I saw the new ITV Saturday teatime/Dr Who competition TV show Demins yesterday. I was out on Saturday night and, not having an means of recording TV these days I was relying on Virgin on Demand. Unfortunately they have yet to sign up ITV to the service, so I then fell back on ITV`s wtach online service. I got about 30 seconds into it when I gave up because the quality was really poor - there is just no excuse when BBCs iPlayer does it so much better. So I fell back on good old BitTorrent. It`s a pretty sad state of affairs when going the iilegal route gets you a better quality prodcut than the legal one. ITV just have no defense for this. SORT IT OUT!

In the end I actually abandoned the torrent as I realised it was repeated on ITV2 on Sunday night so I watched that instead. The show wasn`t bad - very Buffy-esque and, although it looked quite dark, it was relatively light and fluffy in the story department which basically revolved around Uncle Rupert suddenly appearing and telling teenage hearthrob Luke that he was a relative of Van Helsing and destined to kill monsters. Personally I think it was all just a bit too rushed - they could have kept the mystery going a bit longer but as it was, Luke was a fully fledged monster hunter by the end of episode one and seemed relatively accepting of it all. Personally if I`d been aged 18 and some fat uncle with a weird American accent turned up with a cheesy ray gun and started killing every deformed person who crossed our path, I would have gone to the police for a restraining order fairly sharp-ish. But then that wouldn`t have made good televison for kids so I guess I`ll let them off and suspend my belief for a bit longer.

Far more importantly on Saturday night, the next actor to play Dr Who from 2010 was announced. They went for a pretty much unknown named Matt Smith. My thoughts: yes, he looks odd. Yes, he`s younger than I hoped (I`d rather they`d gone older). Yes, he had really floppy hair. And whilst the programme didn`t do him many favours, in particular the cheesy turn to camera gurn at the very end, the clips of him in previous TV dramas looked very good. And if Stephen Moffat, writer of all the best Dr Who epsiodes in the last 4 years and head writer on the series from 2010, says he`s the one, then I guess that`s a good enough recommendation for me. Tennant will be a tough act to follow but overall I think it is a good choice.

And, as an added bonus, a Dr Who/Mr Potatohead toy crossver line will now be a really easy sell.