BBC showed nine out of 10 most popular shows, according to overnight data, with Strictly coming second and Doctor Who third
King Charles’s Christmas broadcast came top of the TV ratings on Christmas Day, with the BBC showing nine out of the 10 most watched shows.
The king’s message, which reflected on the “increasingly tragic conflict around the world”, attracted an average of 5.9 million viewers, according to overnight ratings.
Continue reading...As sci-fi show’s 60th anniversary nears, a collector pleads for BBC to offer amnesty to those with recordings discarded by corporation
For Doctor Who-lovers they are the missing crown jewels: lost episodes of the first series of the TV sci-fi drama, shown in the 1960s. But now film recordings of not just one, but two of the early BBC adventures, both featuring the first doctor, William Hartnell, has been found in Britain by amateur sleuths.
The episodes, one featuring the Daleks, would offer viewers a chance to travel back in time without the use of a Tardis. But the Observer has learned that the owners of the rare, rediscovered footage are not prepared to hand it over to the BBC, even as the clock ticks down to the 60th anniversary of the show’s launch this month.
Continue reading...Actor, 82, said her new role as an alien in the sci-fi series has made ‘an old woman very happy’
Miriam Margolyes will feature in one of the 60th-anniversary episodes of Doctor Who that will air this November, the BBC has announced.
Margolyes, 82, who has appeared in Blackadder, Babe and the Harry Potter films, will be the voice behind the Meep – or Beep the Meep – the furry and seemingly adorable alien adapted from the Star Beast comic strip in a special for the series. The creature will feature in an episode with the same name.
Continue reading...Melvin’s roles included parts in Torchwood, The Phantom of the Opera and A Taste of Honey
Tributes have been paid to the actor, director and theatre archivist Murray Melvin, who has died aged 90.
Melvin died at St Thomas’ hospital in London on Friday, according to friends.
Continue reading...Coronation Street actor will appear as companion to Ncuti Gatwa’s 15th incarnation of the Doctor late in 2023
Millie Gibson has been unveiled as the Time Lord’s new sidekick in Doctor Who, in an announcement made live on BBC Children in Need on Friday evening.
The Coronation Street actor, 18, will play the role of Ruby Sunday, companion to the new Doctor, Ncuti Gatwa, when the programme returns towards the end of 2023.
Continue reading...Neil Cole’s Museum of Classic Sci-Fi, hosted in cellar of his Allendale townhouse, holds costumes and props from numerous TV classics
At first glance the Northumberland village of Allendale, with its pub and post office and random parking, is like hundreds of sleepy, charming villages across the UK. It’s the Dalek that suggests something out of the ordinary.
Behind the Dalek is a four-storey Georgian townhouse. In the cellar of the house is a remarkable and unlikely collection of more than 200 costumes, props and artwork telling classic sci-fi stories of Doctor Who, Blake’s 7, Star Trek, Flash Gordon, Marvel and many more.
Continue reading...It’s a Sin has been voted the Guardian’s best TV show of the year. Russell T Davies reveals why it took him 30 years to write, who the real Colin is – and why he just can’t keep away from Doctor Who
• The 50 best TV shows of 2021, No 1: It’s a Sin
Russell T Davies doesn’t hold back. If he’s thrilled, he shouts about it. And sure enough, the 6ft 6in giant of a man is shouting today. “I’m gobsmacked. I’ve never come first in this. Ever,” he exclaims, admitting that he has always had his eye on the Guardian’s list of the best TV of the year. “If I’ve had a show on, I spend every December watching that countdown wondering if I’ll be on it – I think A Very English Scandal got to No 2.” He’s right, it did. Three years on, his wonderful Channel 4 mini-series It’s a Sin has been voted the Guardian’s best TV show of the year. “I’m ridiculously thrilled,” says Davies, who is Zooming from his home in Manchester.
It’s 30 years since his first TV series – Dark Season, featuring a 15-year-old Kate Winslet – aired on the BBC. Since then, Davies has created any number of groundbreaking dramas (including Queer as Folk; Cucumber, Banana and Tofu; Years and Years) as well as breathing new life into Doctor Who. But he is particularly pleased to have won for It’s a Sin, the five-part drama about a group of young gay friends living – and dying – through the Aids era of the 80s and early 90s. This is the show he knew he had to write 30 years ago, and spent the intervening decades years putting off, because it was simply too personal and painful.
Continue reading...The former League of Gentlemen star on his love of low-budget British spinechillers, his loathing of Brexit and a slew of projects opening this winter
Mark Gatiss scans the breakfast menu at an east London restaurant with a famished eye. We’re at the hinge moment between the nightlife of an A-lister, who attended the James Bond premiere the previous evening, and the day job as an actor who, by his own account, could only land a role he had wanted all his life by writing the play himself. “It was a long evening,” he says of No Time to Die. He hadn’t had dinner and was trying to stave off the hunger pangs by sipping water, but not too much, because he couldn’t get out to the loo: “So I’m just really hungry.” He’s like a jovial Eeyore, painting himself into a lugubrious picture of the turnip fields of celebrity, before deciding, with a giggle, that a hearty breakfast of avocado on toast is exactly what’s needed to put everything to rights.
