Russell T Davies Round Up

Simon Mills is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

Russell T Davies is in the news again – this time he has won an award for Outstanding Contribution to Writing from the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain, at an event held recently at RIBA in London. The awards celebrate the best in British writing talents and Davies has certainly produced some quality and controversial output in his time whilst not writing and running Doctor Who. Readers may remember the rather groundbreaking drama set in the manchester gay scene, Queer As Folk and the much more recent Cucumber, Banana and Tofu drama trilogy – also about the gay scene, but a much older version.

Rustie was rather pleased to win this award.

“For me, this is the greatest of honours, coming from fellow writers, and I’m enormously grateful to the Writers’ Guild – for this, and for the work it does for writers everywhere.”

The Guardian has a great interview with Russell which also talks about his award win, but in their article they also talk about his upcoming adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the BBC’s upcoming spring season of plays celebrating 400 years since the Bard of Avon died. This 90 minute adaptation will be a full on RTD special effects extravaganza – I may exaggerate a little, but there will be at least one lightning bolt. I think the best casting news ever is that Matt Lucas (Nardole in The Husbands of River Song – in case you didn’t know) will be playing Bottom!

If I may quote The Guardian directly (for it is a great paragraph exemplifying journalistic integrity and RTD double-entendre):

“Dreams, chases, people changing identities and species,” he says. “If that’s not an episode of Doctor Who, I don’t [k]now what is.” Clearly, you can take the man out of Doctor Who, but not Doctor Who out of the man. “I’ve wanted to make this for 30 years,” he says, setting about his eggs benedict. But his obsession with the play goes back even further. “It was the first drama I was in.” He pauses. “I was 11 when I gave Swansea my Bottom.”

It’s a nice article that goes into more detail about what motivates Russell now and tells of a new show he’s writing called The Boys about the hysteria surrounding AIDS in the 1980s. This is his attempt to come to terms with the events of the time and to honour friends he lost at that time.

Also of interest in this article is that the news of Alan Rickman’s untimely death broke whilst the interview was taking place and RTD comments that they asked him to be in Doctor Who so many times… Ahhhh! If only!

Russell, we salute you!

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