You may have heard the announcement that one of the ways that Doctor Who‘s 50th Anniversary is to be celebrated next year is with a new docudrama entitled An Adventure in Space and Time written by Who stalwart Mark Gatiss, which will dramatize the creation of the programme back in 1963. Amongst the principal players in the creation of Doctor Who was Producer Verity Lambert, Script Editor David Whitaker, actors William Hartnell, William Russell, Carole Ann Ford and Jacqueline Hill, director Waris Hussain, and originator and instigator of the whole project, Canada’s own Sydney Newman.

With Newman being the only non-Brit amongst the group (even if you also include Donald Wilson, Rex Tucker, Alice Frick and Joanna Spicer (who Verity Lambert had a key meeting to save the show with even before the programme’s first episode had been made)), his casting will likely be the trickiest. I’m hoping that they actually decide to cast a Canadian in the part rather than a British actor or an American. I’m not holding my breath with that, but it does beg the question of just who (amongst Canadian actors) they could cast as Sydney Newman. Louis Del Grande? Michael Ironside? Both are probably too old now even if they were suitable. Any thoughts from our readership?