The shortlist for this year's TV Choice Awards has been announced, with Doctor Who making it through to the final cut in the three categories for which it had originally been nominated.

The show is up for Best Family Drama against Glee, Merlin, and Waterloo Road. The Sarah Jane Adventures had been included in the initial round but didn't get enough votes to make the shortlist.

Matt Smith goes head to head with Martin Clunes, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Colin Morgan for Best Actor - a category that had also included Mad Dogs stars John Simm and Marc Warren in the qualifying round - while Karen Gillan will be pitted against Miranda Hart, Jaye Jacobs, and Freya Mavor for Best Actress, with Freema Agyeman, star of Law and Order: UK, falling by the wayside following the first round of voting.

Torchwood: Miracle Day had been nominated for Best Drama Series in the opening round but failed to get any further, although Sherlock, co-created by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, is a contender.

Voting in the shortlisted categories is open until midnight on Friday 13th July, with the winners being announced at a ceremony at The Dorchester in London on Monday 10th September.

The annual Portal Awards have been announced by Airlock Alpha, and sees Doctor Who represented in a number of categories:

• Matt Smith is once again nominated as Best Actor - as with last year he faces Andrew Lincoln (The Walking Dead) and Eddie McClintock (Warehouse 13), plus this year's nominees Jensen Ackles (Supernatural) and Peter Dinklage (Game of Thrones).
• Similarly, Karen Gillan is nominated in the Best Actress - she again faces last year's winner Anna Torv (Fringe) and runner-up Lena Headey (Game of Thrones), plus Joanne Kelly (Warehouse 13) and Amanda Tapping (Sanctuary).
• The third member of TARDIS crew, Arthur Darvill, also gets a look-in this year as he is nominated in the Best Supporting Actor; he'll face Robert Carlyle (Once Upon a Time), Aidan Gillen (Game of Thrones), last year's winner John Noble (Fringe), and Saul Rubinek (Warehouse 13).
• Series regular Alex Kingston is also nominated again in the Best Special Guest(TV) category for her appearance in Let's Kill Hitler - she out last year to Leonard Nimoy, who's in the list again this year for Fringe. The other nominees are Misha Collins (Supernatural), Jaime Murray (Warehouse 13) and Zachary Quinto (American Horror Story).
• The representative for Best Episode this year is taken up by A Good Man Goes To War, which will face Brave New World from Fringe, Emily Lake from Warehouse 13, Ghost of Harrenhal from Game of Thrones, and Slash Fiction from Supernatural. (Last year's nomination was also from the sixth series, The Doctor's Wife, with the nomination criteria for this year being shows broadcast since 1st June 2011!)
• This year's Best Series include Doctor Who, last year's winner Game of Thrones, Fringe, Supernatural and Warehouse 13.
• Elisabeth Sladen was nominated for the Gene Roddenberry Award last year, but lost out to J.J. Abrams; the late actress is nominated again this year and faces Doctor Who/Sherlock maestro Steven Moffat, as well as Edgar Rice Burroughs, DeForest Kelly, and George R.R. Martin.

The full list of categories are available from Airlock Alpha, and fans will be able to vote once a day between 25th June and 25th July.

Voting is now open for the sixteenth annual TV Choice Awards, with Doctor Who nominated in the same three categories it won last year.

The series itself has been nominated for Best Family Drama, which it won both last year and in 2010. This year again sees it up against spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures, as well as Waterloo Road, Merlin, Casualty, Holby City, Glee, Doc Martin, and Wild at Heart.

Matt Smith is up for his second award for Best Actor, a huge category of names that also includes Sherlock's Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, all four Mad Dogs stars John Simm, Marc Warren, Philip Glenister and Max Beesley, and Merlin's Colin Morgan.

Karen Gillan is up for her second Best Actress award, and again sees her pitted against former companion Freema Agyeman for Law and Order UK; others nominees include Gillian Anderson for Great Expectations, Emilia Fox for Silent Witness and Miranda Hart for Call the Midwife.

