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This year politics was blockbuster TV, with the same must-watch import as Hollyoaks

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2010-12-18 Times.jpg

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Still, if 2010's TV was good at engaging you, intelligently and entertainingly, in real life, it was notable that two of the biggest shows of the year were pure, stylised, escapist fantasy: Sherlock and Doctor Who.

This time last year we were, of course, still living in the era of David 'Pennant's tenth Doctor: hot, flirty, prone to sudden enthusiasms and rages, often Shakespearean in his scope.

When he died on New Year's Day — fatally irradiated by The Wombles' narrator Bernard Cribltins; and, let's face it, no one saw that coming — he ushered in Matt Smith's 11th Doctor, an oddly unsexual, half-boy, half 900-year-old professor with a fondness for bow-ties and fezzes ("They' re cool").

It wasn't rust a new Doctor, though, it was a new executive writer-producer, toil. With Russell T. Davies gone, this was the beginning of Steven Moffat's reign on Who. The obvious debate it set up was, who was best? Smith or Tennant? Moffat or Davies? The regime change was pronounced: gone were Davies huge emotional set pieces, voyages into deep space, themes of unrequited love and colloquial "Corrie-on-Uranus" wit. In contrast, Moffat's Who takes part in plots of exquisite musical-box precision instead. If Davies used the vastness of space as backdrop to passion, Moffat uses the complexity of time as a backdrop for surging imagination.

But trying to work out which is the "best" of the two is pointless. The difference between the Who of Davies and the Who of Moffat is like the difference between Stephen Hawking explaining how rainbows are made —anthelion; the glory; blue light; red light; the rainbows on Saturn's moon — and Judy Garland singing about being on the other side of one.

Both are beautiful. Both would move any human being to tears. Moffat's season finale — Amy crying "I remember you! remember you Raggedy Doctor!" in her wedding dress — was no less affecting than anything Davies has ever done. and that it came at the end of plot in which the characters moved around in space time like a spirograph made it, if anything, more acute.

Plus, I fancy Rory.

Quite how Moffat managed in 2010 to reboot Doctor Who and reinvent Sherlock Holmes — in Sherlock — is a mystery. One presumes that he simply ran from one to the other, greatcoat flapping, in the way that Holmes ran across London in pursuit of murderer.

When the first episode went out on July 25 it entered with the style and velocity of tiger in Top Gun. It inspired something seemingly impossible: instant loyalty. And in Benedict Cumberbatchs Holmes -long-legged, slumped in a chair, bored by anything less than imminent peril --- it launched a hero as watchable (the camera just ate his blunt. creamy, sloe-eyed face up) as he was quotable ("A serial killer! love those! There's always something to look forward toil 'It was TV as big as cinema. Tinema. CV.

Disclaimer: These citations are created on-the-fly using primitive parsing techniques. You should double-check all citations. Send feedback to whovian@cuttingsarchive.org

  • APA 6th ed.: Moran, Caitlin (2010-12-18). This year politics was blockbuster TV, with the same must-watch import as Hollyoaks. The Times p. 10.
  • MLA 7th ed.: Moran, Caitlin. "This year politics was blockbuster TV, with the same must-watch import as Hollyoaks." The Times [add city] 2010-12-18, 10. Print.
  • Chicago 15th ed.: Moran, Caitlin. "This year politics was blockbuster TV, with the same must-watch import as Hollyoaks." The Times, edition, sec., 2010-12-18
  • Turabian: Moran, Caitlin. "This year politics was blockbuster TV, with the same must-watch import as Hollyoaks." The Times, 2010-12-18, section, 10 edition.
  • Wikipedia (this article): <ref>{{cite news| title=This year politics was blockbuster TV, with the same must-watch import as Hollyoaks | url=http://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/This_year_politics_was_blockbuster_TV,_with_the_same_must-watch_import_as_Hollyoaks | work=The Times | pages=10 | date=2010-12-18 | via=Doctor Who Cuttings Archive | accessdate=26 April 2024 }}</ref>
  • Wikipedia (this page): <ref>{{cite web | title=This year politics was blockbuster TV, with the same must-watch import as Hollyoaks | url=http://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/This_year_politics_was_blockbuster_TV,_with_the_same_must-watch_import_as_Hollyoaks | work=Doctor Who Cuttings Archive | accessdate=26 April 2024}}</ref>


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