View source for You've got to love the cheek of Doctor Who

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| publication = Waitrose Weekend  
| file = 2017-04-27 Waitrose Weekend 0001.jpg
| px = 450
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| date = 2017-04-27
| author = Paul Kirkley
| pages = 41
| language = English 
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A round-up of the week's TV

Doctor Who

Saturday, BBC One

You've got to love the cheek of Doctor Who. What other 54-year-old TV show would have the chutzpah to call the first episode of its latest run 'The Pilot' - and then deliver something so new and minty-fresh that it totally justifies the gag?

Unlike other dramas - where, let's face it, you've got three series, tops, before things start to get a bit same-old - Doctor Who thrives on change: you could argue every week is a reboot, and every few years it delights in chucking out all its old baggage and starting again with the simple story of a girl (it's nearly always a girl) stumbling across a mad man with a magical box.

This time around that girl is Bill Potts (a warm and sparky performance from newcomer Pearl Mackie), a canteen worker at the university where the Doctor (Peter Capaldi, right) has taken a teaching job, assisted by Matt Lucas as his sort-of-robot butler.

Bill took longer than usual to work out what the Doctor's magical box actually is and when he explained that it is, in fact, 'the gateway to everything that ever was, or ever can be', she responded as any sensible girl would - by asking where the loo was. It was typical of an episode that delivered the show's trademark mix of wit, wonder and behind-the-sofa scares (killer puddles, anyone?).

With the Time Lord having adopted Bill as his pupil, Saturday's fun, frothy second episode, written by Frank Cottrell-Boyce, propelled our heroes forward in time to a world run by "emoji robots' ('We're in the utopia of vacuous teens,' groaned the Doctor) who kill you with a ☺.

Capaldi, who has jettisoned his initial 'Malcolm Tucker in space' approach in favour of a more of a kindly mad uncle, is firmly in the front rank of Time Lords, and I'll be sorry to see him go. But then the TARDIS will return next year with a new Doctor, a new showrunner (Broadchurch's Chris Chibnall replacing Steven Moffat) and the whole mad, magnificent fairground ride will start afresh all over again.

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