For those who get a bit of a sinking feeling when they know an episode with the Doctor meeting somebody famous from history is coming along, fear not, this one is really, really great in parts, offering a wealth of thought and insight on the subject of Van Gogh (and, while the episodes featuring Dickens and Shakespeare and even Churchill could not fail to inspire, this one far outstrips them). You might have thought that playing the great artist would be challenging for even the world's most accomplished actors, yet (one at least has the impression that) the wellish-known Tony Curran makes an extremely good job of it, choosing to show Vincent as a rather red-blooded man of real-life passions, if afflicted by moments of misery and despair. Like all the Provencal inhabitants portrayed, he speaks in a rural British accent - in his case in fact Scottish, giving rise to a shared (somewhat Allo Allo-like) joke with Amy about her also being from Holland, as opposed to local! There is quite a bit of wit in there, a pretty daft monster of the week, some exquisite Mediterranean settings, Bill Nighy doing a really great and high-class job as an art expert who takes English-speaking visitors around the Musee d'Orsay; and the whole building up to possibly the sweetest 5-10 minutes you've ever seen at the end of a TV episode. Perhaps the Doctor is assuming inappropriately Godlike powers in helping put right history's injustices, but the inspired idea of showing Vincent in plain terms how wrong he is in his low self-evaluation is cathartic for all concerned, and a true moment of magic TV, which has millions of viewers cheering it on. The fact that it ultimately makes little difference - at least on the broad-brush scale (if you'll pardon the pun) is just more testimony to the genius of this episode, yet not quite the limit thereof, given an outstanding (earlier) moment when the artist tries to show the Doctor and Amy what he sees when he looks at the night sky. It would be interesting to know, one day, just how many kids watching were inspired into an interest in art by this one 2-minute fragment. If the answer is zero, I'll eat my hat...
Review of Vincent and the Doctor
