Predictions for season three of The Gilded Age (with very little to go on)

Right. I said I would do The Gilded Age predictions, didn't I? With season three coming next week, it's high time. 

The season trailer didn't exactly wow me, but I must confess there are some clues in it regarding what's to come (unlike in the trailer for the upcoming Downton movie, which is just an elegant nothing – not that I'm bitter). The trick will be to avoid all-to-obvious predictions. I mean, of course Larrian (I'm guessing that's what the Larry + Marian ship is called) will get well under way, and of course there will be friction between Aunt Agnes and Aunt Ada, who has the money now. That much is given. But what else could possibly happen?

Gladys will marry the Duke – but not divorce yet The marriage is a pretty safe bet; we see glimpses of a marriage in the trailer, and there's no way Larry and Marian will get that far in just one season. So it has to be Gladys, and unless her dad finally takes a stand against his wife and objects at the last minute, this means she's stuck with the Duke of Buckingham. Gladys's situation being based on that of Consuelo Vanderbilt, who eventually divorced the Duke of Marlborough, one could assume that Gladys is the woman whose divorce is talked about in hushed tones in the trailer. Generally, though, plot lines in The Gilded Age don't move that fast. Surely, her marriage has to be milked for juicy drama before it is discarded.

Who is divorcing, then? Blessed if I know. Mrs Fane, whose main function in the series seems to be to introduce Marian to a wider society than she'd encounter if Aunt Agnes had her way, is bringing the news. Could she be the one?

Agnes and Bertha will both try to stop Larrian (maybe even together) Fellowes has reportedly realised that it would be a good idea to bring his queen bees together in one scene. From the quote I heard, though, it didn't sound as if they'd be actually interacting much, but one can always hope. As I've said before, these characters are something of a disappointment to me – Agnes doesn't really hit the Dowager Countess spot she's supposed to, and Bertha is pretty much unbearable at this point. Some reluctant plotting over a common cause would do them a world of good drama-wise.

That Agnes will be opposed to the Larry-Marian romance is self-evident. Bertha's view is harder to guess, as she's keen to be allied to "old money" (or lack of money), and the Van Rhijns are the US counterpart to nobility. However, they're also (with the exception of Ada) skint. Bertha may well want something better for Larry, and she's been known to meddle in his love life before.

Peggy's new love interest's parents (probably the dad) will make trouble Peggy's shown looking blissful with a new man, a Dr Kirkland, who seems very respectable. But it can't all be peaches and cream, surely? Is there some significance to the fact that we already know who will be playing Kirkland's father? My guess is that Kirkland Sr., and/or possibly his wife, will object to Peggy for some reason, most likely her troubled past. 

Peggy may also have to face more virulent forms of racism than she has before in New York (not from the Kirklands, though, who are also black affluent middle-class). Any other showrunner would have included a swiwel-eyed racist bogey-man in Peggy's storyline by now, and I admire Fellowes for resisting the low-hanging fruit. But c'mon, nearly encountering a Southern lynch mob can't be it. Peggy needs dragons to slay.

The butler alliance will be sealed by events (I hope) Mercifully, butlers Bannister and Church buried the hatchet in the previous season. Now, they need a storyline which will bring them together, and unlike Agnes and Bertha's potential alliance their partnership should be for a good cause. Maybe they will join forces to help Jack the footman? I thought I spotted him looking well-dressed and giddy in the trailer. Most likely, someone will try to rip him off in order to get their hands on his invention, and he will need trusty servant back-up. 

Not that I've worked out why Church would get involved, but hey. I want the butlers to get on so badly I almost ship them.

Oscar will try to make money Oscar will feel keenly that he's let his mother down, and he'll try to make up for it in some way, possibly by trying to get back some of the money he lost. I'd rather have a romance plot involving Oscar, to be honest, or another marriage-as-window-dressing scheme. Let's face it, though: he'll never meet anyone better than John Adams, the most understanding ex-boyfriend ever.

New New Doctor Who season two: the parting of the ways?

Nowadays, I sometimes watch an old Doctor Who episode not just because I feel like it, but to remind me that Doctor Who actually was good during the first Davies era and the Steven Moffat era. I wasn't imagining it, and so back in December 2022, when I was so excited about the return of Russell T Davies (aka RTD), I had no way of knowing how hard his second stint as showrunner would crash and burn.

