almost witty

For those of us who thought the BBC’s mammoth self-marketing campaigns were one of the symptions of modern marketing excess, a trawl on the Internet has turned up this John Cleese-presented advertisment on What Has the BBC Ever Given Us?. And it being the BBC, Spitting Image have the right of rebuttal…

Hark back to a golden age when the licence fee was only £55, alternative comedy was cool enough to be mentioned on mainstream television (albeit from the toilet) - and more importantly, pubs weren’t decked out in steel chrome.

For all us TV archivists, can you tell me what year this was from? Bob Geldof witters on about Live Aid, so it’s certainly post 1985…

I was chatting to a female Whovian friend about the geek squee that would be seeing David Tennant and Patrick Stewart doing Hamlet at the RSC.

That got me musing as to which gorgeous British actress they could find to play Ophelia and inspire similar squee in women-fancying geeks. Unfortunately, the only name I could come up with was Kate Winslet - and she’s already played Ophelia in the Kenneth Branagh version of Hamlet. Indeed, when I watched it at the time, I thought she played it much like a stereotypical Doctor Who companion, with lots of screaming.

So can you think of any gorgeous British actresses ?

So, Doctor Who takes a year off…

It was rather inevitable really. Plus people on the production team had been muttering in interviews how tired they were, and how they wanted a break. With most long-running TV programmes that take 9 months to film, there’s an ensemble cast that allows actors to take the odd break. Not with Doctor Who - and even when they do an episode without the lead actors, the lead actors are off filming another episode! Something had to break.

There’s also the flaw with filming a 9-month serial in Cardiff when the lead actors and production staff have their main home in London or Manchester or elsewhere. Cardiff is many things, but it’s just not as major a city as its residents would like to believe…

Still, this time - compared to the last time Doctor Who took a “break” - the programme is almost unbearably universally popular (what happened to the cult TV show that I could say was Mine! All Mine!) and there’s three specials to tide us fans over. Although if one more person speculates it’s going to be about the Time War with McGann…

Plus Tennant isn’t sitting on the beach for a year - he’s going to do Hamlet on stage every night for six months. Opposite Patrick Stewart. If that isn’t exercising your acting muscles, I don’t know what is…

Tennant. Stewart. Together on stage doing Hamlet at the Royal Shakespeare Company. Summer 2008.

On one hand, it pretty much guarantees Tennant won’t stay beyond the next series of Who. Unless there’s an extended hiatus or some other piece of trickery.

On the other hand, c’mon! Tennant! Stewart! Hamlet!

I only hope the front row isn’t filled with Trekkies wearing the Star Trek uniforms like they were when I saw Stewart doing his one-man Christmas Carol…

Gawd bless Google Video, and all who use her. For she has put up on the web a classic episode from Saturday Live, the LWT show that helped to bring then-alternative comedy (and people like Ben Elton) into the living rooms of 1980s Britain.

Never mind that it was probably 25 (!) years ago!