Bad timing, Doctor Who . . . you saved Peter Capaldi’s best till last
What a frustration for Peter Capaldi that he finally gets to star in a firstrate Doctor Who (BBC1) adventure, just as he prepares to bow out.
the Scot’s spell as a time Lord has been a walloping disappointment, for him more than anyone. a fan of the show since boyhood, he was visibly trembling with excitement when he was revealed four years ago on a live tV special as the 12th Doctor.
But his relationship with tardis companion Clara (Jenna Coleman) was always shockingly awkward. he was like a lecherous lecturer panting over a student.
When Bill Potts (Pearl Mackie) appeared this year, Capaldi really was her university tutor: thankfully, there was no hint of romance, but that was because lesbian Bill was on an inter-galactic mission to spread the gay rights message.
Capaldi admitted earlier this year that the role bored him, and that saving the world had quickly become repetitive. Surely he would have enjoyed it far better if he’d had more episodes of this calibre.
the best scenes had him battling and bickering with his nemesis the Master (John Simm) and the supervillain’s female incarnation, Missy (Michelle Gomez). In a dazzling twist, these two murdered each other, a sort of suicide squared. they weren’t quite dead as we left them, just cackling evilly.
at moments, especially during a succession of goodbyes, there was a little too much talking. But mostly, this was a bonanza of setpieces and explosions, ending with a glorious cliffhanger that saw a dying Doctor apparently at the South Pole, meeting the original Doctor (David Bradley, impersonating William hartnell).
there was a grand clear- out of characters — the unfunny Nardole (Matt Lucas) went, too. But far from being maudlin, this was the best Doctor Who for years. Meanwhile, the saddest aspect of
George Best: All By Himself (BBC2), tracing the self-destruction of one of our most scintillating sportsmen, was how football didn’t learn from his tragic experience.
a quarter of a century after the brilliant boy dubbed El Beatle became an alcohol-fuelled meteor of flaming wreckage, Paul Gascoigne crashed and burned in just the same way. their two lives were practically identical — lads from the poorest streets of the UK, granted by God the most sublime natural talent, and rapidly overwhelmed by the nation’s adulation.
Even the aftermath was the same for both, with a succession of comebacks that tailed off into drunken degradation.
Strange, then, that this documentary made no mention of Gazza. Its focus was so narrow, you could almost believe Best was the only footballer who ever existed, and so it failed to put his life into proper context.
It was limited in its choice of interviewees, too. the big names who could have given a better sense of Best’s colossal fame were absent — Elton John engineered his move to play in the States, for instance, and Bobby Charlton won the European Cup with him at Manchester United, but we didn’t hear from either.
Consequently, the 90-minute programme lacked deep insight. Most of us know what happened to Georgie the Boy Wonder — for a few years in the Sixties he was the greatest talent the game had ever seen. and then, as one team-mate put it: ‘he went downhill like a toboggan.’
But there were some wonderful moments. the shots of Best dancing through defences were so audacious, they were almost comical. this was a tV show to watch with one finger on the fast-forward button, skimming over the heartbreak and pausing to relish the magic.