Canary Catch Up: A week of TV announcements – including on the BBC’s Doctor Who

Hello and welcome to Canary Catch Up. Each week, our resident telly addict Rachel Charlton-Dailey will bring us bang up to date with the shows she’s been obsessed with, what she’s hate-watching, and what she can’t wait to get stuck into.

Something I was painfully aware of when I started this column was that some weeks there wouldn’t be a lot of TV to talk about. Living with chronic illness means I sometimes can’t look at screens, and some weeks the telly is just crap. Last week, unless you’re interested in football (which I’m not), there wasn’t really a lot to watch.

However, what tends to happen in these early summer months, when TV execs are aware everyone’s in a beer garden, is they’ll sneak out announcements and hope nobody notices — which is rarely the case.

BBC says Doctor Who won’t regenerate for a while

There’s been even more mystery around Doctor Who than usual lately. The past series ended this time last year with a massive wtf when Ncuti Gatwa regenerated into ex-companion, Billie Piper. Then we were told the show wouldn’t be back until Christmas 2026.

However, as 2026 quickly sped on, there still hasn’t been not even a whisper or a single on-location leaked photo. Surely Billie wasn’t actually going to be the next doctor? And if she wasn’t, why hadn’t they announced who would take over yet?

Finally, this week fan speculation that there would be no Christmas special was confirmed. The BBC published a statement last week saying it would put the show out to tender to ensure it could continue.

The statement read:

After careful consideration, the BBC, Russell T Davies and Bad Wolf have collectively decided not to go ahead with the previously announced Doctor Who Christmas episode. This decision was not taken lightly, and we know it will be disappointing for fans, but in order to set the show up for future series, it was decided that rather than bridge the gap with a one-off special, we are choosing to push forward to invest in the long-term future of the show which ensures that when the TARDIS lands once more, it does so in all its glory.

While the show hasn’t technically been put on hiatus, like it was between 1989-2005, we still don’t know when it will be back. To be fair, though, it’s been clickbait rubbish for the last couple of years, so maybe this was the right choice.

Strictly quietly reveals new celebs

Alongside the Doctor Who drama, the BBC also began sharing which celebs will be in the new series of Strictly Come Dancing.

Usually, the BBC likes to build up the excitement, but Lacey Turner was just quietly announced on a Wednesday afternoon. On Thursday, the news was followed up with returning celeb Dani Dyer, who injured herself last year and was replaced by Amber Davies. Then Delta Goodrum was announced on Friday.

While they might not be huge celebs, Turner and Goodrum are pretty big signings for Strictly. They’re usually the calibre of celeb that’s saved for The One Show or Radio 2, not a quick Instagram post.

The timing of the announcements is also weird. Strictly doesn’t air until late September, so they’re being announced three months early as opposed to the usual August. And that’s without mentioning the utterly naff new logo, which looks like it was made with AI.

The next series of Strictly is already starting on rocky ground without Claudia Winkleman and Tess Daly, so God only knows what the BBC is playing at here.

Worst Taskmaster lineup ever

As another series of Taskmaster comes to a close, the lineup for the next series was announced. It looks like the silly show, which felt like one of the most inclusive places in comedy, decided to stick two fingers up to its fandom.

While it’s great to see that Chloe Petts, Isy Suttie and Nina Conti will be on the show, it’s beyond disappointing to see that Matt Lucas and Richard Ayoade will be also.

Lucas is, of course, best known for the naughties sketch show Little Britain. In which he and David Walliams took the piss out of working class people, trans people, gay people, fat women, poor women, disabled people and wore Blackface.

Ayoade said serial terf, Graham Linehan, was a “man of great principle” and endorsed his book where he whinged about losing his career, blaming trans people instead of his own actions.

As a Taskmaster fan, it’s so upsetting that one of the most inclusive shows on TV will happily platform two harmful men.

One last trip to the masseria

Queer viewers were raging when the BBC announced it’d cancelled I Kissed a Girl and I Kissed a Boy earlier this year. The beeb said the first ever queer dating shows in the UK had been axed due to “funding challenges”. But it’s interesting that only shows representing LGBTQ+ people were cut. They could find the money for endless Mrs Brown’s Boys specials.

Thankfully, one final series of I Kissed a Girl has been filmed and it’ll air on iPlayer from 23 June.

At a time when Reform and other right-wing ghouls want to erase LGBTQ+ people, it’s vital we support queer media.

I’m in agreement with former contestant, Amy Spalding, who said:

We’ve gotta show the entertainment industry and the media that this is what we want to see…

We have to be louder, we have to be prouder against the absolute noise of the right wing and Reform and all this anti-Pride homophobic storm that is going on.

And with that, I’m going back to binge rewatching Pop Star Academy: Katseye, until next week!

Featured image via BBC