LONDON. — Older men are walking a little straighter this week with the news that the prized role of Dr Who is to go to Brian Blessed.
Blessed, 45, will take over from Peter Davison, 31, as the sixth Dr Who in the program's 20-year run when the present series ends.
Attracting Blessed to the part is a coup for the BBC. Since he won acclaim as PC Fancy Smith in the long-running Z Cars, Blessed has had great success on both stage and screen in Britain.
Among his triumphs have been Banquo to Peter O'Toole's controversial MacBeth, Augustus Caesar in I Claudius, the King of the Birdmen in Flash Gordon and Deuteronymy in the smash musical Cats. But it was as the rumbustious but lovable winged man in Flash Gordon that Blessed showed his likely Dr Who personage — noisier and more irrascible than recent inhabitants of the role, but with a flashing, warming smile which will surely charm even Daleks away from extermination.
In the mid-70s Dr Who was one of the hottest of all BBC properties. Recently, its ratings have dropped. Peter Davison insists he is leaving of his own accord before he becomes type-cast. Nonetheless, by building the future of the show around Brian Blessed, the BBC is making every effort to win back audiences.
Aficionados are already saying Blessed can be the best Dr Who since the redoubtable Jon Pertwee.
Disclaimer: These citations are created on-the-fly using primitive parsing techniques. You should double-check all citations. Send feedback to whovian@cuttingsarchive.org
