Toby Jones stars as Alfred Hitchock in a BBC Two drama about his relationship with the model and actress Tippi Hedren. The Girl, which airs on Wednesday 26th December at 9pm, also features Imelda Staunton as Hitchcock's wife, Alma, and Penelope Wilton as Peggy Robertson, who was his production assistant.

Peter Capaldi triumphed at the British Comedy Awards, winning the Best TV Comedy Actor gong for the role of Malcolm Tucker in The Thick of It. Among the other nominees he beat to the title was Hugh Bonneville. [BBC News, 13 Dec 2012]

Steven Moffat's first TV work, the teen drama Press Gang, will be one of the shows feted when ITV celebrates 30 years of children's television on the commercial channel. A one-hour documentary marking the 30th anniversary of Children's ITV - which was launched on 3rd January 1983 - will be shown on ITV1 on Saturday 29th December at 6.30pm, and between 9.25am and 6pm on Saturday 5th and Sunday 6th January CITV (which started on 11th March 2006) will be showing a selection of its iconic shows, including the first and last episodes of Press Gang. Two episodes of Children's Ward - which was produced by Russell T Davies, who also wrote for it - are to be shown as well, as is an episode of Button Moon, whose theme music was co-composed by Peter Davison. [Radio Times, 18 Dec 2012]

Yasmin Paige returns as Beth Mitchell when the second series of BBC Three comedy Pramface begins its run of six episodes on Tuesday 8th January at 10pm.

The two-part BBC Four drama Spies of Warsaw - starring David Tennant - starts on Wednesday 9th January at 9pm. Set in 1937, it features Tennant as Colonel Jean-Francois Mercier, the French military attaché in Warsaw. With Hitler's shadow looming over mainland Europe, Mercier is grossly suspicious of the German military's intentions, but must juggle his formal duties at stifling diplomatic functions with the often death-defying realities of espionage. The drama also stars Burn Gorman as French bureaucrat Jourdain.

The Symphonic Spectacular in Sydney, Australia was hosted by Alex Kingston and Mark Williams, who were interviewed beforehand by local Breakfast show Today; the Sydney Opera House itself has provided a behind-the-scenes video featuring the presenters and composer Murray Gold. Meanwhile, Dudley Simpson was a special guest at the show on Wednesday - the classic series composer met up with his modern series counterpart Gold and conductor Ben Foster, and was also presented with a print of all eleven Doctors, celebrating his contribution to over 250 episodes of the series. [Dallas Jones/Doctor Who Club of Australia, 21 Dec 2012]

A variety of Who names have been nominated in the 2013 WhatsOnStage Awards: Billie Piper is up for The DIGITAL THEATRE Best Actress in a Play for The Effect; her husband Laurence Fox, alongside Arthur Darvill, Cian Barry, Jolyon Coy, Matthew Lewis and Lewis Reeves, are nominated for both the Best Play Revival and The IMAIL Best Ensemble Performance awards for Our Boys; Best Supporting Actress in a Play - Fenella Woolgar (Hedda Gabler) and Helen McCrory (The Last of the Haussmans); Best Supporting Actor in a Play - Adrian Scarborough (Hedda Gabler), Mark Gatiss (The Recruiting Officer) and Tim McInnerny (Scenes from an Execution); The STAR Best Actress in a Musical - Imelda Staunton (Sweeney Todd); The JO HUTCHISON INTERNATIONAL Best Solo Performance - Simon Callow (A Christmas Carol). Voting remains open until Thursday 31st January 2013.

While on the subject of award nominations, the writer Robert Shearman is in the running for the Short Story Collection Of The Year title in the This Is Horror Awards 2012 for his anthology Remember Why You Fear Me. Voting is open until 12.01am GMT on Friday 4th January 2013.

In Memoriam:

The newsreader Kenneth Kendall has died at the age of 88. In 1955, he achieved the distinction of becoming the BBC's first in-vision newsreader, and 11 years later he made a cameo appearance in Doctor Who, playing himself as a newsreader in episode 4 of the story The War Machines. He also had a cameo as a newsreader in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. After leaving the world of news, Kendall moved to the Isle of Wight, where he ran an art gallery. [The Independent, 14 Dec 2012]

Neil Gaiman will be in Tasmania next month as part of the music-and-arts-centred Mona Foma Festival. An Evening With Neil Gaiman is to be held at the Theatre Royal in Hobart on Sunday 20th January. (NB: Although the event is described as being suitable for all ages, explicit language is used in the theatre's web page about the show.)

