Well, I came to "Children of Earth" with no preconceptions and found it to be remarkable.
When I started watching the first season, I found TORCHWOOD to be an iffy proposition. There are some really fine episodes, but, for the most part the thirteen episodes seemed to be lacking footing.
"Children of Earth" tells a harrowing story at a gripping pace - with only five hours of season time - and succeeds even for this uninitiated one.
So I'd say that you might be more enamored with this particular season than you were with TORCHWOOD.
In retrospective, I think that seeing those four very strong characters (Gwen, Ianto, Rhys and Jack) dealing with this particular world threat is what made me seek out the first two seasons, to find out all I could about their respective backstories. . .