Every time I come across a video of this man speaking, I grin like an idiot.

So how do they do it, these people for whom the naked vulnerability of the act of giving flowers creates no fear? -- who are somehow capable of thinking, 'I fancy this girl; I should let her know. Tell you what -- I'll declare it unilaterally, in the most unequivocal way possible.' How does that make them in any way sane or human?

This precious, precious man, who would no doubt object to my referring to him as 'precious',  gives me hope for humanity. Even if he lacks an appreciation for coffee and New Who, he's so eloquent about his dislike that I don't particularly mind.

Having said that, this video:

does conjure a certain amount of...

before my rational mind kicks in and reminds me that
a) it's some guy's opinion,
b) we don't pick on the Classic Who fans just because they don't get New Who, and,
c) Classic Who fans do tend to be polarized over the new series.

Look at all the fucks I give.

Aside from which, he goes on to raise an interesting point about the prevalence of things aimed at children which are also accessible to adults. I'm calling it 'interesting' because unlike 99% of everything else David Mitchell has to say, I actually disagree with him on this one. Oh, not about the idea itself - of course, there are plenty of things fitting that description floating around nowadays. Harry Potter, for instance. 

And as soon as the thought occurred to me, I had to admit that no, that's actually quite a generalised, and thus ignorant, way of looking at it. For the first few books in the series, yes -- for the series as a whole, not at all. By the time the last book rolls around, you are acutely aware that this is not really children's literature anymore. If anything it's become an elaborate, deeply political allegory for a number of very serious subjects including racism and war. That's not to say that children's literature can't be all of those things -- the Narnia books come to mind -- but the tone and style of the novels evolve to the point where they are unmistakeably aimed at people who are probably too old to be considered a 'child audience'. And that is just one facet of the brilliance of that series: the books grow up with you. 

Of course, that may not be immediately obvious to someone who has never read them.

Another series that comment reminded me of is one which is so comfortably nestled between 'children's fiction' and 'young adult fiction' that it has been marketed as both of those things, and as adult fiction, in various countries: His Dark Materials, by Philip Pullman, who apparently has a bone to pick with the Church.

I remember reading the first novel of that series, Northern Lights, and finding it -- honestly, a little infantile. I was 11 years old at the time. Admittedly, I had finished The Lord of the Rings about two years before this, so my reading tastes were perhaps a little eclectic (read: snobby) for a child. At any rate, I was sufficiently intrigued to read the sequel, The Subtle Knife, which I found far more satisfying, but which was still pretty safe to describe as a very long, very meaty children's book. And then the third book came along, The Golden Compass. It contained concepts so far above my little head that I had to read it four times in succession to even begin to grasp the full magnitude of it. In hindsight there were a ridiculous number of sub-plots which made it at times very difficult to follow with any degree of coherency; and Pullman had apparently chosen this book in which to stop dancing around behind the veil of tolerance and blatantly attack monotheistic religion as a whole. That isn't to say that I wouldn't happily hand that book to a child and say "Have at it", but I might doubt how much of it they would really understand. 

That phenomenon, incidentally, is basically embodied by The Simpsons. It's probably a large part of why that show been so successful for so long.

Possibly I'm the only 20-year-old who still snickers at the log.

If I go back now and watch episodes I saw for the first time as a child, I can still distinctly remember finding it hilarious and entertaining and generally brilliant, but I realize now that most of the references and a good portion of the jokes went straight over my head. Nonetheless, The Simpsons is definitely what I would call a children's show which is also accessible to adults.

Doctor Who is not. Or at least, the new series isn't. Right from Rose, it struck me as -- well, a teen's show. My 16-year-old self is still filled with glee at the mere prospect of a 12-hour marathon of soft sci fi blended with a lot of social drama and thinly veiled sexual tension between attractive people. But, and this is where I can see Classic Who fans getting tripped up, the classic show wasn't like that. It's essentially the same concept, but aimed at completely different audiences. And of course it should be; the audience of 2011 is a very different one to the people parked in front of the TV in 1963. If anything, we're simply more accepting of ambiguity in target audiences now than we were back in the day -- children's television is still very much children's television (look at Dora the Explorer: I defy any mentally sound adult to sit through it and claim to have enjoyed the experience). But we're not exactly thrown off by the idea of a show that both the little 'uns and the high school kids can watch together. Different things appeal to us now; we expect different things from the shows we watch. 

And that interests me again, because really, Classic Who is what should be appealing to us -- aren't we constantly being told that these modern audiences want an anti-hero? Someone arrogant, cynical and a little bit bitchy, but clever enough to back it up. Artemis Fowl, Tony Stark, Hannibal Lecter...Someone more like, oh, I don't know, the first incarnation of the Doctor? Instead we have Nine, Ten and Eleven, all irrevocably driven to help the underdog, all classically heroic, all frightfully boring by modern standards. And I can't help but wonder if perhaps that's exactly what's so lovable about Doctor Who: it reminds us -- first as children, and now as a wider audience -- what there is to like about something that's unfashionable. The zeitgeist may lean in favour of the anti-hero, but it seems there's still something to that old concept of cheering on someone who is kind and brave and fighting for what anyone with a moral compass would think of as 'right'. It may be old hat, but put it in a bow tie and make it considerably younger and more attractive, and you might have something.