Matt Smith is to play the novelist Christopher Isherwood in a new drama for BBC Two.

Titled Christopher and his Kind, the drama is based on the memoir of the same name, written by Isherwood in 1976. It covers the ten years in the writer's life-from 1929 to 1939, when he left England for Berlin, the capital of the young Weimar Republic, drawn by its reputation for sexual freedom. It talks about the gay Berlin of the 1930s and Isherwood's struggles to save his companion, a German man named Heinz, from the Nazis. Isherwood's experiences in the city later inspired him to write his 1939 novella Goodbye to Berlin on which the Broadway musical Cabaret was based.

The drama will also star Lindsay Duncan, who played Adelaide Brooke in The Waters of Mars, as Isherwood's mother. It will be directed by Geoffrey Sax, who directed the 1996 Doctor Who TV movie.

The drama is written by acclaimed playwright Kevin Elyot (My Night With Reg) and produced by Celia Duval for Mammoth Screen.

Filming on Christopher and his Kind starts in May. The 90-minute drama is likely to screen on BBC Two in the autumn.

The BBC have issued a press release reporting the launch of a new website for the weekly magazine Doctor Who Adventures.

The website has been designed by Monoroot and built by BBC Worldwide's web team, and is aimed at the magazines target readership (6-12 year olds). It is expected to be updated every day whilst the series is still broadcasting, covering features like wallpapers, competitions, updated on the current magazine, and also a blog from the magazine team.


Moray Laing, editor of the magazine:

David Tennant's acclaimed performance as Hamlet Prince of Denmark comes to PBS Wednesday evening as part of the Great Performances series. Immediately following the broadcast, the film will be available online in its entirety on the Great Performances Web site.


Hamlet aired in the UK on Boxing Day 2009 to an audience of more than 900,000. In an article in The Observer, Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown wrote: “Like many people, I had my love of Shakespeare reawakened by David Tennant’s TV portrayal of Hamlet over Christmas.”

Tennant made his debut in October as the host of MASTERPIECE CONTEMPORARY on PBS. His many other credits include his recent portrayal of Barty Crouch Junior in the big-screen blockbuster Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Tennant has also received numerous awards from the theatre community for his lead roles in several Shakespearean productions and other classic plays.

Veteran stage and screen actor Sir Patrick Stewart reprises his 2009 Laurence Olivier Award-winning role of Claudius in the screen version, which is directed by Gregory Doran, who also returns to reprise his stage direction of the production. Co-produced by Illuminations Television and the RSC for the BBC, in association with Thirteen for WNET.ORG and NHK, the adaptation recreates the tone and atmosphere of the stage production in a film-style interpretation shot in HD on location at St. Joseph’s College in Mill Hill, London. The production is produced for television by John Wyver and Sebastian Gran.

Check local listings here.

2 entertain have confirmed in DWM the release date for the next three UK DVD releases

• The Dominators 12th July
• Revenge of the Cybermen/Silver Nemesis 9th August
• Time and the Rani 13th September

A full release schedule for all Doctor Who products can be found on our Release Guide.

A Doctor Who Tour is being launched this summer by Brit Movie Tours.

The independent London based company already runs tours based around other TV and film locations, including subjects such as Harry Potter, Notting Hill and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

The 10 hour Doctor Who tour departs from London's Earls Court and travels to Cardiff, to take in such locations as Amy Pond's home village, Rose Tyler's department store, the church attacked by the Reapers and the entrance to the Torchwood Hub. The trip includes a visit to the Cardiff Doctor Who Exhibition. Classic and new series episodes will be shown on the bus during the journey.

The tour runs fortnightly from Thursday 10th June until 28th October 2010 and costs £75.

Final figures for Victory of the Daleks published today by BARB show the story was watched by 7.82 million viewers.

The total is over 1.5 million higher than the initial overnight reported figure.

The programme was the fourth highest on BBC One and the eleventh highest on all British television for the week. An additional 0.381 million watched on BBC HD, however as this week's episode was not simulcast with the BBC One showing, the figures are not added onto the final total. Even if they were the programme would still be eleventh in the chart.

This is the first time the programme has dropped out of the top ten since the series four story, Silence in the Library, which was 27th. Since then the number of iplayer requests for the programme have dramatically increased.

The BBC Three Sunday repeat did not appear in the top ten for the week for that channel.

2entertain have announced on their offical Twitter feed that the two stories Kinda and Snakedance are to be released during 2011, in a boxed set entitled Mara Tales. The company have released a Next Time Trailer for the set, which also features a glimpse of new CGI for the Mara's manifestation as a snake.

The trailer will appear on a future, currently unspecified Doctor Who release.

This weeks Radio times contains an interview with actress Alex Kingston about returning to the role of River Song.

Kingston last appeared in Silence in the Library and Forest of the Dead in 2008 – in which she perished to save David Tennant’s Doctor. Kingston reprises her role alongside Matt Smith's time traveller in a battle against the Weeping Angels, last seen in Blink in 2007.

In this current two-parter River is a younger version of the one who previously met, and admitted to having intimate knowledge of, the Doctor. Time travel can be confusing, but it does give the Surrey-born actress something of a unique perspective on the whole Doctor Who phenomenon, having played opposite both Tennant and Smith.

When she first took on the part, she spoke of the Doctor being her lover but now she’s not so sure. “I was absolutely certain. That’s what I’d assumed. But when I was reading The Time of Angels, I suddenly thought, “My God, she’s his mother!’ ”While Kingston, 47, and Tennant, 39, couldn’t have pulled that off, Smith is 20 years her junior. So is that how she’s playing it this time? A mother/son relationship? 


“Well, no, the flirtation between them still indicates they have a much more intimate relationship further down the line – and I sort of hope it is that. I hope they’re married,” she laughs, “Otherwise, if she’s his mother, the flirtation isn’t quite appropriate!"

The title of episode eight of the new series has been confirmed as The Hungry Earth.

The title is listed on the cover of the edition of Doctor Who Magazine due out this week and posted on the magazine's Facebook account.

A full series summary can be found on our 2010 series guide.

Update: Episode Nine will be titled Cold Blood.

Extras have been cleared by BBFC for the forthcoming release of the fourth Doctor story Revenge of the Cybermen.

Extras Cleared:

• Commentary
• Cheques Lies and Videotape - 28'15"
• Easter Egg - 21"
• The Tin Men and the Witch - 25'22"
• Location Report - 5'53"
• Photo Gallery - 4'35"

No release date for the story has yet been announced.