Best of the bank holiday ... Catherine Tate as Donna with David Tennant as The Doctor. Photograph: Adrian Rogers/BBC
Another weekend, another bank holiday. In Scotland, there aren't as many bank holidays as there are in England and when I was wee, we'd look enviously across the border at them. (You can insert your own anti-Scottish remark here if you wish.) Bank holidays were one of those things that my mum says are "an English thing". Like Christmas and Easter and Bruce Forsyth.
Anyway, as well as attending the British Soap Awards - the highlight of which was the appearance of lovely and apparently ageless Linda Gray, who presented the Best Soap gong - I really enjoyed Doctor Who. The concluding part in Helen Raynor's Sontaran two-parter was thrilling, funny, great on character and with genuine jeopardy. Even its reliance on that old convention of the evil doppelganger (Evil Martha - like Good Martha but a bit sneery) didn't jar. Plus, I'm really enjoying Catherine Tate's Donna. The character is a world away from her one-note debut in The Runaway Bride and is really going on a journey - albeit one that is rumoured to end in tragedy. Not being the bit of the audience that wants the Doctor's companion to be traditional eye-candy, I'm all for sassy, brassy Donna. Tate is, as far as I'm concerned, confounding her critics completely. And the upcoming ep, The Doctor's Daughter, looks promising indeed. Or am I drunk?
In other news, I'm also excited about Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, am very sceptical of the claim in today's Independent that Gossip Girl has changed telly, and am slightly concerned that in Eastenders, being a gay is akin to being mentally unbalanced. Were Steven Beale's behaviour up until now not a cause for concern - kidnapping Ian, shooting Jane, spiriting Lucy away to a caravan to play with her mind - wait until he attempts to murder his granny. Homosexuality = mental illness. Discuss.
