Other Doctor Lives: Staged: Series 2, Episode 5 – “The Warthog and the Mongoose: Part 1”) (2021)

Doing next week’s Other Doctor Lives early so I’ll have room to review the last two Best Picture nominees after I watch them over the weekend. This episode offers up a fun, unexpected quartet of guest stars and primo David Tennant-Michael Sheen content.

Michael and David are back to coaching prospective “Michaels” and “Davids” for the American remake, but there are some changes this time around. For starters, it seems they’re no longer trusted to work as a duo, so they’re split up, with Michael working with the Davids and vice versa. Second, they’ve both been entreated by Simon to talk him up, as a lot of the actors in talks for the remake are under the impression that the success of the original show was all down to David and Michael’s improv rather than his writing.

We get two “Davids” and two “Michaels” in this episode, and they’re all inspired choices that I couldn’t have come up with on my own. It’s fun to get the guest stars’ takes on the “characters,” their performances while rehearsing as well as their opinions about said characters. Each brings something different to the conversation and adds a new layer of humor.

Even though Tennant and Sheen of course do their finest work when they’re playing off of each other, I like the divide-and-conquer approach seen here. In a weird way, since both are in the position of acting opposite someone who’s playing the other, they’re still engaging with their thoughts and feelings about one another, almost working out their interpersonal issues by proxy. That said, there are still some good team-up scenes between them, including a fantastically-funny one of them arguing with Simon over who contributed most to the show’s success.

David is just a stitch rehearsing with the Michaels. I love how, even when he’s not intentionally trying to derail things, he still gets things off-track almost immediately. His insecurities lead him to glom onto any and all compliments toward his character, so when one of the guest stars points how mean “Michael” is to “David” in the dialogue, things instantly turn into a, “No, really? Tell me more!” session about how “evil” Michael is. And like I said, both guest stars who play off of him while rehearsing Michael are wildly different, from Sheen as well as from each other, but Tennant has a great, fun dynamic with both.