i loved that.

Sour grapes basically. Miserable old git.

I like Doctor Who but it is over hyped, months of adverts then a few episodes then another long wait for another small batch of episodes. The Americans produce long runs of high quality shows yet we can't?

Mr Eve is a respected stage and camera actor with good credits to his name including the new Bouquet Of Barbed Wire series which started this week.

This is true but being a respected actor makes him no less of a prat in this case.

And why have you opted to single out Doctor Who, which, with a 13 episode run per series is above average in terms of the number of episodes in a series in British drama actually?

Waking the Dead series 8, for example, had eight episodes in it...

Doesn't make him right though does it? Dr Who is full of respected stage and camera actors and you don't hear them crying to the press about unfair budgets. He's paid better than any Who actors as far as I've read.

To be honest, Trevor Eve is remembered for one thing - Shoestring (1979-80). Hardly gives added weight to his opinion.

Exactly. Especially when that opinion is based on jealousy and misinformation. You'd think he was on a "shoestring" budget. God did I just type that? Sorry.

Trevor Eve has done alot of decent TV shows but he is a miserable sod so he's bound to have a go at something.
His point is fair that the BBC hasn't made any decent TV dramas lately but what that has to do with DW is anyone's guess.

Why would we want to produce as many episodes as the USA. Nothing wrong with how they do it, but there is nothing wrong with the way we do it. ... so sorry but your argument does not really make any sense. Trevor Eve would be better advised to concentrate on his own stuff than to rubbish other dramas. I'm sure he would not have liked it, if someone had bad mouthed his Waking of the Death!.

"It's fine as far as it goes, but Doctor Who is a 40-year-old children's programme," he argued.

Eve currently stars in the new ITV1 adaptation of Bouquet Of Barbed Wire.

Er, Bouquet Of Barbed Wire - A 50- year-old ITV Drama.
Two previous adaptations.

He was in the running for the part of the Timelord until the esteemed Timothy Dalton came along hence his bitterness as well as his rumoured removal from 'Waking the Dead'.

By whom, certainly not anyone who has worked with him, his one redeeming feature is he produced a shagable daughter.

Then he goes and stars in a remake on ITV hardly original

....and yet sometimes, we stand united

So we are not allowed remakes? No more Shakespeare or Austin remakes then lol don't make me laugh. The guy is a good solid actor voicing his opinion and last time I checked he is allowed to do that, after all opinions are like ass holes in that we all have one.

Doctor Who is a nice glossy production with average to good cast and story lines pitched at a level the younger brits and Americans can understand, its not great or classic TV in the making.

Stephen Fry did much the same sort of 'attack' in a speech this week, what are the unbiased and informed opinions of you DS users

And we are allowed to disagree with him and voice our opinions in a forum dedicated to the very subject he was slating. Hardly surprising!

This week? Give us a link or quote it and maybe people will have an opinion.

You may be thinking of the Bafta speech in June. There was plenty of discussion here at the time. You can search the forum for it.

Stephen Fry was commenting this week that there is a culture of fear at the BBC which is creating "incredibly bland" programmes.

Unlike Mr Eve's comments I cannot see any reference by Mr Fry to Doctor Who

I understand he was up for the Dalton role in TEoT and missed out - as for his reason, well...he did rather need a headline-grabber to publicise a 2nd rate rehash of a 1970's pot-boiler in BoBW before it aired last Monday...and from the response and the reviews to it, it clearly needs any publicity it can get...odd though, that a respected Actor being paid a fortune by the BBC to appear in another series of WTD (currently filming) should go on the record bemoaning the lack of "quality drama" coming out of the Corporation.

True but it's a bit disappointing that so many people seem to expand that by denigrating the man himself and all his works as if by expressing an opinion that is midly critical of DW (bearing in mind his principal statement was about the beebs promotion of the show) he has put himself beyond the pale. A quick glance at his imdb page should be enough to convine that whatever the view of the DS forum, plenty of producers and casting directors have found him worthy of continual employment on tv over 30 years, and mainly in leading roles.

Vilification (usually accompanied by ill-conceived threats/comments/insults) is part and parcel of the Internet, sadly...it's amazing how fearless people get when separated by a nickname and a screen from the person they're slagging off...

...as for TE, it is always possible, given his age, that he is of the old school thought (that still persists amongst certain BBC Execs incidentally) that says any "fantasy" based programme cannot be considered as "serious" or "quality" Drama...he would have ascended during the new realism of Osborne etc. where everything had to be "real and gritty" otherwise it wasn't worthwhile...the saddest aspect, if his quote is true, is yet another example of championing one cause by slating something else: if a cause is worth championing, surely it's virtues should be extolled in their own right?

The success of DW has launched a whole strand of similar stuff: Robin Hood, Merlin. plus Torchwood and SJA. The BBC is heading down a route of quite samey programming, just as it got a bit too obsessed with gritty detective stuff (Silent Witness etc), a few years back.

Success breeds imitation. To some extent, Trevor Eve is right.

Just as DW's success caused a splurge of fantasy/sci-fi stuff, and also brought the "family viewing" idea back onto TV for the first time in years, other past successes have spawned derivatives (Big Brother leading to all the other reality shows, Pop Idol leading to all the other talent shows, a huge glut of makeover programmes at the start of the century).

I don't think it's a "bitter attack", anymore than it's bitter for women of "a certain age" to state that there aren't any roles for them on TV at the moment.

Bring back Shoestring, that'll shut him up.

I'd love to see Shoestring again.

Joking aside, it actually wasn't bad!