In addition, Gaiman's urban fantasy TV series Neverwhere, which aired on BBC Two in 1996 and had an accompanying novelisation, is currently being made for BBC Radio 4 and Radio 4 Extra. Adapted by Dirk Maggs, who is also co-directing it, and with a cast that includes Christopher Lee, Bernard Cribbins, Anthony Head, Yasmin Paige, David Harewood, Sophie Okonedo, Don Gilet, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Andrew Sachs, the six-parter is scheduled to be broadcast during the early part of 2013. [neilgaiman.com, 28 Nov 2012]

Sheila Hancock and Lee Evans are to star in a new comedy at Wyndham's Theatre in London next year. Barking In Essex tells the tale of a gangster fresh out of jail and returning to his dysfunctional family to retrieve more than £3.5m. It has been written by Clive Exton and will be directed by Harry Burton, with Evans playing the "dim-witted idiot of the criminal underbelly" Darnley and Hancock playing Emmie, described as Darnley's "Rottweiler mother". The production previews from Friday 6th September, opening on Monday 16th September. [BBC News, 30 Nov 2012]

A new play by David Haig that was due to open at the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh next May before transferring to Chichester Festival Theatre has run into casting problems. Pressure, which is about the meteorologist Captain James Stagg, who had the task of predicting the weather ahead of the D-Day landings in the Second World War, has been postponed until spring 2014 while the search to find "the right person" to play Stagg continues. [The Stage, 30 Nov 2012]

Jessica Hynes and Olivia Colman have both been nominated as Best TV Comedy Actress in this year's British Comedy Awards. Colman has, in fact, been nominated twice - firstly for Rev and secondly for Twenty Twelve, with Hynes's nomination also being for Twenty Twelve. The spoof "mockumentary" about this year's London Olympics, which had a voiceover commentary by David Tennant, is itself up for Best Sitcom against, among others, The Thick Of It, which starred Peter Capaldi, and both Capaldi and Hugh Bonneville are vying for the title of Best TV Comedy Actor for their roles in those two respective shows. Meanwhile, David Mitchell is in the running for Best Male Television Comic and he is also among the nominees for the publicly-voted King and Queen of Comedy. The ceremony will be shown live on Channel 4 on Wednesday 12th December. [BBC News, 2 Dec 2012]

Tamsin Greig and Anne Reid will be among the guest stars appearing in a new darkly comic anthology that has just started filming for BBC Two. Written by Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, the six-part series, which has the working title of Inside No 9, will take a look at what goes on behind closed doors at six very different residences sharing the number 9. [BBC Media Centre, 3 Dec 2012]

Sheridan Smith - companion Lucie Miller to the Eighth Doctor in the Big Finish audio dramas - is to return as mystery-solver Jonathan Creek's sidekick Joey Ross in a new episode of the BBC One crime-comedy-drama. Filming on The Clue of the Savant's Thumb, written by David Renwick, starts later this month, with the 90-minute Jonathan Creek special due to air next Easter. [BBC Media Centre, 5 Dec 2012]

Doctor Who is once again up for one of the American People's Choice Awards after making it on to the 2013 short list of nominees for Favorite Sci-Fi/Fantasy TV Show.

It faces competition from Once Upon A Time, Supernatural (which beat Doctor Who last year in the same category), The Vampire Diaries, and The Walking Dead. The nominees for all 48 categories in the CBS awards show honouring TV, film, and music were announced yesterday at The Paley Center in Beverly Hills.

People can vote as often they like until Thursday 13th December, and the award winners will be revealed on CBS on Wednesday 9th January 2013.

Both The Sarah Jane Adventures and Steven Moffat were winners at The Writers' Guild Of Great Britain Awards today.

The Curse of Clyde Langer, which was written by Phil Ford and featured in the final series of The Sarah Jane Adventures, was named Best Children's TV Script, beating fellow nominees 4 O'Clock Club: Maths and Horrible Histories.

And although Sherlock lost out to Appropriate Adult in the Best Short-Form TV Drama category, co-creator Steven Moffat, who was cited alongside Mark Gatiss and Stephen Thompson for the reimagining of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's detective classic, was given the Writers' Guild Special Award For Outstanding Writing.

Today's event took place at The Tabernacle in London.

The Doctor Who Adventure Game The Gunpowder Plot triumphed at this evening's BAFTA Cymru Awards.

It won the Digital Creativity And Games prize, with the combined effort of the BBC Wales Interactive Team, Sumo Digital, and Revolution Software beating Becoming Human and Coridor 5.

However, both Doctor Who and The Sarah Jane Adventures lost out in all the categories for which they had been nominated.

The Impossible Astronaut, which opened Series 6 of Doctor Who, was beaten to the Television Drama title by Shirley, the BBC Two production directed by Colin Teague and with music by Ben Foster that charted the rise to fame of Shirley Bassey, and the Series 6 finale The Wedding of River Song, which was up for a gong in the Sound category, was trumped by the Matthew Rhys film Patagonia. Meanwhile, The Curse of Clyde Langer, from the fifth and final series of The Sarah Jane Adventures, saw the Children's Programme title go to S4C's Dim Byd.

