On the box, and In the Black Box

For all you culture vultures who read AiB ...

Doctor Who is back on Saturday night ... but earlier in the evening that you might expect. So tune into BBC One at 6.20pm - harrumph, that’s well before bath and story time - as Donna (the runaway bride) tries to find the Doctor again. Russell T Davies isn’t too happy about the time change either ... though the show should return to 7pm or thereabouts after a handful of episodes once I’d Do Anything finishes. Maybe the Doctor will be singing It’s a Fine Life, while Donna croons As Long As He Needs Me!

Any Whovians reading won’t want to miss the Verity Lambert tribute weekend on BBC Four starting on Saturday evening with The Naked Civil Servant, Doctor Who: The Daleks, Minder & Jonathon Creek, Shoulder to Shoulder: Annie Kenney, Adam Adamant Lives, as well as a 60 minute look retrospective on her career in TV drama.

Sesame Tree starts on BBC Two at 2.15pm on Tuesday afternoon. Funny enough, it’s in the fifteen minutes before the behind-the-scenes peek at NI’s other more adult Muppet Show - Stormont Live looking at the work of our elected representatives up at Stormont. Seems like a good enough excuse to post that picture of Martin McGuinness again!

Update - April 2007 - it's made it onto our screens.

To add some balance, you’ve missed the first two programmes, but it’s not too late to catch the last The Troubles I’ve Seen on UTV on Monday at 8pm. Another retrospective. This time as Denis Tuohy talks to well known national journalists like Kate Adie, Sir Trevor McDonald and Peter Taylor about the time they spent covering Northern Ireland stories.

And if you’re averse to big stadium Christian events and giving Celebration of Hope a miss over at the Odyssey Arena (some have referred to it as “making Jesus king by force”), then the alternative religious act IKON is on in the Black Box arts venue on Sunday night. They pride themselves as being iconic, apocalyptic, heretical, emerging, failing.

In the heart of Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter, the bar opens at 8pm, with the organised activities kicking off closer to half eight. The night’s act is entitled “we have decided not to die” this month. Having popped along to IKON in February, I can say that they’re a friendly bunch. Must get around to finishing writing up the post about the experience.