WHO'S NEXT? Candidate Number One

Nick Mohammed

With the sudden (and slightly chaotic) end of the Ncuti Gatwa's tenancy in the TARDIS as the 15th Doctor, I'm guessing the BBC is looking for a new actor to headline Doctor Who - once the "why is Billie Piper back?" last-minute twist from The Reality War has been resolved.

This post is, therefore, the first of an occasional series of my own suggestions - and those of anyone who wishes to chip in - for the role of The Sixteenth Doctor.

My current favourite choice, whose star is in the ascendant after his recent spectacular performance on Celebrity Traitors, is actor-comedian Nick Mohammed.

I can't recall where I first saw Nick, whether it was his key role in either Intelligence (with David Schwimmer) or Ted Lasso, but he gives off just the right blend of earnest decency and Machiavellian intelligence to be a Doctor in a similar style to Sylvester McCoy's Seventh or Peter Capaldi's 12th Doctor. Who just happen to be two of my favourite takes on the legendary Time Lord.

Presenting a distinctly different silhouette to previous Doctors, Nick's also a musician and magician, skills which could add interesting character quirks to his iteration of The Doctor. He's also incredibly smart, can do voices, roller-skates expertly, and is often pictured sporting a bow tie.

Besides Celebrity Traitors - which must be generating him a ton of job offers - he also played London Mayor Zafar Jaffrey in the latest season of Slow Horses (one of, if not THE, best dramas currently on television).

I fear, though, that Aunty Beeb may have missed its chance here as it feels as though 46-year-old Nick is on course for even greater things, and may quickly become unavailable for a multi-year run in the TARDIS.

HALLOWEEN HORROR: The Gorge (2025)

To date, I've pretty much loved everything I've seen on Apple TV: the puzzle box that is Severance is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, one of the best TV shows ever; Slow Horses is near-perfection; the retro-futurism of Hello Tomorrow is wonderful; The Morning Show is great, engaging drama; and Monarch: Legacy of Monsters is a fascinating insight into the kaiju-filled world of the Monsterverse.

So, I wasn't worried clicking on The Gorge, especially as it has the added bonus of starring the flawless Anya Taylor-Joy who is incapable of making a bad movie. Even her co-star, Miles Teller (despite appearing as Reed Richards in the worst Fantastic Four movie of all time... and, yes, I'm including the unreleased Corman version), is generally seen as a safe pair of hands.

I couldn't have been more wrong. 

The Gorge is two hours and seven minutes of utter tedium. Our stars are a pair of elite snipers - Levi 'Married To His Job' Kane and Drasa - tasked with guarding a mysterious, smoke-filled, gorge and preventing whatever is down there from getting out.

Each stands guard in a tower on either side of the gorge, both forbidden to communicate with the other side.

The trouble from the get-go is that both characters are walking clichés (very early on Teller's Levi is sitting on a beach, cuddling a random dog, and I said to myself: 'I bet he writes poetry'... and an hour later, when Levi and Drasa finally get to meet he starts telling her about his poetry).

But it's also very obviously slightly racist/sexist because while both are supposedly the best at what they do, the implication is that Levi - representing America - is slightly better than - not-America - Drasa (who doesn't even warrant a surname), has slightly better technology, and so on.

For the first, painfully long, hour the couple are getting used to their new jobs and, as the months pass, starting to break the rules and communicate across the gorge.

This segment could easily have been compressed into 15 or 20 minutes, which might then have made what follows a bit more bearable.

Eventually, after a sneaky romantic rendezvous, they find themselves in the gorge, getting to the bottom of the mystery.

The trouble is there's a very strong chance that if you'd been thinking about what might be going on yourself you probably would have come up with something way more interesting than the 1950's B-movie explanation we get served up with.

At one point, I'd even wondered - when they were fighting giant insects - if The Gorge was somehow connected to Monarch: Legacy of The Monsters. But no such luck.

And the thing about the monsters our heroes find hidden in the mists is that we don't see enough of them. Perhaps horror-leaning director Scott Derrickson (Doctor Strange, The Black Phone) should have put more focus on the critters and less on the turgid banality of the padded first act.

There is absolutely no need for this Asylum-movie-on-an-Apple-budget to have been over two hours long. An hour and a half would have been fine and might have kept the pace (and my engagement) up a bit more. 

It's not that toothless creature feature The Gorge is really that bad, it's more a case that there's nothing memorable about it, from its generic stunts and forgettable monsters to its uninteresting explanation and predictable resolution.