Christmas 2011 highlights

Right then, I suppose it’s about time I do a quick run-down of some of the things I’m looking forward to this Christmas…

Great Expectations

Next year will be the bicentenary of Charles Dickens’ birth and the BBC will be celebrating with a season of programmes, including documentaries fronted by Armando Iannucci and Sue Perkins, plus an adaptation of his unfinished last work, The Mystery Of Edwin Drood. At the centrepiece is this big-budget version of one of his most popular stories, starring Ray Winstone, Gillian Anderson and David Suchet.

Tuesday 27 December, 9.00pm, BBC One

The Borrowers

Mary Norton’s tale of little people who live under the floorboards has been told many times on both the big and small screen, most recently in Studio Ghibli’s beautiful animation Arrietty. This version is a one-off film for the BBC, starring Christopher Eccleston, Aisling Loftus and former Misfit Robert Sheehan.

Boxing Day, 7:30pm, BBC One

The Royal Bodyguard

Sir David Jason takes his rightful place back in the BBC One Christmas comedy line-up. In this new series, he plays Captain Guy Hubble, mistakenly put in charge of royal security due to a terrible mix-up. Quite how good this comedy is remains to be seen, but it’s comforting to have him back on our screens at this time of year.

Boxing Day, 9:30pm, BBC One

Treasure Island

The highlight of Sky’s Christmas schedule is this two-part adaptation of Robert Louis-Stevenson’s adventure, starring Eddie Izzard as Long John Silver alongside such big names as Elijah Wood, Philip Glenister, Rupert Penry-Jones, Keith Allen and Donald Sutherland.

New Year’s Day, 7pm, Sky 1 HD

Absolutely Fabulous

Twenty years after it first appeared on our screens, Eddy, Patsy, Saffy, Bubble and Mother are back in three new episodes, including one where they get involved in the 2012 Olympics.

Christmas Day, 10pm, BBC One

Hacks

Written by Drop the Dead Donkey and Outnumbered writer Guy Jenkin, this is the first comedy to take a look at the recent phone hacking scandals. Starring Claire Foy as a tabloid editor who demands her staff get the story by any means necessary, Hacks also features Kayvan Novak, Nigel Planer, Phil Davis, Alexander Armstrong, Gordon Kennedy, Russ Abbott and Celia Imrie.

New Year’s Day, 10pm, Channel Four

The Bleak Old Shop of Stuff

Another part of the Dickens season, a new four-part comedy adventure set in the Old Shop of Stuff, Victorian London’s most successful purveyor of miscellaneous odd things. Robert Webb plays shop owner Jedrington Secret-Past while Katherine Parkinson is his wife Conceptiva. Look out for appearances by David Mitchell, Pauline McLynn, Johnny Vegas, Una Stubbs and Stephen Fry.

Monday 19 December, 8.30pm, BBC Two

This is England ’88

After the success of This Is England ’86, Shane Meadows’ breathtaking follow-up to his earlier film, This Is England ’90 was commissioned and a Christmas special set in 1988 was also given the green light. As filming went on and the project kept going, it became clear that this would have to be a mini-series in its own right as well. After the devastating events shown in the previous series, this one will focus on Lol and Woody as they struggle to cope with the fallout.

Tuesday 13 December, 10pm, Channel Four

Doctor Who

This year’s Christmas special is a set in Dorset during the Second World War, a time when city children were being sent to the countryside for their safety. With more than a few nods to The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, this is set to be the highlight of Christmas Day viewing. Matt Smith is, of course, the Doctor and he’s joined by Claire Skinner, Bill Bailey, Arabella Weir and Alexander Armstrong.

Christmas Day, 7pm, BBC One

Doctor Who: The Impossible Astronaut

So, I’ve been a bit busy giving the blog a facelift (it’s still not quite right) and until now haven’t gotten around to doing a quick review of the new Doctor Who episode on Saturday night. It was the boldest opening episode since the show’s 2005 return, remarkably dark, complex sci-fi for all the family at teatime.

