Keeping it in the family

Mother and daughter Dame Diana Rigg and Rachael Stirling are to star side-by-side in a Doctor Who adventure to be broadcast next year. Dame Diana is probably still best known for her role as high-kicking Mrs Emma Peel in two seasons of The Avengers during the Sixties. She has, of course, done much since including starring opposite James Wilby in the memorable BBC psychological drama Mother Love. She also played Lady Dedlock, to excellent effect, in the 1985 version of Bleak House, as well as appearing alongside Charles Dance and Emilia Fox in ITV’s adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca. Rachael, on the other hand, achieved notoriety appearing alongside Keeley Hawes in lesbian drama Tipping The Velvet and has more recently been seen in the BBC Four retelling of DH Lawrence’s Women In Love (pictured) and its prequel The Rainbow. It is the first time the pair have worked together on screen. The actresses will play “a mother and daughter with a dark secret” up against Matt Smith’s Doctor and new companion Jenna-Louise Coleman. Filming of the story began this week at Roath Lock Studios in Cardiff.

Meanwhile, over on the other side, Matt’s immediate Time Lord predecessor David Tennant will play a detective in new drama Broadchurch, about the death of a young boy in a seaside town, ITV1 has announced. The eight-part series has been penned by Doctor Who and Torchwood writer Chris Chibnall. He wrote the real-time episode 42 in which David’s Doctor had to prevent a spaceship from crashing into the Sun and, more recently, the two-part Silurian adventure for Matt’s Doctor. Tennant leads an ensemble cast featuring Rev actress Olivia Colman and Will Mellor, best known for the interminable Two Pints Of Lager And A Packet Of Crisps and, latterly, White Van Man although, to his credit, he did once appear in an early episode of Merlin! Arthur Darvill, who plays current Doctor Who Matt Smith’s sidekick Rory, will appear as the town priest. See what I mean about keeping it in the family? Nepotism just ain’t what it used to be! Still, something to look forward to on the independent channel, bearing in mind that the much-delayed transmission of the fifth season of Primeval, screening at a ridiculously early time, is currently ITV1’s best show!!

Taking care of Carey

Five years ago, many red-blooded Doctor Who fans were clamouring for actress Carey Mulligan to become the Doctor’s next companion after she almost single-handedly carried the episode Blink. It was not to be. Freema Agyeman was replaced by Catherine Tate and Carey’s character, Sally Sparrow, became but a birdcall in the garden of fond memories! Miss Mulligan has, of course, gone on to bigger things, though not necessarily greater. It’s unlikely we’ll ever see her back in Doctor Who, even though its current show-runner, Steven Moffat, created her character in a short story for an annual before embellishing it into a full-blown television episode.

I first noticed Carey in 2005, two years before her appearance in Series Three of Doctor Who, when she took on the role of Ada Clare, one of the wards in the court case of Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce, in Andrew Davies’ excellent BBC adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Bleak House. I thought her extraordinarily pretty but predicted Anna Maxwell Martin, who played another of the wards, Esther Summerson, would go on to be the more successful of the two female leads. I was wrong, possibly. Their stories aren’t over yet and it depends how you define success. Anna’s worked solidly in this country while Carey has tried her hand at working in Hollywood. America suits some better than others. It may mean bigger bucks but the jobs aren’t necessarily as satisfying.

Carey Mulligan’s portrayal of the gifted-but-emotionally-impressionable Jenny, in the BBC-funded An Education, was the breakthrough role which brought her to the attention of American producers such as Oliver Stone. It wasn’t long before she found herself starring opposite Michael Douglas, playing his daughter of all things, in the Wall Street sequel Money Never Sleeps. I know the tagline of the original was “greed is good” but surely Catherine Zeta Jones must be handful enough?! The image above shows Carey on the set of neo-noir road movie Drive, wearing shades - I suspect - not to look cool but to hide tired eyes from the glare of paparazzi! Should you want to see her naked, and I know you all hanker after nothing else, look no further than Steve McQueen’s tale of sex-addiction, Shame, in which she plays Michael Fassbender’s saucy sister Sissy. To be fair, there’s much more to this psychological drama than Mulligan’s mammaries, as gratifying as it may be to finally catch a glimpse!

If you can’t get enough of her loving (and who can?), Carey Hannah can also be seen, brassiere intact, opposite the likes of Jim Broadbent and Colin Firth in And When Did You Last See Your Father?; as Kitty Bennet in the film version of Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice, alongside Keira Knightley, Brenda Blethyn and Donald Sutherland; and in an ITV1 adaptation of Northanger Abbey as Isabella Thorpe. To bring her story smack-bang up to date, she has just finished working with Titanic heartthrob Leonardo DiCaprio and Romeo + Juliet director Baz Luhrmann on a remake of The Great Gatsby, due out on Christmas Day, playing the role Mia Farrow brought to life in the 1974 film version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, the superficial Daisy Buchanan. Give me your answer, do!

Decency’s Jigsaw

If, like me, you found yourself falling for the innocent charms of the Charles Dickens heroine Ada Clare, in the BBC One adaptation of “Bleak House” six years ago, or thought that the Steven Moffat creation Sally Sparrow, in the “Doctor Who” story “Blink” some two years later, might make a more interesting companion than some of the other young ladies to occupy the TARDIS, then you could’ve done worse than tune into BBC Two last night at 8:30pm for the network television premier of the film that finally made a name for ascending actress Carey Mulligan.

