First woman Doctor plays second fiddle to right-on smuggery
NOT so much ho-ho-ho, as ho-hum. everywhere you looked on Christmas Day’s telly it was the same old programmes, last year’s favourites reheated like stale mince pies.
when the best thing on the box all day is a re-run of the 1990 movie Home alone, you know that the holiday TV schedules are not so much Ding Dong Merrily On High, more In The Bleak Midwinter.
On every side were repeats, rehashes and return visits – all testimony to a crisis in Christmas creativity made worse by doses of po-faced and sanctimonious piety. Nowhere was this more painful than on the wretchedly dull Doctor who (BBC1).
There’s a tradition that the Time Lord’s festive outing in his Tardis is a silly affair, all larks and jingle bells, like a nudge in the ribs from a tipsy uncle. Not this year.
set partly on a world war One battlefield, and partly in a crypt containing the memories of a trillion dead people, it was achingly, earnestly worthy... not to mention knee-deep seriously this in self-pity. show takes The itself, more the more people switch off. Ratings tumbled during the last series and, if anyone was still watching by the end of the hour, it was only because they wanted to see Peter Capaldi turn into Jodie whittaker, as the Doctor’s first female regeneration.
self-important to the last, writer steven show of the – Lady viewers refused Moffat Doctor. – only to who oblige, No a is brief sooner leaving and glimpse permitted had the she a lurch appeared and tipped than the her Tardis out gave into space. Perhaps it doesn’t want a female Doctor either. Before that, we had to endure an age of Capaldi wringing his hands and begging humanity to ‘be kind’. David Bradley reprised the First Doctor, originally portrayed by william Hartnell in the sixties. His chief role was to make scandalising remarks about the importance of having a woman about the place to do the dusting, and to look horrified when Bill Potts ( Pearl Mackie) hinted she was a lesbian.
That was far from the only splash of right-on smuggery on display. Upstart Crow (BBC2), Ben elton’s sitcom about the home life of william shakespeare, crowbarred a sneering speech about the monarchy into the final scene, a little injection of Corbynism into the festivities. Perhaps it was inspired by the appearance of emma Thompson, patron saint of luvvies, as Queen elizabeth I.
THE unoriginal plea for a Republican Britain was delivered by David Mitchell, who plays the Bard in this clever-clever comedyby-numbers. every episode follows the same formula – you can predict to the minute when the rant about public transport will happen, or a character will exclaim ‘Bolingbrokes’.
The ultimate in automated production-line sitcom was delivered by Mrs Brown’s Boys. If you’ve seen one episode, you really have seen them all, right down to the interchangeable punchlines. It’s one of the most repeated shows on TV, and yet it’s nigh impossible to know when you’re watching a new one. There was precious little new comedy elsewhere – a stark indictment of how badly the genre has flagged in recent years. all the best laughs came from decades ago – the 1977 Morecambe and wise Christmas show, a 1975 Dad’s army, a reprise of the best bits from 30 years of French and saunders.
Meanwhile, on BBC4, it was the Two Ronnies from 1972, followed by Christmas with Val Doonican – an easy listening special that was laughably old- fashioned even when it was first aired in 1986.
Other gaps in the schedules were plugged with lazy spin-offs from popular series such as First Dates, Bake Off and strictly. all padded out with footage we’d seen before, as familiar lovers, cooks and dancers were wheeled out again.
It takes a special sort of cynicism to serve up a glorified repeat and bill it as an extra- special festive one-off. In any other business, this would be called ‘scraping the bottom of the barrel’.
Thankfully, there was an escape. Millions of viewers had box-sets in their stockings, or new phones and tablets with bright little screens to play catch-up TV and streaming video. But this meant the risk that we all went off and watched our own things, separately. The one time of the year when the whole family is encouraged to gather round the television together was squandered. what a turn-off.