The tone was set within the first five minutes. Amy Pond, her husband Rory and the intriguing time traveller River Song were all invited to the Utah desert where they met the Doctor, now two centuries older than we last saw him. As usual, he compares notes with River to see where they are in their timelines, and it seems they’re now a lot more familiar with each other (remembering a trip to Easter Island, River says “They worshiped you there! Have you seen the statues?”). They go to a lake from which someone or something in a spacesuit emerges and shoot a calm, expectant Doctor and then shoots him again in the middle of regeneration, apparently killing him for good. After giving the Time Lord a Viking funeral, his distraught friends realise that one more person got an invite to the wake – the Doctor, our 909 year old Doctor. “Even for you, this is cold”, River says to him, although she could be addressing Moffat himself.

It’s established that Amy, Rory and River cannot let the Doctor know what they saw, a secret which instantly changes the dynamic within the group in an interesting way – for the first time, the Doctor is not all-knowing, both his friends and us in the audience know something he doesn’t. There was plenty for Whovians to get stuck into during this episode, from the reappearance of the ship from last series’ The Lodger to the identity of the girl in the spacesuit.

Steven Moffat has created some of the most chilling and clever monsters in the programme’s 48-year history, such as the Weeping Angels who can only move when you blink and the Vashta Nerada, flesh-eating microbes that exist in the shadows. The Silence, alluded to throughout the previous series, were introduced here and they’re just as clever – creatures that exist all over the planet but you forget as soon as you turn away. Their appearance is just as scary, a sort of cross between the Gentlemen from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Munch’s The Scream.

Another of Moffat’s creations in the limelight during this episode was River Song, played by the fantastic Alex Kingston. Besides camping it up as usual (“I’m quite the screamer. Now there’s a spoiler for you.”), there was added depth to her relationship with the Doctor, where both of them meeting at various points in time. She revealed to Rory that the one day she’s dreading is when he doesn’t recognise her, which we’ve already seen back in the David Tennant era.

Matt Smith, meanwhile, was continuing to prove himself as an excellent choice for the role, adding a little more mystery and unpredictability to his childlike, bowtie loving Doctor. Karen Gillan gave her strongest performance yet as Amy Pond and Arthur Darvill’s Rory was welcoming light relief in an increasingly dark episode. Battlestar Galactica’s Mark Sheppard was a fine piece of casting as FBI agent Canton.

Overall, it was a great start to the series. It seems that last year Steven Moffat was settling us in gently to life after David Tennant and Russell T Davies and now is finally starting to bring us his own vision of Doctor Who. If the opening episode is anything to judge it by, this sixth series of “New Who” looks like being the best yet.

Elisabeth Sladen, 1948-2011

Some very sad news this evening, as it has been announced that Elisabeth Sladen, known to millions as Doctor Who companion Sarah Jane Smith, has died at the age of 63. She had been suffering from cancer for some time.

She had perhaps a unique position, loved by the children of the 1970s following her introduction alongside Jon Pertwee and memorably Tom Baker, but also loved by a whole new generation of kids when she returned to the role in the David Tennant episode School Reunion and her own award-winning spin-off series, The Sarah Jane Adventures, one of the most successful British children’s television series of recent years.

Thousands of Whovians have been leaving tributes across the Internet, with many 40-somethings speaking of her as their first crush and others lauding her portrayal of Sarah Jane as one of the first strong female characters in sci-fi. Russell T Davies said “I absolutely loved Lis. She was funny and cheeky and clever and just simply wonderful. The universe was lucky to have Sarah Jane Smith; the world was lucky to have Lis.”

Steven Moffat, current Doctor Who showrunner, said “Never meet your heroes, wise people say. They weren’t thinking of Lis Sladen. Sarah Jane Smith was everybody’s hero when I was younger, and as brave and funny and brilliant as people only ever are in stories. But many years later, when I met the real Sarah Jane – Lis Sladen herself – she was exactly as any child ever have wanted her to be. Kind and gentle and clever; and a ferociously talented actress, of course, but in that perfectly English unassuming way.”

The tragic news comes just days before Matt Smith’s return as the Doctor this weekend. Earlier this year, fans mourned the loss of Nicholas Courtney, who played the Brigadier across 40 years.