Additionally, Torchwood: Miracle Day has been nominated in the Best Drama Series category, which sees it up against Sherlock amongst many other shows, including Being Human, Dirk Gently and Downton Abbey.


Voting is open online until 15th June, with the Winners' Ceremony taking place on the 10th September at The Dorchester Hotel in London.


As well as the three awards won last year, previous ceremonies have seen Doctor Who win every year except 2009 (where it was beaten by Waterloo Road), both of the recent former Doctors voted Best Actor - Christopher Eccleston in 2005 and David Tennant in 2006-2008 - and sidekicks Billie Piper in 2006 and Catherine Tate in 2008 for Best Actress.

Steven Moffat received the Writer prize for the Sherlock episode A Scandal In Belgravia at this year's BAFTA Television Craft Awards, and said he was "genuinely, utterly thrilled" to be presented with it. His wife, Sue Vertue, tweeted: "The Moff wins! Hurrah for my husband @steven_moffat who's just won a #Bafta for #Sherlock. Love him!" The Mill had been nominated for its visual effects work on Doctor Who but it lost out to BlueBolt and Great Expectations. [BBC News, 14 May 2012]

Ahead of being presented with a Special BAFTA next Sunday, Moffat has given an interview to the film and television arts organisation about his career so far. In it, he takes a swipe at people who have problems with the complexity of his dramas Doctor Who and Sherlock. "There's been a weird backlash among, I presume, fairly stupid people about the fact the shows are complicated and clever, but they're both huge international hits. We make no apology. Don't expect to do the ironing; sit down, pay attention and think about it. Audiences like complexity. They follow intricately plotted soap operas all the time. It depresses me when people say, 'It's all far too clever,'" he states. [BAFTA Guru]

Catherine Tate has been signed up by Sky Arts to star in a new comedy called Psychobitches. Part of the channel's comedy and drama strand entitled Playhouse Presents, the 30-minute production will see her portraying Eva Braun and Edith Piaf. Also appearing in it will be Sheila Reid as Mother Teresa, while Sam Spiro will play Mary Whitehouse - a real-life enemy of Doctor Who during the classic era! It will be shown on Thursday 21st June at 9pm. [Sky Arts]

Production designer Michael Pickwoad gave a talk to the Friends of the Bodleian in Oxford in which he touched on his involvement with the show. A great admirer of historical architecture and construction methods, he mentioned that Nostell Priory in Yorkshire influenced a twin-column design that he used in Doctor Who. Pickwoad's early work included the film Withnail and I, which starred Paul McGann and Richard E Grant, who not only provided the voice of the Doctor in the animated webcast Scream of the Shalka but also played a version of the Doctor in the 1999 Comic Relief spoof The Curse of Fatal Death, which was written by Steven Moffat. Another notable film Pickwoad worked on was Let Him Have It, which starred Christopher Eccleston in one of his earliest acting roles. [The St James's Evening Post, 16 May 2012]

And speaking of the actor . . . During an interview ahead of his appearance as Creon in Antigone at the National's Olivier Theatre in London, Christopher Eccleston touched on his time as the Time Lord and why it was so brief. "I know what went on and the people who were involved know what went on – that's good enough for me. My conscience is completely clear," he said. Eccleston also praised the young fans of the show, saying: "I'm hugely grateful to the children who to this day come up and talk to me about the show." Antigone opens tomorrow and runs until Saturday 21st July. [The Telegraph, 16 May 2012]

Eccleston will be talking about his career and answering questions at the Olivier Theatre on Thursday 19th July. The one-hour interview - part of the In Conversation series - will be conducted by Al Senter.

