6. Peter Kay- Love & Monsters
"Tastes like chicken!" It's not just 80s Who that went in for stunt casting. Lest we forget, the line-up for the first series of New Who sounded like a deliberate effort to enrage and confuse fandom- Christopher Eccleston, face like a relief map of human misery, playing an eccentric 900 year old time traveller? Billie Piper, best known for singing a song that The Spice Girls probably turned down?! John flaming Barrowman?!? Somehow it worked, but it was a trick that Russell T Davies and co repeated to diminishing effect as the series went on. Case in point- Peter Kay. In an age when it's harder and harder to create TV with genuine crossover appeal, playing to the lowest common denominator is almost the only sure-fire guarantee of success. That's where our Pete enters the scene. In Love & Monsters, Bolton's most confused exponent of garlic bread plays Victor Kennedy, a shadowy figure with sinister designs on the Doctor and a mysterious aversion to human contact. Sounds intriguing? Well, it's not, at least not the way Our Pete plays it. It's his usual schtick- roll onto set and upstage the rest of the cast with an incredibly broad performance that might well have been enervating to act against- not that anyone would say anything because 'he's a bloody nice bloke and funny with it'. Kay's populist appeal as a professional Northerner explains why he was tapped for the role- his audience isn't exactly a sci-fi audience, but they're about as loyal (seriously- this is a man who hasn't produced any original material for years, yet somehow manages to top the DVD charts every Christmas with 45 minutes of deleted scenes from his old stand-ups). He's exactly the sort of star who can make grotesque flatulent hyper-absorbent malevolent aliens accessible to a wider audience. Er, yeah...
Most OTT Moment: Yeah, ten minutes left and it turns out Pete is really playing the Absorbaloff, a grotesque flatulent hyper-absorbent malevolent alien (designed by a child in a Blue Peter competition- seriously). Having him waddle about in a repainted Fat B**tard suit, yelling stupid dialogue in a Coronation Street accent- if that sounds funny, then you should probably be designing monsters for a kid's TV competition.