Doctor Who and Madonna’s gusset

Doctor Who Christmas special: apart from David Morrissey, who I could happily see much more of, it was all a bit silly, really, lurching from one spectacle to another with tentative excuses, like a BBC version of a really bad Hollywood action movie. The first couple of series after the advent of Russell T Davies were worth making a TV date with, and David Tennant’s gawky charm is all very well, but the storytelling now is often flimsy, with honourable exceptions like the Blink episode. The fact that it’s for children is no excuse; it is emotionally manipulative, but without a consistent underlying intelligence, so when the music blares and you’re presented with a scene that is obviously meant to make you feel something, you just think, Did I miss something?

For the last few years Doctor Who has been suffering from a mild case of Madonna’s gusset; that is, when everybody tells you something’s worth watching, so you do, and then are disappointed. Madonna’s gusset syndrome was named after the nasty pink leotard she wore in a video for one of her entirely unmemorable songs. The definition of her buns was almost universally admired, at least in the kind of magazines I read, but that still didn’t make her look like someone you’d want to get sticky with. I just found myself wishing she’d put a skirt on it.

David Morrissey: mmm.... Those sorrowful dark blue-grey eyes, the sensitive mouth, the slight ruggedness... I remember him being great in The Deal, and a brilliant counterpoint to Michael Sheen’s impersonation of a brittle and weightless Tony Blair. Sheen’s perfectly equipped to play TB: when he acts there’s no core to him, he’s a perfectly observed, weightless exterior, whereas David M has a sympathetic gravitas. If only David M was playing the ghost in The Ghost, rather than blooming Ewan McGregor, who will wreck it, or rather, gently lay waste to it by being smug and uncompelling, as he has been in everything I’ve seen him in since Trainspotting, when he still had something to prove. With David Morrissey as the doomed writer The Ghost would be a much better film.