Also missing out were Eve Myles for Actress in Baker Boys and Helen Raynor, who was co-nominated (with Gary Owen) for the Writer prize, again for Baker Boys. Those categories went to, respectively, Sharon Morgan for the film Resistance and Eddie Butler for Lions '71.

Tonight's ceremony was hosted by Alex Jones at the Millennium Centre in Cardiff.

Karen Gillan has moved back to Scotland and back home with her parents: "It's a really funny thought having all these crazy experiences on Doctor Who, then always seeming to end up back in my old childhood bedroom, with my childhood posters. I've got a Muse one, from when I was like an angsty teen. And I've got a Daniel O'Donnell calendar, which I thought would be really funny when I was younger, from 2004 or something. I lie there and I am like, has all that just really happened? Or did I just imagine it?" [Daily Record, 24 Sep 2012]

Arthur Darvill, currently appearing in Our Boys at The Duchess Theatre in London, recalls his first theatre appearance: "I was confronted with 1,000 people. I thought, 'Oh my God, what am I doing?' I've been so nervous during shows that I've walked offstage at the end and immediately forgotten everything that I've just done. You hear stories about stage fright, but if you know that someone's experienced it, you don't mention it – just in case. You never know what can set it off. It is a terrifying thing walking out for the first time, but it's funny how quickly that fades. Later, you start to crave that fear." [Guardian, 21 Sep 2012]

Colin Baker is to appear as Nurse Nellie in this year's Sleeping Beauty pantomime at Bournemouth Pavilion Theatre: "Nurse Nellie is a dame, and dames do what dames do which is to be 'mumsy', and inept, and funny, and hopefully create a few laughs along the way. I did dame three or four times before they asked me to do villain again, which I've been doing for the last six or seven years. I've been asking Martin Dodd (of UK Productions) if I can do dame again, and he said how do you fancy doing it in Bournemouth? I said, yes please!" He also commented on how much he likes the current Doctor: "I love Matt Smith. When I heard they were casting a 12-year-old I got very depressed as I like my old Doctors. He may only be 12, but inside there is a 900-year-old Time Lord and I absolutely believe it. I think he's fantastic and I love watching it." [What's On Stage, 24 Sep 2012]

Former actor Michael Cashman received the Lifetime Achievement honour at the European Diversity Awards 2012, held at The Savoy in London. Cashman, now a Labour MEP for the West Midlands and the party's human-rights spokesman in the European Parliament, said he was "very happy and humbled" to accept it.

Hugh Bonneville is to play the title role of Mr Stink in a BBC One adaptation of the children's novel by David Walliams. The one-hour family comedy, adapted by Walliams and Simon Nye, begins filming in October and is set to be transmitted later this year. Bonneville said: "I'm delighted to be adding my own whiff to the odour that emanates from David Walliams... and his very funny, touching, and thought-provoking story." Walliams, who will play the Prime Minister in it, added: "I am thrilled that Hugh is playing Mr Stink. He is one of the most popular and talented actors around, and is the perfect person to bring out the character's humour and sadness." [BBC Media Centre, 21 Sep 2012]

Make-up designer Neill Gorton explains what led him to take up the career of creating prosthetics: "We used to do family trips to Blackpool where they had a Doctor Who exhibition. Now, when, as a kid, I saw Davros on the TV, I remember thinking, 'Where did they get this incredibly ugly old man?' Then, at the exhibition, they had a Davros mask on display. That was when it dawned on me... it was a mask! Then it sank in that someone had to make it, and that is my earliest recollection of wanting to do what I do." [Scotsman, 27 Sep 2012]

With the imminent return of cult sci-fi comedy Red Dwarf to our TV screens, two of its stars have spoken of their wish for a Doctor Who crossover. Craig Charles, aka Dave Lister, said: "I think it'd be great if, for one scene, we could be beaming somewhere and suddenly we'd be on the Tardis with the Doctor. Then we could shake our heads, say 'nah', and just beam back out again." Fellow Dwarfer Danny John-Jules, who plays The Cat, added: "I think Doug Naylor should write in one of the old Doctors. Sylvester McCoy or someone. And then we could have an episode with one of those guys in it. It would be funny." [Radio Times, 25 Sep 2012]

Imelda Staunton and Tim Pigott-Smith are up for gongs in this year's Theatre Awards UK. Staunton is nominated for Best Performance In A Musical (Sweeney Todd) and Pigott-Smith is in the running for Best Performance In A Play (King Lear). The awards ceremony takes place on Sunday 28th October at the Guildhall in London. [The Stage, 27 Sep 2012]

Voting has now opened for the eighteenth National Television Awards, and as per the norm Doctor Who and its stars have been nominated for awards.

