Ninth Doctor, Christopher Eccleston will star in an episode of a new BBC One six-part drama Accused, by Jimmy McGovern. Eccleston plays lapsed Catholic Willy in the series which also stars Mackenzie Crook, Juliet Stevenson, Peter Capaldi and Andy Serkis. Meanwhile Eccleston's portrayal of John Lennon in Lennon Naked, will be shown as part of the BBC Four Fatherhood season on Wednesday 23rd July.

Tenth Doctor David Tennant has been cast in a remake of the 1985 film Fright Night. Tennant will play a character originally portrayed by Roddy McDowall in a Dreamworks production, which will also star Toni Collette and Colin Farrell.

Fourth Doctor Tom Baker has written the foreword to the new AA book of Haunted Britain due to be published in September 2010.

John Barrowman is to return in his entertainment series Tonight's the Night. The show will be recording at BBC Scotland's headquarters, at Pacific Quay in Glasgow, over the summer for an autumn transmission.

Sophie Okonedo been awarded an OBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours list. Okonedo, who played Liz 10 in The Beast Below, described the award as 'the cherry on the cake'. It's not known if the award will be presented to the actress by Liz 2.

The final episode of the current series of Doctor Who, The Big Bang, will be shown at 6.05pm according to the BBC Press Office. The programme will run for 55 minutes, 10 minutes longer than normal.

The early start is to avoid clashing with one of the two World Cup matches taking place on the day. One match will be on BBC One and one on ITV, but which on which will not be determined until the results of the first round matches are known the day before transmission. If England win their group, their match will be shown immediately after Doctor Who on BBC One.

ITV1 will be offering You've Been Framed! in opposition to the Doctor, with BBC Two offering Tennis as the first week of Wimbledon 2010 draws to an end. Channel 4 has Come Dine with Me while Five offers the 1970 film Chisum, staring John Wayne.

Over 500,000 people have downloaded the new Doctor Who Adventure Game, City of the Daleks, in the two weeks it has been available.

Simon Nelson, controller of portfolio and multiplatform at BBC Vision told games magazine MCV.
The game is the first of four which will be released over the summer.

Fans in London were given a special preview of the penultimate episode of the current series of Doctor Who, The Pandorica Opens, at BAFTA earlier this evening. The screening was attended by Steven Moffat, Matt Smith and Karen Gillan who answered questions at the end of the screening.

Introducing the episode Ben Stephenson, Controller, BBC Drama Commissioning, paid tribute to the current prodcution team. In a speech which left no doubt to the high regard the series is held in by BBC Management, he paid particular tribute to Steven Moffat saying how no other broadcaster in the UK or the USA had such a brilliant writer producing such high quality family drama. He called The Pandorica Opens a tremendous piece of television.

Following the episode a wide range of questions were put to the team. Matt Smith revealed he had had initial doubts about the way he was playing the Doctor and often spoke to his dad for advice. He was delighted when a six year old, dressed in tweed jacket and bow tie presented him with a gift of a picture. Smith revealed he had been to a costume fitting for the next series earlier today and he was looking for something warmer to wear in the future.

Steven Moffat was asked about Steven Fry's comments yesterday, where he described Doctor Who as Children's Television. Moffat said Doctor Who always was, and always will be, family television. Designed for that special period when both children and their parents could watch together. When asked about the move of viewers from watching the programme as broadcast to watching later, either on harddisk or via the iPlayer, he called on BBC One controller Jay Hunt who was also in the audience. She confirmed the BBC was aware of the massive reach the programme had and said she didn't mind when they watched it as long as they did.

He paid tribute to the classic series, singling out Waris Hussein who was in the audience. Hussein directed the very first episode of Doctor Who, screened in November 1963. Moffat called it a wonderful half an hour of television and urged anyone who had not yet seen it to view it.

The Pandorica Opens has its début on BBC One and BBC HD this Saturday evening.

The first four episodes of Doctor Who to première in May, were the top four most requested programmes for the month on the BBC iPlayer according to BBC iStats.

Top of the list was episode 7, Amy's Choice, with nearly 1.4 million requests. Episode 5, Flesh and Stone was second, followed by Episode 6, The Vampires of Venice and Episode 8, The Hungry Earth. The four episodes were the only programmes during the month, to have over 1 million requests each.

Episode 9, Cold Blood, came in at number 8 despite only being available for the last two days of the month.

Overall Doctor Who was the second most requested programme of the month with over 6.5 million requests for one of the nine episodes available. The top programme was EastEnders with over 8 million requests, although these were spread over 33 episodes. Doctor Who had the highest downloads per episode.


Episodes of the current series are available in the UK on the BBC iPlayer from transmission date until Saturday 3rd July.

The new Radio Times features an interview with former Doctor Christopher Eccleston. The article focusses on his role as John Lennon in the BBC film Lennon Naked (BBC4/BBHD, 9:30pm Wed 23rd), but he also discusses his departure from Doctor Who after just the one series:


The Radio Times (19-25th June 2010) is out now.

The new issue of the Radio Times (week commencing 19th June) joins the collection of those that feature Doctor Who on the cover; this issue promotes Karen Gillan, who is interviewed inside the magazine about playing the part of Amy Pond, and acting alongside Matt Smith.


This year has previously seen Radio Times covers for The Eleventh Hour and three versions for Victory of the Daleks.

Final figures for Episode Ten, Vincent and the Doctor, published by BARB show the story was watched by 6.76 million viewers.

On BBC One the programme got 6.29 million watching where it was the second most watched programme for the channel for the week, just being beaten by Tuesday's EastEnders. An additional 0.47 million watched on BBC HD and when added together the programme totalled 6.76 million viewers.

Final figures for ITV1 HD are not available, so a full top thirty programmes of the week can't be calculated. Doctor Who stands at 18th for the week without HD figures added. If HD figures are included, it will almost certainly rise one place to be the 17th most watched programme of the week.

The BBC Three Sunday repeat did not rank high enough to get into the top 30 for the week.

Full ratings for the series so far can be found in Gallifrey Base.

Character, makers of the successful Doctor Who figures, are to release a new, combined set featuring all eleven Doctors, presented in a "TARDIS" box. All of the figures are newly moulded with different costumes/head sculptures to those previously released individually or in other sets.

The set will also be released in the USA by Underground Toys.


The Eleven Doctors set is due out in the UK in August.

The Appreciation Index figure for The Lodger was 87, joint highest of the series so far.

The Appreciation Index or AI is a measure of how much the audience enjoyed the programme. Any score over 85 is considered excellent.

The Sunday repeat on BBC Three was watched by 0.45 million viewers, winning its timeslot amongst the multi-channel stations.

With Sunday's overnight figures now available, Doctor Who is currently 41st for the week. This should rise considerably when the final figure is released next week.

Doctor Who Confidential recieved an AI of 81 on Saturday and the Sunday repeat was watched by 0.21 million viewers.