Georgia Moffett has been speaking about stripping to her underwear as Geraldine Barclay in the farce What The Butler Saw. "I thought it was going to be a lot scarier than it is. Once the play starts I have to take my clothes off or the story doesn't work. But I am quite insecure about my figure, so it's amazing how liberating it feels after you have done it a couple of times. Obviously, I would prefer to wear clothes, but once I take them off at the beginning, I think, 'Oh, well, they've seen it now’, and I just carry on." The production, which also stars Samantha Bond and Tim McInnerny, is at the Vaudeville Theatre in London's West End until Saturday 25th August. [The Telegraph, 18 May 2012]

In Memoriam:

Legendary hairdresser Vidal Sassoon, who in 1963 created the distinctive geometric cut for the character of Susan, played by Carole Ann Ford, has died in Los Angeles at the age of 84. [BBC News, 10 May 2012]

The Doctor Who story The Doctor's Wife has won the Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation in this year's Nebula Awards, the annual event held by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

Although Doctor Who was nominated for the same award last year, this is the first time the programme has been successful. In winning the award the team beat several Holloywood movies including Martin Scorsese's Hugo and Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris.

The Doctor's Wife was the fourth episode of the 2011 series of Doctor Who. It was written by acclaimed author Neil Gaiman and directed by Richard Clark.

In accepting the award, Neil Gaiman paid tribute to the creators of Doctor Who. Posting on twitter he said
Richard Clark also took to twitter to express his delight at the award.
Show-runner Steven Moffat congratulated the team

Steven Moffat, Executive Producer and Lead Writer on Doctor Who, is to be presented with a special BAFTA award in recognition of his outstanding creative writing contribution to television.

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts is honouring the writer with the award, presented in memory of the playwright Dennis Potter, at the Television BAFTA's which take place at London's Royal Festival Hall on May 27.

Moffat began his television scripting career on Press Gang, the ITV Children's drama, in 1989. Since then he has gone onto to work on a wide variety of programmes including Stay Lucky, Joking Apart, Murder Most Horrid, Chalk, Jekyll and Coupling.

Steven Moffat was one of the first writers approached by Russell T Davies when he was planning the return of Doctor Who in 2005, leading to Moffat writing one of the most critically acclaimed stories of that first series, The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances. Moffat went on to write several more episodes of the show, creating aliens such as The Weeping Angels and characters such as River Song. When Davies left the series, Moffat was the obvious successor, taking the helm of the show for the introduction of Matt Smith as The Eleventh Doctor and creating the characters of Amy and Rory.

Running parallel to the success of Doctor Who, Moffat has, in collaboration with Mark Gatiss, created Sherlock, updating Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories and placing Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson's firmly in the 21st century.

In announcing the special award Tim Corrie, Chairman of BAFTA, said
Steven Moffat said he was thrilled with the award.
The award was won by Russell T Davies in 2005. Other recent winners include Alan Plater, Stephen Poliakoff and Lynda La Plante.

The Mill is up for an honour at this year's BAFTA Television Craft Awards for its work on Doctor Who.

It has been shortlisted in the Visual Effects category against BlueBolt (for BBC One's Great Expectations), Philip Dobree, Sophie Orde, and Dan Upton (Inside The Human Body, BBC One), and Burrell Durrant Hifle (Wonders Of The Universe, BBC Two).

Meanwhile, Steven Moffat's other major show, Sherlock, is nominated in three separate categories at the awards, which are held to recognise behind-the-scenes professionals in TV production - Editing: Fiction (Charlie Phillips, for A Scandal In Belgravia); Sound: Fiction (John Mooney, Jeremy Child, Howard Bargroff, and Doug Sinclair, for A Scandal In Belgravia); and Writer (Steven Moffat, for A Scandal In Belgravia).

Doctor Who has failed to make the shortlist in this year's BAFTA TV Awards, but a number of people connected to the show have been nominated for other programmes, and Sherlock features in the nominations line-up as well.

John Simm vies against Sherlock title actor Benedict Cumberbatch for the Leading Actor prize for Exile, while Sherlock's Andrew Scott (Moriarty) and Martin Freeman (Watson) are pitted against each other for Supporting Actor.

Olivia Colman is nominated in the Female Performance in a Comedy Programme category for Twenty Twelve, as is Tamsin Greig for Friday Night Dinner. Ruth Jones, who played Nikki Bevan in the Torchwood episode Adrift, is also nominated for Stella.