Roughly half of the fifth series of the Sarah Jane Adventures has already been shot, meaning we should hopefully still get to see her save the world a few final times. Here’s the first time, her debut scene in the 1973 serial The Time Warrior:

…and here’s the final, poignant scene from the 2006 episode School Reunion:

Doctor Who is back at Easter

Just a quick one to let you know that the BBC has just confirmed that Doctor Who will be back on our screens on the Easter weekend. The sixth series since the timelord returned (or the 32nd series in old money) is being split into two halves, with seven episodes this spring and the other six in the autumn. It all begins with a two parter set in 1960s America. Saturday 23rd April is the date to put in the diary.

Top 10 TV of 2010

Another year has come and gone, and we’re a few days into 2011, yet I have failed to come up with a top ten list of 2010. But I’m a blogger – I’m pretty sure that doing top ten lists of the year is a contractual obligation. I won’t say “better late than never”, because we all know that’s not true…

Anyway, some people say that the golden age of television is long-gone, something it would be hard to disagree with when looking at the top ratings winners of the year – a particularly dismal set of autotuned wannabes on the X Factor and a bigot being dragged across the floor in Strictly Come Dancing. But, a closer look at the schedules shows that 2010 was a vintage year for television and there were plenty of great programmes I’ve not been able to squeeze into the list. The Apprentice continued to be the perfect reality show, conflict, drama and absolute stupidity boiled down into its purest form. The final season of 24 was right up there with the best in its nine years on air and the few who stuck with FlashForward to the bitter end found that it had an answer to pretty much every question posed earlier in its run. This is England ’86 was a superb piece of television drama, Life proved that Attenborough is still the king of natural history documentaries, The IT Crowd continued to breathe life into the studio-based sitcom, Mongrels was a very funny and original comedy and both Strike Back and Thorne continued to improve Sky1’s credentials with original drama. Plus, of course, Big Brother bowed out after a decade on air, in its final weeks reminding us just why it was so loved in its hayday.

And that’s not to mention the many shows I have to admit to not having the time to see. Being usually averse to costume dramas, I gave Downton Abbey a miss, only to find everyone raving about it. Rev, The Trip and Moving On were all apparently brilliant but somehow passed me by, while I also still need to find the time to catch up with the latest seasons of Mad Men, Fringe and Dexter.

Anyway, on to the top ten…

Doctor Who: A Christmas Carol

Of all the treats in store for us over the Christmas period, perhaps the one most people were looking forward to was the Doctor Who special. Matt Smith has defied the doubters and has stepped into British sci-fi’s most famous role with ease, while showrunner Steven Moffat has taken the series into a darker, much more interesting place.

Christmas on the BBC

It’s that time of year again, when the TV companies start to tell us what treats they’ll be serving up over the Yuletide period. If I were writing this for a tabloid, I’d be contractually obliged to say something about some of the offerings being turkeys and others being crackers, but instead I’ll get right to it and pick through today’s announcements from the Beeb.

Doctor Who: The Waters of Mars

I am 28 years old. This means that the Doctor Who I grew up with was Sylvester McCoy. Some slightly older people might think of this as a terrible curse afflicted on people born in the early 1980s, but he was my Doctor and I feel the need to stand up for him. His adventures were often fun but there was a particularly sinister edge to many of his stories which meant that as a seven year old the programme was very scary indeed. Yes, he might have had the annoying, screeching Bonnie Langford as his assistant at first, but she was soon replaced with Ace, played by Sophie Aldred, my first childhood crush. And to my tiny child’s eyes, he was blatantly much better than Colin Baker, anyway.

But having said that, I’m a little jealous of the seven and eight year-olds of today who have been growing up with David Tennant as their Doctor. How amazing must that be? Easily one of the all-time best in the role, the last few years riding in the TARDIS with him have been sometimes scary, sometimes amusing, but always very exciting. But now his time in the role is coming to an end, with only two specials left after tonight’s Waters of Mars. Only read on if you haven’t watched yet, or else there be spoilers…