Paper Monitor
11:01 UK time, Friday, 19 March 2010
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Let's start with a bit of whimsical reverie to ease us into the weekend. As an idea, Google StreetView Cameras Do The Funniest Things never quite made the transition from print to TV.
But it was a fruitful seam of humorous editorial last year - and one the Daily Telegraph returns to today, with a (fear not animal lovers, a Googleista is on hand to explain it's a result of stitching together images) and a convention of superheroes - Robin, Captain America and Mr Incredible among them - gathered outside a country pub.
"The characters, who were previously thought to be fictional, may have been using the guise of a stag party as a cover to fool their enemies."
Meanwhile, away from superheroes-on-the-sauce news, there's a three-way battle of the previews going on between the Guardian, the Times and the Sun. Yes, the new series of Doctor Who is very nearly upon us... well, it's still over a week away.
True to form, the Sun claims its story as an exclusive: "We're first to review new Who series."
Paper Monitor is mindful of all the delicate flowers out there ready to howl "plot spoiler" so it will tread carefully. the new Doc is more "street" that his predecessor and at one point even quips "Who da man?".
Unlike the Sun, the Guardian isn't about to bump this piece to its middle pages - giving p7 billing. The subtext here is that this is a news story more than a mere TV preview.
The paper has been granted a "tour of the new-look time machine" which turns out to be a "set housed in South Wales' Upper Boat studios". It's a level of detail that for the young, impressionable Who fan must rank not so much as a plot spoiler as an existential meaning-of-life spoiler.
Over at the Times, the paper is , with a picture of TV reviewer Andrew Billen peering from behind a sofa across a double-page spread incorporating both the preview and pen biographies of the past three Doctors.
Under a picture of the Tardis crash landing in a street in Cardiff, Billen tells us what Smith brings to the role is his youth. You don't say. Without explaining further, he notes Smith is "comfortable with Google and Twitter" (Aren't we all, especially thanks to the ).
And the marvellous Caitlin Moran addresses what is, for some, a key question:
"Sex appeal: Too early to tell yet - although the mums all confess to deep theoretical unease in perving someone young enough to look confused by a conversation on Britpop."
Which makes Paper Monitor think back to its previous theme. The site of a 50-year-old police callbox skidding through a public square somewhere in South Wales... that really could jemmy Google StreetView Cameras Do The Funniest Things into a TV slot.
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