Not even the Doctor can save this mess...
THE return of Doctor Who (BBC One, Sunday) was terrifying for all the wrong reasons. The noisy bombardment of rapid-fire story threads felt like we were being screamed at in an asylum. Showrunner Chris Chibnall has been a disaster for the once cherished sci-fi favourite. The last series saw the show’s ratings fall like a ton of Judoon droppings as viewers complained about its right-on agenda. The clumsy politics tested the patience but poor writing was its real undoing.
Chibnall’s response was to throw everything at this hectic opening episode, hoping something would stick. I’m not sure anything did. We had Weeping Angels, barbarous Sontarians, and an orange cosmic dust cloud called The Flux which devoured planets. There was also a murderous alien called Swarm with lumps of crystals growing from his face.
John Bishop played a saintly version of John Bishop called Dan who was kidnapped by Karvinista – a dog-alien who looked roughly as menacing as Bungle from Rainbow. (For Zippy see the Doctor.)
The overgrown Yorkshire terrier was a Lupari, a race who had vowed to stand by humanity in their darkest hour but hadn’t bothered to show up throughout six decades of Daleks and Cybermen. Seven billion Lupari were on their way to save us. Somehow, between bouts of drinking out of cosmic toilets, they’d developed the technology to keep Earth safe from the Flux, and protected us.
Meanwhile, Swarm’s girlfriend was disguised as a human at the Arctic Circle, 19th century Scousers were doing something dodgy down a mineshaft, the war-like Sontarans were “30 trillion light years away” – further than the extent of the known universe – and a character resembling Lister from Red Dwarf was played by Grey Worm from Game Of Thrones. Confused? You should be. It was busier than a division of Daleks on an extermination weekender.
Yet the defining qualities of great science fiction are simple stories well told with intelligent twists and characters viewers can invest in. This was just an over-complicated mess. The best Doctor Who was William Hartnell’s calm, rather grumpy “mad professor”. H ow he turned into Jodie Whittaker’s shouty scatter-brain – played as Leanne Battersby with verbal diarrhoea – escapes me.
Chibnall’s mix of excess and heavyhanded exposition are unlikely to save it. Strictly Come Dancing (BBC One, Saturday and Sunday) did Halloween last weekend. I’m not quite sure how Dan Walker with lobster claws and Anton
dressed as The Riddler fitted the theme, but full marks to Claudia. With no extra effort, she looked scarier than the lot. Is it possible that all giant businesses are run by foulmouthed moguls and are rife with boardroom betrayals? Or is that just the fantasy projected by clever writers like Jesse Armstrong? His Succession (Sky Atlantic, Monday) is one of the most lauded drama series of the century. It revolves around Logan Roy, the self-made founder of global media mega-corp Waystar Royco, and his fiercely competitive offspring – one-time heir apparent Kendall, sister Shiv and brothers Roman and Connor.
Last series we learned about a number of historic sexual assaults in their cruise ship division. Victims had been silenced with hush money. The Roys weren’t involved, but the scandal ripped the family apart. Now it’s Kendall versus the rest. It’s not an even fight.
Logan is part Rupert Murdoch and part King Lear in need of a swear box. Kendall is a selfregarding berk. He’s smart enough to sabotage Royco’s company town hall (by playing Nirvana’s Rape Me over the speakers during Shiv’s big speech) but still a deluded narcissist who thinks he can
survive a late-night TV comedy show grilling. In rapid succession Shiv issued a public statement – “a greeting card from hell” – revealing Kendall’s struggles with drugs, and “problematic relationships with women”; Kendall ducked the show; and the White House “betrayed” Logan by letting FBI agents raid the company.
If like me you feared that this third series was concentrating too much on dialogue – all talk, no action – then episode three was the antidote, and tomorrow’s is even better.
None of the Roys are likeable, so smirking Talitha Campbell from Showtrial (BBC One, Sunday) would fit right in. The la-de-dah daughter of a ruthless property developer was arrested on suspicion of murdering a former friend and promptly stuck her fingers in her ears saying, “la-la-la”. The “rude, entitled little cow” (© Bristol Plod) is off-hand with her brief, Chloe too. She looks bang-to-rights guilty, so clearly she isn’t.
Tracy Ifeachor is wonderfully controlled as Chloe.
Spitting Image (Britbox) has 16 joke writers and not a single laugh. The chief targets for their “satirical” scorn were Sir David Attenborough, Adele, and James Corden; of whom the latter two were “hilariously” murdered. TV satire has come a long way from the wit and forensic intelligence of Bremner, Bird And Fortune. All of it downhill.
David Stephenson
is away