Parallel Lives

I don't often get to see the local BBC lunchtime news. When I've caught it in the past it has always been presented by someone I've recognised as a reporter from the main evening programme, with the weather forecast provided by the regular evening weather forecaster. Imagine my surprise when I saw a lunchtime bulletin last week, to find it presented by people I didn't recognise - even the weather girl was different! I was quite nonplussed by this development and even began to suspect that I might have strayed through some hole in the space-time continuum and had landed up in a parallel universe. I began to wonder if, when Doctors came on, I'd find myself faced with an unfamiliar cast playing the familiar roles? Would I find that I'd landed in an alternate reality where Ralph Fiennes film career had never taken of, and he was playing Dr fenton in the popular daytime soap? Would cheery working class nurse Archie be portrayed by Jude Law? Dian Rigg as Vivian, the stern receptionist? Would I be treated to Ray Winstone as Dr West and Ioann Gruffudd as Dr Clay?

I was really beginning to look forward to this parallel universe version of Doctors, when the programme actually started. Sadly, it was the regular cast. It was the same with Diagnosis: Murder, Dick van Dyke was still plying Dr Sloane, rather than, say, Burt Reynolds. Switching channels, I found that Mel Gibson wasn't playing Alf Stewart in Home and Away. I can't deny that I was disappointed. I'd been getting pretty enthusiastic about this alternative universe I seemed to have fallen into: maybe John Lennon was still alive and presenting Songs of Praise; perhaps Martin Jol was still managing Spurs and we were topping the Premiership; maybe I didn't have such a shitty life? But sadly, it turned out that the local news had simply decided to have a dedicated lunchtime news team. Everything else was exactly as it had always been. Pity.