The show itself has been nominated for the Drama category, but is up against a formidable number of shows this year, with some 35 to choose from. The list includes the other Steven Moffat success Sherlock, BBC medical stalwarts Casualty and Holby City, Merlin, and last Christmas's showpiece drama Great Expectations. ITV1's contributions include Lewis, Whitechapel, Law & Order UK and last year's winner Downton Abbey.

Matt Smith is up for Drama Performance: Male; there are 29 nominations in this category, which include Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman (Sherlock), Kevin Whately (Lewis) and Sir Kenneth Branagh (Wallander). Other Who-related nominees include Marc Warren (Without You), Colin Morgan (Merlin), Hugh Bonneville (Downton Abbey), Daniel Mays (Mrs Biggs), and Martin Clunes (A Mother's Son).

Karen Gillan has slightly less to contend with for the Drama Performance: Female, with "just" 25 nominees, including Gillian Anderson (Great Expectations), Claire Danes (Homeland) and Emilia Fox (Silent Witness). Other Who-related names include Lesley Sharp and Suranne Jones (Scott and Bailey), and Sunetra Sarker (Casualty).

Who-related actors in other categories include Nina Wadia (Eastenders) in Serial Drama Performance, and Alexander Armstrong, Reggie Yates and Bradley Walsh as Entertainment Presenter.


Voting for the awards is made by the public, and takes place until Thursday 11th October. Up to four nominees from each of the categories with the most votes will then go forward to be included in the shortlist voting round (date to be announced). The ceremony itself will take place live from the O2 on ITV1 on 23rd January 2013.

The Sarah Jane Adventures is in the running for an award this year from The Writers' Guild of Great Britain.

The Curse of Clyde Langer, which was written by Phil Ford and was in the final series of the show, is nominated in the Best Children's TV Script category, facing competition from 4 O'Clock Club: Maths and Horrible Histories. The same SJA story is also up for a BAFTA Cymru award later this month.

Doctor Who failed to make the shortlist this year. It was nominated for Best TV Drama Series in 2009, 2010, and 2011 but didn't win in any of those years. However, Being Human, created and co-written by Toby Whithouse and which beat Doctor Who in 2009 and 2010, is once again nominated in that category. It is pitted against Scott & Bailey (starring Lesley Sharp and Suranne Jones) and Prisoners' Wives (whose supporting cast includes Iain Glen).

Meanwhile, Mark Gatiss, Steven Moffat, and Stephen Thompson are in the running to walk away with the Best Short-Form TV Drama trophy for Sherlock, which is up against Appropriate Adult and This Is England '88.

This year's awards ceremony takes place on Wednesday 14th November at The Tabernacle in London.

In 1975, Season 11 of Doctor Who won a guild award for best writing in a children's serial, and Series Three was named best TV series in the guild awards of 2007. The guild is a trade union for professional writers and the awards are regarded as special because they are from peers and colleagues.

Doctor Who scooped the Best Family Drama title last night for the third year in a row at the TV Choice Awards.

Series Six saw off stiff competition from Merlin, Glee, and Waterloo Road to take the prize, with showrunner Steven Moffat accepting the honour at the ceremony, which was held at The Dorchester in London.

Matt Smith and Karen Gillan, who had been nominated in the Best Actor and Best Actress categories, lost out to, respectively, Benedict Cumberbatch (for Sherlock) and Miranda Hart. Gillan was named Best Actress last year but it was a successive disappointment for Smith, who in 2011 was beaten in the Best Actor category by David Tennant for Single Father.

Sherlock, created by Moffat and Mark Gatiss, was named Best Drama Series at last night's awards.

Both Doctor Who and The Sarah Jane Adventures have been nominated in this year's BAFTA Cymru Awards.

The Doctor Who Series 6 opening episode The Impossible Astronaut is in the running for the Television Drama title, while the Series 6 finale The Wedding of River Song is up for a gong in the Sound category. The Curse of Clyde Langer, from the fifth and final series of The Sarah Jane Adventures, is nominated for the Children's Programme award.

The Doctor Who Adventure Game The Gunpowder Plot - available free to TV licence-holders in the UK and for sale elsewhere globally - is up for the Digital Creativity And Games title.

Meanwhile, Eve Myles is nominated for the Actress award for Baker Boys - a programme for which Helen Raynor is co-nominated (with Gary Owen) for the Writer prize.

Last year, Doctor Who won two of its categories and The Sarah Jane Adventures was presented with the Children's Programme honour.

This year's winners will be announced at a ceremony to be hosted by Alex Jones at the Millennium Centre in Cardiff on Sunday 30th September. A limited number of tickets are available to the public and are on sale from the centre.