Hugh Bonneville is shortlisted for Male Performance in a Comedy Programme for Twenty Twelve, and The Fades, which was produced by Caroline Skinner and had Farren Blackburn directing some of its episodes, is nominated for Drama Series, as is Scott and Bailey, which co-stars Lesley Sharp and Suranne Jones.

Coronation Street, which is produced by Phil Collinson, is nominated for Soap And Continuing Drama, and The Cricklewood Greats, which was created, presented, directed, and co-written by Peter Capaldi, is up for Comedy Programme. Rev, which co-starred Olivia Colman, is nominated in the Situation Comedy category.

Sherlock is also one of the nominees in the BAFTA YouTube Audience Award, which is voted for by the public. It was similarly nominated last year but lost out to The Only Way Is Essex. This time it faces competition from Frozen Planet, Fresh Meat, Celebrity Juice, The Great British Bake-Off, and Educating Essex. Voting is open until 5pm on Thursday 24th May.

The Television Craft Awards will be held on Sunday 13th May at The Brewery in London, while the TV Awards, including the YouTube Audience Award, will be presented on Sunday 27th May at the Royal Festival Hall in the capital.

Three 2011 Doctor Who stories have been nominated for the 2012 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form.

The scripts for Neil Gaiman's The Doctor's Wife and Tom MacRae's The Girl Who Waited, will compete against showrunner Steven Moffat's A Good Man Goes to War to win the award which will be presented at Chicon 7 to be held in Chicago, Illinois, at the end of August.

Doctor Who has won five previous Hugo Awards, with Steven Moffat winning for The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, The Girl in the Fireplace, Blink and The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang, while Russell T Davies and Phil Ford won for The Waters of Mars. The awards are given every year for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories.

2012 Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form - Full Nominations

• Doctor Who, The Doctor’s Wife, written by Neil Gaiman; directed by Richard Clark (BBC Wales)
• The Drink Tank’s Hugo Acceptance Speech, Christopher J Garcia and James Bacon (Renovation)
• Doctor Who, The Girl Who Waited, written by Tom MacRae; directed by Nick Hurran (BBC Wales)
• Doctor Who, A Good Man Goes to War, written by Steven Moffat; directed by Peter Hoar (BBC Wales)
• Community, Remedial Chaos Theory, written by Dan Harmon and Chris McKenna; directed by Jeff Melman (NBC)

Also nominated this year is Doctor Who writer Paul Cornell who has received two nominations. His book The Copenhagen Interpretation is nominated as Best Novelette while SF Squeecast in which he takes part is nominated for Best Fancast.

Paul McGann has joined the list of former Doctors and companions who have indicated an interest in being involved in Doctor Who's 50th Anniversary: "Being Doctor Who, there's always anniversaries looming large - celebration programmes and episodes. I'm often asked, 'If they get the five Doctors together, would you do it?' and of course, I'd do it. They've just got to ring me up! Although I was [in] Doctor Who for six weeks, sixteen years ago, it never goes away - it only ever seems to get stronger - I'd love to do that again, but that's not up to me." [Digital Spy, 15 Mar 2012]

Three Doctor Who-related names join the principal cast of What The Butler Saw, which opens in the West End in May. The lead character of Dr. Prentice will be played by Tim McInnerny, with his wife to be played by Samantha Bond and secretary by Georgia Moffett. [Playbill, 15 Mar 2012]

Mark Gatiss talks about creating his appearance for his character Mr Snow in Being Human: "I wanted to have red hair, because you never have ginger vampires, and terrible teeth, and these really dirty fingernails. And they gave me everything I wanted. So there's lots of lovely close-ups of my filthy hands and terrible teeth. He's about 3000 years old, he's literally rotting from the inside." [Guardian, 15th Mar 2012]

The Fourth Doctor, aka Tom Baker, was the subject of a Forbes "Geek Picture of the Day", depicting him in costume with two Daleks for a publicity photo in 1975. [Forbes, 16 Mar 2012]