This is certainly no time to die of hunger for Gatiss, who has rocketed out of the pandemic as one of British showbusiness’s most sought-after all-rounders. He’s currently putting the finishing touches to his remake of the 1972 children’s film The Amazing Mr Blunden while rehearsing his new adaptation of A Christmas Carol. The latest in a series of half-hour ghost stories, The Mezzotint, is ready to roll into his now customary slot on the Christmas TV schedules. But it’s not all fear and Victorian clothing, he spent part of the lost year in the Outer Hebrides, playing a country doctor in a first world war romance, The Road Dance, and another part messing about in a pedalo on a boating lake with his old League of Gentlemen muckers Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith for a new series of their TV comedy Inside No 9.
Continue reading...After 16 years, the BBC’s flagship sci-fi show is tired and suffering. It should go away to save itself
Three series is the usual tenure for an actor playing the Doctor, so rumours are rife that Jodie Whittaker is about to step down. Michaela Coel, Olly Alexander and Richard Ayoade are among those tipped for the role. But what if, instead of a new Doctor, the show actually needs something a doctor might prescribe to an exhausted patient – a rest.
The current run started in 2005, and even with such a flexible format as Doctor Who, there aren’t many TV dramas that can sustain 13 series in 16 years. (Call the Midwife is probably the best BBC attempt at that in the past decade.) Soap operas can manage it, but then soap storylines generally don’t revolve around such cataclysmic events as the universe being destroyed.
Continue reading...The characters she plays do not match her own life, the actress insists, but it’s hard not to see parallels with her own journey
Billie Piper has occupied a near continual, if shifting, position in the public imagination for almost a quarter of a century. That’s a notable achievement by any reckoning of a performer’s career, but it’s also rather alarming, given that she’s still only 38.
Having started out as 15-year-old chart sensation, she walked away from the pop music treadmill, enjoyed a boozy marriage with the DJ Chris Evans, returned to frontline fame in Doctor Who, struck out on a path of acclaimed dramatic performances on TV and the stage, and has now made her directorial debut with the feature film Rare Beasts.
Continue reading...Exclusive: BBC faces questions as further allegations made about Clarke – and co-star John Barrowman is accused of exposing himself
The Noel Clarke sexual harassment controversy threatens to embroil the BBC after several sources came forward to allege they were sexually harassed or inappropriately touched by the actor on a flagship show, Doctor Who.
Another Doctor Who actor, John Barrowman, has also been accused of repeatedly exposing himself to co-workers on two BBC productions, prompting questions about whether the corporation allowed a lax culture on its sets during the mid-2000s.
Continue reading...The young actor, who plays the timelord’s arch enemy The Master, talks about his meaty new role in The Great – and reveals how he overcame the fears that used to leave him traumatised in his trailer
When Sacha Dhawan learned that he had been chosen to play Doctor Who baddie The Master, it should have been one of the biggest moments of his career. “My agent was ecstatic,” he says. “The BBC was ecstatic.” But he wasn’t. “I put the phone down and I couldn’t have felt more sad,” he says. The reason, it turns out, is a hidden battle with anxiety that Dhawan had been waging for years.
The opportunity was too big to pass up, but at that moment its scale felt insurmountable. “I would be the first British South Asian actor to play The Master,” he says. “So I’m kind of representing not only the Whoniverse but my community. And if I fuck this up, they aren’t going to be casting another South Asian actor for this.”
Continue reading...Since returning with a female Doctor, the sci-fi smash has been accused of political correctness. But, as recent storylines prove, the truth is far worse
Doctor Who returned last week with another first: Sacha Dhawan’s casting as the first person of colour to play the Doctor’s arch nemesis, the Master. The decision was broadly met with praise, but in darker corners of the internet the argument that the show has become too politically correct rages on.
“Too PC” has become a familiar jibe levelled at the sci-fi hit since 2018 when Jodie Whittaker became the Thirteenth Doctor and new showrunner Chris Chibnall took up the mantle. As well as the first woman to play the title role, their first series featured two BAME companions and episodes about Rosa Parks and the partition of India, written by Doctor Who’s first ever BAME writers. The show quickly found itself embroiled in a culture war, with talk of its apparent political correctness becoming commonplace (see the Twitter hashtag #notmydoctor). Whittaker and Chibnall were forced to defend the show against these claims before this series began: Whittaker reminded viewers that there’s “still racism within our current society”, and Chibnall added that “the Doctor and the show are beacons of compassion and empathy”.
Continue reading...Where’s Mad Men? How did The Sopranos do? Does The Crown triumph? Can anyone remember Lost? And will Downton Abbey even figure? Find out here – and have your say