien invasion. By 2008, all that remains of the organisation is a small team based in Cardiff. And now, following the tragic deaths of two of their colleagues, the remaining three – Captain Jack Harkness, Gwen Cooper and Ianto Jones – have to protect the human race against another unknown force from the darkness.

Martha Jones, ex-time traveller and now working as a doctor for a UN task force, has been called to CERN – the world's largest particle physics laboratory in Geneva – where they're about to activate the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

The LHC is a particle accelerator which has been built deep underground in a 27km tunnel under Switzerland and France. Once activated, the collider will fire beams of protons together, re-creating conditions a billionth of a second after the Big Bang – and potentially allowing the human race a greater insight into what the universe is made of.

But so much could go wrong – it could open a gateway to a parallel dimension, or create a black hole – and now voices from the past are calling out to people and scientists have started to disappear...

Where have the missing scientists gone? What is the secret of the glowing man? What is lurking in the underground tunnel? And do the dead ever really stay dead?

Torchwood is a spin-off from the award-winning BBC Wales TV production Torchwood. Written by Joseph Lidster, it stars John Barrowman, Freema Agyeman, Eve Myles, Gareth David-Lloyd, Lucy Montgomery (of Tittybangbang) and Stephen Critchlow.