David Tennant Week: Blackpool

Welcome one and all to Day 1 of David Tennant Week. Given I have written several Doctor Who episodes starring the fellow of the week I thought it would be nice to see some other BBC projects that he managed to snare prior his sand shoes, suit, brainy specs and long coat. Such as is the series today involving an arcade owner who is attempting to turn his arcade into an almost casino style hotel worthy of Vegas in the hopes to rake it in and give people something to do. All is good until a young man is murdered and the DI has to get into our arcade owner's business and personal life. This is Blackpool.

Well the name says it all.

The murder of a young man occurs in Ripley Holden's (David Morrissey of Stoned, Derailed, Meadowlands, Sense & Sensibility, Five Days and The Walking Dead) arcade and no stone must be left upturned. The DI (Detective Inspector, you poor yanks) in charge is one Peter Carlisle (David Tennant of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Secret Smile, Doctor Who: The Infinite Quest, The Decoy Bride and The Escape Artist) who comes off charming and good natured but is in fact quite manipulative and is convinced that Holden savaged the boy for skimming from the till or had a fight with him that went out of hand. Everyone's lives have been turned upside down as the coppers have to back and forth from the arcade to their homes and disrupt their lives in search of the truth behind the murder.

Fresh out of Jelly Babies. That was 6 regenerations ago.

Holden has his own family to think about. His wife Natalie (Sarah Parish of Cutting It, Our Hidden Lives, If I Had You, The Holiday, Mistresses, Monroe and Atlantis) who grows weary of putting on a happy face when her family is in chaos, Holden takes her for granted and in general she is lost in her own life. Their kids Shyanne (Georgia Taylor of Coronation Street, The Royal, Blackpool, Casualty and Law & Order: UK) a rotten to the core spoiled brat constantly undermining authority in need of more understanding, love and so on and Danny (Thomas Morrison of Brideshead Revisited, Doctors, Casualty, Monroe and The Theory of Everything) an awkward and deeply troubled boy that is constantly berated by his own father for not being what he deems a man. From the get-go you can see Holden has a temper but years of restraint keeps it under wraps. At the end of the day though, he screams bully and you can see how his rage take ahold of him. Our good DI seems to want Holden to be the murderer, in his heart he needs him to be the murderer as this case is eating him up. Carlisle starts to take a shine to Natalie and concluding to himself he just needs to get into Holden's head and get him to come forward and confess.

The musical score is vital to carrying the elements of the show when it gets downright sinister to the tender budding romances. Tennant and Morrissey come off as they genuinely hate one another.

Is Holden the murderer? Will Carlisle pursue Natalie and will she in turn pursue him?

And now some trivia... because you all do bar crawls and trivia games... well maybe a few of you.

Character actor David Bradley, David Morrissey and David Tennant all have a connection. Both Bradley and Tennant have been in Harry Potter and Morrissey and Tennant were in Doctor Who: The Next Doctor Christmas Special. Furthermore David Bradley portrayed William Hartnell the First Doctor in An Adventure in Time and Space. Complex that is, eh?   

What do you mean NO MORE WALKING DEAD ROLE???!!!