Maureen Lipman is to be one of the guests in Matt Lucas's new comedy show The Matt Lucas Awards. It will air on BBC One in the spring. [BBC Media Centre, 16 Mar 2012]

Talking of awards, June Whitfield was honoured with a proper one at this year's TRIC Awards. The Television and Radio Industries Club event, held at the Grosvenor House in London, saw her given the TRIC Special Award. Sian Williams was named Best Newscaster/Reporter. [BBC News, 14 Mar 2012]

Steven Moffat, John Simm, James Corden and The Sarah Jane Adventures lost out last night in their respective categories at the Royal Television Society Programme Awards, but Moffat's mother-in-law, Beryl Vertue, was given the Lifetime Achievement Award. While representing writers at Associated London Scripts, Vertue negotiated Terry Nation's partial rights deal for the Daleks. Among her many other achievements, she founded the production company Hartswood Films, which makes the BBC One series Sherlock, co-created by Moffat and Mark Gatiss. At the awards ceremony, Russell Tovey jointly won (with Sarah Solemani) the Best Comedy Performance prize for the BBC Three anti-romantic comedy Him And Her. Full details of the awards ceremony - which, as with the TRIC Awards, was held at the Grosvenor House in London - are online here.

Michael E Briant is to publish his memoirs about his time on Doctor Who. The director's connection with the show stretches back to the 1965 story The Crusade, for which he was assistant floor manager. He was subsequently production assistant on a number of stories before notching up his first directorial credit on Colony In Space in 1971. Briant directed five more stories, finishing with The Robots of Death in 1977. Who Is Michael E Briant?, to be published by Classic TV Press, comes in at 216 pages and is due out on 4th May 2012. It can be pre-ordered here.

Talking of memoirs, a heartfelt and public thank-you has been said via one to Janet Fielding by writer Grant Gordon. In a piece taken from his forthcoming memoir Cobras In The Rough, Gordon recalls being a 12-year-old desperate to see the actress at the 1983 Longleat convention and how ensuring that he got his wish proved to be his father's salvation, following financial and personal problems. [Independent, 17 Mar 2012]

Russell T Davies is to be one of the inaugural judges in a new £10,000 initiative for writers living in Wales.

The Wales Drama Award, which will be given every two years, was launched at yesterday's official opening of the BBC's Roath Lock drama studios in Cardiff - the new home of Doctor Who.

For this year's award, writers must submit a full-length, unperformed, or unproduced script in any medium and in English, with a minimum running length of 30 minutes, by July 16th. Six writers who are shortlisted will then be asked to submit a one-page outline of an original idea for development before meeting the judges in September to discuss their script as well as the idea.

The winner, who will be announced in September or October this year, will receive £10,000 and the chance to develop their script and idea with BBC Cymru Wales or National Theatre Wales. Two runners-up will each receive £1,000.

The BBC said:
The judging panel will also comprise BBC creative director of new writing Kate Rowland, BBC Cymru Wales head of drama Faith Penhale, National Theatre Wales artistic director John McGrath, and writer Abi Morgan (Sex Traffic, The Iron Lady, The Hour).

Wales's First Minister, Carwyn Jones, performed the opening ceremony at the Roath Lock production centre by unveiling a plaque on the TARDIS prop. The drama village, which took just 14 months to build, is part of the Porth Teigr renovation projection on Cardiff waterfront. Speaking ahead of the ceremony, Mr Jones said:

Open days over the weekend of 10th and 11th March gave members of the public the chance to see props from Doctor Who and Upstairs, Downstairs, as well as a look round the sets of Casualty and Pobol y Cwm, which have also shifted production to the 170,000 sq ft drama village - the BBC's largest drama production centre in the UK. An exhibition included costumes from Sherlock, which was co-created by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, and a Dalek.

Doctor Who production has moved to Roath Lock from Upper Boat. A video report on the opening, in which BBC director-general Mark Thompson mentions the beneficial effect locally of Doctor Who being made there, is available here.