True, I was apprehensive about his politics, though not apprehensive enough as it turns out. The problem with Davies's second run – the "RTD 2" run – is that not only is the political commentary dialled up to eleven and clumsier than ever (and it wasn't exactly subtle in the olden days), but the things he did well are less in evidence, if at all. 

Where are the grounded characters and everyday situations that you believed in? I barely feel I know the new companions Ruby Sunday and Belinda Chandra at all. Ruby's adoptive mother Carla and grandmother Cherry had some promise, but they weren't given enough screen time to develop (and it was a shame that Carla ended up betraying Ruby in two aborted time lines over two seasons). All the UNIT staff seemed to be given about one or two character traits each. You can't blame the Who Culture youtubers for nicknaming Colonel Ibrahim "Colonel Sexy", because what else is he? I'm starting to wonder whether I like Kate Stewart simply because Jemma Redgrave is such a great actress, as I still don't quite know what the character is about after all these years. And what is Rose Noble (who ought to be in school) doing at the UNIT headquarters at all? Not even Davies himself seems to know. 

As for Belinda's family, I kept thinking there was a plot twist coming where it would turn out she actually didn't have any parents, in spite of her talking about them all the time, because we didn't get to meet them. Belinda's mother eventually makes a brief appearance, but her father is kept off-screen. What's with all the missing fathers? Davies, who once opened up Doctor Who to romantic girl-meets-Doctor storylines, seems to have acquired a new distaste for heterosexual mating and its manifestations.

While we're on the subject of characterisation, what happened to the characters being interestingly flawed even when they happen to tick some minority box? Ruth Madeley was allowed to play a complex character in Years and Years – the cheeky little sister whose judgment wasn't always sound (she voted for the dangerous populist Vivienne Rook). Her Shirley Bingham, on the other hand, is little more than a token disabled character, seemingly flawless.

What happened to bringing back characters from Classic Who in a meaningful and thrilling manner, instead of hauling them in and then completely wasting their potential? Who can forget the Dalek-Cyberman face-off ("this is not war, this is pest control"), the Master's return and the confrontation between the Doctor and Davros in RTD's first era? And now what do we get? Not one but two excellent actresses taking on the Rani, but given precious little to work with. The Rani is dispatched unceremoniously and without any real effort on the Doctor's part about midway through the final episode. Still, she is lucky compared to the other Classic Who villain Omega, resurrected as a soulless CGI monster then got rid of within minutes. I haven't even seen any Omega adventures, and I still felt offended. And what happened to the Doctor's granddaughter Susan, of whom we saw the merest glimpse but who then didn't appear in the finale at all? 

To get to the point, season two of the RTD 2 era had so many flaws they even became apparent to viewers who have no problem with the politics, which is still very much in evidence, as it was in season one. What particularly cheesed me off about the commentary this time around was that its particular target was white young men with a taste for gaming or social media – in other words, we got a look at what Davies imagines New New Who's angriest critics are like. 

Both Belinda's controlling ex-boyfriend Alan and the duplicitous podcaster Conrad were poorly understood caricatures. I should have enjoyed the episode "Wish World" as it contained a fake reality, a trope I'm usually a sucker for. But the moral arrogance behind the depiction of Conrad's Wish World as everything the seemingly progressive Davies despises was hard to watch. Of course a monster such as Conrad must be in favour of women staying in the home, against homosexuality and ignorant even of the existence of the disabled and "dispossessed". Unlike, one imagines, Davies, who is all for rainbows and puppies and world peace.

To be fair, the finale did take a step back when it came to the Conrad hate (I seem to be the only one who appreciated that Ruby showed him mercy instead of tearing into him). But that is about all that can be said for it. Ncuti Gatwa regenerating into Billie Piper (who played companion Rose Tyler in RTD's first era) was a tired stunt that had even me groaning, and I have a high tolerance for fan service. But to tell the truth, I was fed up long before then. I'm not sure what to do about Doctor Who in the future. I can't seriously be prepared to stop watching it, can I?