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Tuesday 19 April 2011

Who: Vincent And The Doctor Retrospective (R: 4.5/5)

It's Richard Curtis writing Doctor Who- what could possibly go wrong? Not much, as it happens, because Vincent And The Doctor is another stunning highlight of the season that fully takes advantage of the show's time travel aspects and features one of the best castings since its 2005 return in Tony Curran as Vincent Van Gogh. Curran shows us effortlessly the mental strains the famous artist fell under in his final year of life, and so it's no wonder that the trip to the modern museum that the Doctor takes his new friend is so genuinely moving, as is Amy's crushed hope that Vincent might not have taken his own life due to their adventure. Bill Nighy also makes a nice cameo, though debatably the bow tie gag becomes a little too cringe-worthy here. That's not the main problem found here, though; no, that comes in the naff CGI of the invisible monster hunting the trio of protagonists through the streets of Paris- it really begs the question why the BBC fails to invest more money in one of its flagship annual dramas, not just its finale (you can see effort really went into making The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang look great), and its something which I hope has been addressed in this year's run. Other than that, though, Vincent And The Doctor brings the series back on a high which has yet to drop!

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