The Catherine Tate Show (series)

The Catherine Tate Show is a British television sketch comedy series created by and starring Catherine Tate, and is largely credited for bringing the actress and comedian to full public attention.

Tate and her comedy troupe star in different comedic sketches as a menagerie of different reoccurring and one-off characters, with Tate herself being largely at the centre of each. Some of the most noteworthy characters to become popular through the series include the mouthy schoolgirl Lauren Cooper, and the swearing nan Joanie Taylor.

The series' popularity in the latter half of the 2000s resulted in the show running for three series, and also having Christmas specials and other shorter skits for Comic Relief, the second of which is especially relevant to the Doctor Who universe for being a crossover, and other causes such as 2020's The Big Night In.

The Nan character, in particular, has been spun off into three dedicated seasonal specials, and a.

Crossover
Loosely coinciding with Tate's debut as Donna Noble in the then-recent Doctor Who Christmas special, The Runaway Bride, the BBC's 2007 Comic Relief telethon featured the broadcast of a special Catherine Tate Show sketch, in which the mouthy Lauren Cooper faced off with her new English teacher; the Tenth Doctor under the alias "Mr. Logan", played by David Tennant.

The sketch involves "Logan" attempting to teach William Shakespeare to his class while having to deal with Lauren's insistent heckling, in which she asks him if he is the Doctor, among other Doctor Who-related questions such as whether he came from Mars (a reference to Donna) or if he fancied Billie Piper, before making other jibes based his Scottish accent. After Lauren goes on a Shakespeare-themed tirade about how she "ain't bovvered", the Doctor produces his sonic screwdriver and uses it to transform Lauren into a Rose Tyler action figure.

Other references
In a sketch for the BBC's The Big Night In telethon in 2020, held during the COVID-19 lockdown, Tate teamed up once again with Tennant for a new Lauren Cooper sketch, in which the mouthy teenager attends an online tutoring session via video chat with Tennant playing her Scottish teacher, a setup that is notably similar to that of the previous Comic Relief sketch. Although Tennant's character does not reveal himself to be the Doctor, two back-to-back questions directed at him ("Are you or have you ever been a Doctor?", "Are you a member of the WHO?") were clearly intended as a nudging reference to the pair's previous collaborations.

Cast Connections
David Tennant later made another appearance as the Ghost of Christmas Present in the Nan's Christmas Carol special on Christmas Day 2009.

Niky Wardley is a recurring actor within the series, with perhaps her most prominent character being Lauren Cooper's school friend, Liese Jackson, a role she reprised for the 2007 Comic Relief special. For the wider DWU, Wardley is most known for her voice roles for Big Finish Productions, where she most prominently voiced Eighth Doctor companion Tamsin Drew. She also voiced Natalie Morrison, a friend of Donna Noble - reference to her previous partnership with Tate - in the Donna Noble: Kidnapped! anthology.

Angela McHale, who voiced Kay and Christophe in An Ideal World, was another recurring actor on the series.

Ella Kenion, an actor with a handful of DWU credits, most notably on screen as Teselecta crew member Harriet in Let's Kill Hitler, played a few characters in the series, perhaps most notably Ellen, the long-suffering office worker who is constantly pulled into the arbitrary guessing games of her colleague Kate (played by Tate).