Doctor Who (BBC One) | iPlayer
Caroline Aherne: Comedy Queen (BBC Two) | iPlayer
Murder Is Easy (BBC One) | iPlayer
The Castaways Paramount +
As the new year beckons, is the world ready for a sexy Doctor Who? Watching the BBC One Christmas Day special, The Church on Ruby Road, the first full-length story featuring the 15th doctor (Ncuti Gatwa), I’m initially amusing myself with thoughts of the Time Lords representing musical genres (Tom Baker as art-school punk; Jon Pertwee as prog, and so on). Which makes Gatwa the first “superstar DJ” doctor. Striding in a maxi coat, spinning on a dancefloor in a vest and kilt, he certainly fits the bill.
As well as bringing in an LGBTQ+ flavour, Gatwa also seems like the first doctor you could imagine having a sex life. Not on screen, I hasten to add (I doubt returning writer-showrunner Russell T Davies intends to depict Whovian bunk-ups in the Tardis). It’s more of a glint, a new layer to the ever-evolving character. Let’s face it, all these years in, fresh and innovative is exactly how Doctor Who needs to feel.
After the trio of 60th anniversary specials, featuring the temporary return of David Tennant’s Doctor, this is the episode firing up the new era, and introducing new companion, Ruby Sunday (a kickass Millie Gibson). A festive foundling left as a newborn at a church, then taken into a loving home, Ruby is already seeking answers (Davina McCall plays herself in Long Lost Family mode), when she encounters the Doctor.
It all gets very full-on: spiky-toothed goblins: a ragged sky-borne pirate ship; a blob of a monster with a gaping maw; a baby in peril; a goblin sing-song, with the Doctor and Ruby joining in. Also, the vast sparkly Tardis, old favourites (the sonic screwdriver) and new gadgets (“intelligent gloves”).
The result is high-octane Whoniverse family viewing. You can see where the money is going from the new Disney+ tie-in (no longer does the CGI look daubed on in post-production with glitter glue). And while the vivid The Adventures of Baron Munchausen-esque visuals don’t compensate for the rather thin plot, that’s my only real quibble: Gatwa brings vim and edge to the role. He and Gibson sizzle together. The tone is fun, bracing and confident. This new Doc looks promising.
I was unprepared for how emotional it got watching Caroline Aherne: Queen of Comedy, the BBC Two Arena profile on the Mancunian performer and co-creator of The Royle Family, who died of cancer in 2016 at the age of 52.
Shown as part of a night paying tribute to Aherne’s creations (including the rapier wit of her chatshow host Mrs Merton), loved ones and collaborators turn out in force (Ricky Tomlinson, Steve Coogan, John Thomson, Sue Johnston, and more) to laud Aherne as a person and a creative force. One of them is Craig Cash, Aherne’s partner in comedy crime, who is palpably still raw with grief.
The documentary isn’t afraid to probe the starker areas of Aherne’s life: her retinoblastoma as a baby which left her partially sighted in one eye; the crippling depression and alcoholism; the tabloid scrutiny that led her to spend her later years tucked away in a bungalow in Timperley.
However, her legacy is where the documentary shines. While The Royle Family, co-created with Cash and Henry Normal, wasn’t all Aherne did, it’s probably her crowning glory. A pin-sharp comedy, it was also a TV revolution, changing the on-screen conversation about the working class, and how they were depicted. Presenting the Royles as loving, funny, silly, kind and above all human, it gave one-dimensional working-class stereotypes their marching orders.
This is a lovely, big-hearted documentary, but also so bittersweet, Oh god, you think, as it ends, how brilliant, how unique Caroline Aherne was. And how cruel it is that she was taken so soon.
Back on BBC One, Siân Ejiwunmi-Le Berre’s two-part Murder Is Easy, the latest festive Agatha Christie whodunnit, pushes the lace-curtained boundaries with a foray into race set in England in 1954.
David Jonsson (Gus from Industry) is a Nigerian attache, Fitzwilliam, who’s travelling to London when he meets Miss Pinkerton (“Scotland Yard is my last hope!”), played by Penelope Wilton in what must be one of the shortest roles in her career. One moment she’s sharing fudge with Fitzwilliam and talking of murder in her village (“Murder is easy for a certain type of person”); the next, she’s hit by a car and killed, splayed out on the road, almost bloodlessly of course. They probably didn’t even need to bury her; just popped her into mothballs.
Investigating Miss Pinkerton’s suspicions, Fitzwilliam faces all the Christie classics (class, sexism, money, power, bizarre deaths). There’s a flirtation with the strong-willed Bridget (Morfydd Clark), and encounters with majors, lords, old maids, clergy and staff, played by a cast including Douglas Henshall, Mark Bonnar, Sinead Matthews, and Jon Pointing, all thoroughly enjoying the campery.
Then there are the racial themes (Fitzwilliam is stared at; there’s talk of “mud huts” and “Chief Bongo Bongo”). While overall subtly done (a real-life Fitzwilliam would have had it far worse), if anything, it heightens the mystery, adding another dimension of threat. Elsewhere (spoiler alert), a key scene from the book feels undersold (all I’ll say is that it concerns a bird), but this is an intriguing, leftfield take on Christie that’s very much worth seeing.
The new five-part thriller The Castaways, based on Lucy Clarke’s bestselling novel of the same name, is a tale of two sisters. When Lori (Sheridan Smith) is on a small plane that crashes on to a remote South Pacific island, Erin (Celine Buckens) must find out what happened to her.
Mainly conveyed in two timezones and locations, sometimes The Castaways feels like a more suburban Yellowjackets (sans mystical elements). Both leads are wasted: Smith huffing and puffing with fellow survivors, some of whom are sinister (“Are you scared of me? You should be”); Buckens, moodily slouching in a hoodie, pouncing on evidence her sister is alive.
Realism isn’t The Castaways’s strongest suit (the island survivors practically assemble a complex of yurts out of plane debris). Three episodes in, it’s a bit daft, but curiously watchable. I’m minded to stick with it to the end.
Star ratings (out of five):
Doctor Who ★★★★
Caroline Aherne: Comedy Queen ★★★★
Murder Is Easy ★★★
The Castaways ★★★
What else I’m watching
Men Up
(BBC One)
A comedy drama starring Iwan Rheon, Aneurin Barnard and Joanna Page, about the discovery of Viagra, when its active ingredient was tested as an angina treatment on ordinary men in a Welsh drugs trial. Nicely done, it has whiffs of The Full Monty.
MasterChef Battle of the Critics
(BBC One)
MasterChef guest critics (including the Observer’s restaurant critic, Jay Rayner, and the Guardian’s, Grace Dent) sportingly put their culinary skills where their tasting spoons usually are. A riveting rollercoaster of the tastebuds.
Ghosts
(BBC One)
The last ever episode of the much-loved haunted house comedy. Touching and inventive, this is how you bow out in style.
