There haven’t been many bright spots in this Covid-crippled year but a resurgence of David Tennant on our small screens is one of them. He rocketed to national fame in a similar burst of screen time in the mid-Noughties. Suddenly all my female friends and work colleagues were drooling over this skinny Scot with his sharp jawline and purring Paisley accent. I may not have shared their crush but as an actor he certainly possessed the X factor.
For me, it started with Peter Bowker’s BBC2 series Blackpool. On paper, it really shouldn’t have appealed to me. It was a crime mystery, but frequently interrupted by song and dance, a la Dennis Potter. Urrghh. Luckily the story was quite engaging and it boasted a cracking cast, including David Morrissey, Sarah Parish and John Thomson – and then there was a handsome, charming DI played by David Tennant determined to pin the murder on Morrissey’s distinctly unpleasant character. The eclectic mix of pop songs, ranging from Elvis and Engelbert to Sandie Shaw and Slade (‘Skweeze Me, Pleeze Me’!), were all mimed so we didn’t hear David’s ear for a tune, but he made an impression.
I’d actually already seen him guesting in the opening episode of Charlie Higson’s tongue-in-cheek reboot of Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) in 2000, out-acting the stars Reeves and Mortimer but in 2005 he was dazzling in another light drama series playing the title role of Casanova. I hadn’t expected to like it but it was brilliant: a sexy costume romp but with laugh-out-loud comedy.
The production was written by Russell T Davies who was already working on an even more significant project, the return of Doctor Who. Once Christopher Eccleston had quit after a solitary series, the producers turned to another hot actor, Mr Tennant. As in Casanova, the Scottish accent was ditched in favour of Estuary English but, whether flirting with Billie Piper’s Rose or swapping comic banter with Catherine Tate’s Donna, David was a coolly charismatic Doctor, armed with seriously sharp sideburns and even sharper scripts. It wasn’t just about battling alien monsters and running around quarries in Dorset; there was real acting, too. Even Dad became a fan. There were mesmeric scenes with guest stars like Bernard Cribbins but one of his finest ‘timey-wimey’ speeches came during the thrilling story Blink, also featuring a pre-Hollywood Carey Mulligan. He stayed for four years before a further, time-busting, cameo appearance with successor Matt Smith in the 50th anniversary special The Day of the Doctor in 2013.
With
Doctor Who, a Harry Potter film and a must-see RSC Hamlet on his CV, David
Tennant’s future as a proper actor was secured. However, he has also shine in
comedy roles. I probably first saw him as a transsexual barmaid confusing the
pub regulars in Rab C Nesbitt way back in 1993 and in the Noughties teamed up again with Catherine Tate in Lauren
mode (“Am I bovvered?”) for a Comic Relief sketch. That same year he channelled his inner Doctor to regenerate Tony Blair
in the TV impressions show Dead Ringers and his wry narration was perfectly matched with the fly-on-the-wall BBC spoofs
Twenty Twelve and W1A.
More recently I have discovered the delights of Staged, a comedy for the Covid lockdown era. Broadcast in six 18-minute instalments, it primarily involves Tennant, Michael Sheen and their director meeting up on Zoom to rehearse a play from their respective homes - and failing miserably. The two stars poked fun at themselves and their professional relationship, assisted, or hampered, by their real-life partners and ‘remote’ guests including Adrian Lester and potty-mouthed Samuel L Jackson, but the best was left 'til last. The final episode had the duo’s frustrated producer (Nina Sosanya) calling upon Dame Judi Dench to bring the actors’ childish quarrelling to an end which she does by simultaneously pricking their pomposity and reminding them that she can do what she likes ‘cos she’s Judi Dench! Sheen plays up to his Welsh luvvie stereotype with gusto, while Tennant is just as believable, exaggerating his vanity, over-sensitivity and childcare incompetence.
Getting
back to David Tennant the actor playing characters other than himself, there
have been lots of other opportunities to see him on the box. I haven’t taken
them all, for one reason or another, but he’s never less than exceptional. With
his cache and demand, the one-time David McDonald can surely pick and choose
his medium, be it TV, stage, film or podcast, and his parts. Consequently even
his television crime vehicles have been distinctly superior fare. In 2006 he
was an acclaimed Richard Hoggart in Andrew Davies’ The Chatterley Affair and in 2013 a troubled barrister on trial for
murder in The Escape Artist.
It seemed that he was innocent but had he actually committed the perfect crime?
One element of David Tennant’s choices I particularly like is his reluctance to settle for ‘national treasure’ roles playing the goodie every time. In Paula Milne’s The Politician’s Husband, he was an ambitious Cabinet minister resorting to duplicitous methods when the career of his wife (Emily Watson) begins to eclipse his own. This year he has also shown a willingness to go the whole hog and be not merely a bit of a shit but also a devious killer.
In Channel 4’s otherwise unremarkable three-parter Deadwater Fell, Tennant portrayed a respected village doctor who loses his family in a house fire. Surely he wouldn’t have started the blaze deliberately….? After a recommendation we also dipped into Netflix’s Criminal, with its different case each episode. Like the cops we have to decide whether or not the accused is guilty. I think David was in the opener, his ‘No comment’ mantra ultimately failing to fool his interrogators. Then in the past few weeks he was even more chilling as Scottish serial killer Dennis Nilsen in ITV’s Des. The uncanny physical likeness made it even more compelling and more than 10 million tuned in, a huge audience these days.
However, perhaps my favourite David Tennant performance belongs to Broadchurch. In 2013 Chris Chibnall’s terrific tortuously twisting Dorset-set whodunit redefined the TV crime serial for the modern age. The second series dipped in quality before perking up for the trilogy’s conclusion but throughout it was the professional relationship between the local cop Ellie (Olivia Colman) and incomer DI Alec Hardy (Tennant) on which the series’ foundation was constructed.
Colman was fantastic, of course, but her co-star was mesmerising as the complex detective trying to solve a child’s murder in a hostile seaside community harbouring all manner of secrets, while harbouring personal troubles of his own. He could be abrupt, he could be socially awkward but his determination to solve the crime, no matter the impact on his health, was undeniable. So important was Tennant to the production was that he also recruited for an American version in which the story, and Tennant’s accent, were transported to California. Sadly, the Yanks didn’t like the show, but at least that meant the UK could welcome him back to our shores.
Since then, Olivia Colman has won an Oscar, Chris Chibnall is the new Doctor Who showrunner while David Tennant is simply one of greatest small-screen actors of my generation.
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