Almost as much as the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary special, “The Day of the Doctor,” I’ve been looking forward to An Adventure in Space and Time, the Mark Gatiss-penned docudrama about the creation and making of Doctor Who back in the early ’60s, lo those 50 years ago. And now, friends, you won’t have to wait much longer to see it, because BBC America is showing the TV movie on Friday, November 22nd at 9:00pm ET/PT.
The film follows the inception of a sci-fi television phenomenon and how it almost didn’t get beyond the pilot. In truth, it’s about the least likely success story in television history. Brian Cox plays Sydney Newman, the Canadian who was head of BBC Drama at the time, Jessica Raine (from the DW episode “Hide” last season as well as Call the Midwife) plays young producer Verity Lambert, the first woman producer at the BBC, and Sacha Dhawan plays Waris Hussein, the young Indian director who helmed the first serial: certainly, not the kind of people making programs at BBC at the time. Add to that mix veteran tough guy actor William Hartnell (played by David Bradley, who really looks perfect), who’d never before had the chance to be a leading man, and you’ve got an incredibly compelling story.
They’ve even made some FANTASTIC vintage-style posters for the movie as well which you bet I’m sharing below.
Again, the movie airs at 9:00pm ET/PT on BBC America. I’m stoked! Are you stoked? Let us know in the comments.
Bradley looks perfect, much better than I imagined. Still, it’s hard to unsee his performance in The Red Wedding.
Holy smokes, that guy’s practically a carbon copy of Hartnell! And it would have been carbon copying, being the 1960’s. Also, carbon based life forms don’t really photocopy too well, as decades of butt-xeroxing has demonstrated all too well. Interestingly, ‘butt-xerox’ was actually suggested by my onscreen keyboard app as I was typing ‘butt’. Nice to know it’s well entrenched in the lexicon.