The Sarah Jane Adventures (CBBC, 2006 2011)
What's It About? The adventures of Sarah Jane Smith and her teenage sidekicks as they investigate alien activity in Ealing.
Is It Any Good? This is how you do a Doctor Who spin-off. Created off the back of an abandoned idea to make a spin-off about Rose Tyler, children's drama The Sarah Jane Adventures began in 2006 and continued until Elisabeth Sladen tragically passed away in 2011, becoming CBBC's flagship drama and paving the way for similar programmes such as Wizards Vs Aliens to be made. As well as having strong writing, performances, and production values, The Sarah Jane Adventures mimics Doctor Who in being a programme that children and adults can enjoy without it either being too complex for children or too simplistic for adults. In fact, Elisabeth Sladen once recalled being contacted by a fan who was 92 years old. Which goes to show how wide ranging the programme's appeal was. But, despite being a bright and energetic adventure series, The Sarah Jane Adventures also dealt with surprisingly mature themes for a children's programme including Sarah Jane having a chance to stop her parents from dying when she was a baby in Series Two, and suffering from an alien-induced condition similar to Alzheimer's disease in Series Four. That's the programme's biggest strength: it's not dumbed down for its younger viewers and it doesn't try to shield them from the harsh realities of life too much like other children's programmes will sometimes do. Another huge point in its favour is that it never shied away from the Doctor Who connection. If anything, it wholeheartedly embraced it. The writers were huge fans and many of them had worked on or went on to work on the revived series so pretty much any episode will have a nod to Doctor Who at some point. And as well as the references, it actively crosses over with its parent series on occasion, including K-9 eventually becoming a recurring character, Slitheen and Sontarans being recurring villains, and guest appearances by Classic Series companions and the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors. Thanks to Elisabeth Sladen's always wonderful performance as Sarah Jane and a lot of effort and skill put into making every episode, The Sarah Jane Adventures is easily the best Doctor Who spin-off so far despite it being cut short by Elisabeth Sladen's death. But as the final episode said: "The story goes on forever".