“An Education”, made three years ago, is a quirky coming-of-age drama set in London in the early Sixties. Mulligan was Oscar-nominated for her breakthrough role as a gifted 16-year-old schoolgirl, Jenny, whose life is one of drab-suburban conformity. Her strict father, played by Alfred Molina, is determined she shouldn’t be distracted from her studies, and gain the place at Oxford University of which he dreams, by things like going out and having fun! But a chance meeting with a worldly 35-year-old playboy, David, played by Peter Sarsgaard, changes everything forever.

Oozing charm and sophistication, David wins over Jenny’s parents and is soon whisking the impressionable girl off on ‘educational’ weekends away. Well, they do say travel broadens the mind! The situation is perhaps rather dubious but, to a teenager, seems very glamorous and romantic, thanks to smooth-talking David and his good-time friends played by Dominic Cooper and Rosamund Pike. Inevitably, though, the unconventional arrangement can’t last… “An Education” also features the excellent Olivia Williams, recently seen on ITV1 solving intriguing police-procedural “Case Sensitive”, as Jenny’s enlightened English Literature teacher and “Sense and Sensibility” champion Emma Thompson as her hardened headmistress.

Bleak to Blink

“Blink” is the second “Doctor Who” story in a row based on a previously existing tale. It makes you wonder if they’re short of ideas! Whereas the two-part adventure written by Paul Cornell is based on the novel of the same name, but with added scarecrows, the latest episode originated as a short story in the “2006 Doctor Who Annual” and was called ““What I Did on My Christmas Holidays” by Sally Sparrow”. Sally, in the original, is but twelve years old and conscious of having to wear braces! She has a younger brother called Tim which seems to be a popular name in “Doctor Who” these days!! Not a bad name, by any means!!! The short story is simpler, aimed at a younger audience, and much more interested in the time paradox than its TV equivalent with added statues. It was originally a ninth Doctor story without Rose. Writer Steven Moffat captures his character well, as in “The Empty Child”. It’s implied, at the end, that Sally becomes the Doctor’s travelling companion for a while and isn’t left behind like the older character in the updated version, as played to quiet perfection by Carey Mulligan.

I first came across Carey when she played Ada Clare in Andrew Davies’ 2005 adaptation of Dickens’ finest novel “Bleak House”. RTD has employed a fair number of actors from this production in “Doctor Who”, and its spin-off “Torchwood”, over the last few years. Anna Maxwell Martin, in “The Long Game”, appeared in “Doctor Who” before she was seen as Esther Summerson in the Dickens’ classic whereas Burn Gorman was cast as Owen Harper in “Torchwood” after Russell had seen him as Guppy in “Bleak House”. Catherine Tate, Donna in “The Runaway Bride”, had a (thankfully) minor role as Mrs. Chadband in the Dickens’ production while Anne Reid, Florence Finnegan in “Smith and Jones”, played Mrs. Rouncewell. Which brings us up-to-date with Ms Mulligan. Her big break was as Kitty Bennet in the film version of Jane Austen’s “Pride & Prejudice”, alongside Keira Knightley, Brenda Blethyn and Donald Sutherland no less! And, since “Bleak House”, Carey has returned to Austen, in the same season of films in which Billie Piper also appeared, in an ITV1 adaptation of “Northanger Abbey” as Isabella Thorpe.

The usual new age “Doctor Who” philosophy was as implicit in the latest episode as in all the others, despite the virtual absence of the lead characters, that in order to form a meaningful relationship with another human being one must first let go of obsessions. In other words, older “Doctor Who” fans… grow up! Hand your DVDs and transcripts back to the Doctor, stop searching for “Easter Eggs”, in order that you may free yourselves of the encumbrance of an old TV show to hold hands with your lover!! Bit patronising, really, don’t you think, Steven? Aren’t the writers biting the hands that feed? Don’t they want us long-in-the-tooth fans to watch in case we’re a little over-critical of the series’ oh-so-many shortcomings?!! I might just take their advice and switch off! As understatedly beautiful as Carey undoubtedly was as Sally, though, she was upstaged in just one scene. Louis Mahoney, as Old Billy Shipton, stole the show, for me, as he talked of the Doctor and of time travel with his tongue firmly in his cheek but with the added pathos that it was on his last day on this Earth.

"Bleak House", then and now!

It's difficult to choose a stand out performance from the latest television adaptation of "Bleak House" by Charles Dickens, when they were all so uniformally excellent, but, if pushed, I would have to say newcomer Burn Gorman as Mr. Guppy (pictured) stole the show. He had the voice, the facial mannerisms, the body language, all off to a fine art. The only thing he didn't do was wipe his hands in the table cloth while first proposing to Esther Summerson, as Jonathan Moore did in the same role twenty years ago!

It's been difficult to avoid comparison with the production from 1985 as it was this earlier version which first brought the story to my attention, despite already being a fan of costume drama and the novels of Dickens. Denholm Elliot brought more grit to his portrayal of John Jarndyce in the mid-Eighties while Denis Lawson, in turn, brought much humanity to a truly good-natured human being.

Both versions of "Bleak House" featured a comedian but in different roles! Charlie Drake was Smallweed in the older dramatisation; Johnny Vegas played Krook in the serial which concluded its eight-week, fifteen episode, run yesterday evening. Both versions featured actresses better known for cult roles in the same part!! Diana Rigg, Mrs. Emma Peel in Sixties classic "The Avengers", played Lady Dedlock previously while Gillian Anderson, Dana Scully in US SF series "The X Files", portrayed her on this occasion.

For anyone who has missed what is, without doubt, the drama of the year, there is an opportunity to see the final two episodes again this Sunday afternoon or view the entire serial on BBC FOUR over two nights at the end of the month. Failing that, I thoroughly recommend investing in the DVD release available from the end of February, next year.