My buddy Meng and I are enormously fond of Scottish actor David Tennant. His talent. His charisma. His wit. His hair. We were unfortunately behind on his body of work, however, so when Meng came to visit me this weekend, we decided to catch up. A lot.

Casanova

In the three-episode BBC mini-series, not to be confused by the American film released the same year, an elderly Giacomo Casanova (Peter O’Toole) describes his outrageous exploits as a young playboy in 18th century Europe. David Tennant plays young, ginger-haired, blue-eyed Casanova with vibrance and excellent comic delivery. The show was marvelously funny. The writing, acting, costumes, and cinematography were all beautiful (except for a couple aspects of the story which irked us, but they do not have to do with David Tennant and the majority of the writing was flawless, so never mind).

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

In the fourth installment of the film series about the world’s most famous teenage wizard and his hormones, bros, and superfoes, Tennant plays Barty Crouch Jr., a character whose role in the movie is sadly reduced to a standard mad Death Eater. Oh well. Had they been more faithful to the books, Barty Crouch Jr. would have been invisible during his first scene (out of, what, three?) and we would not have seen Tennant’s ecstatic crazyface as he sent up the Dark Mark.

Doctor Who

Like most of his fans, Meng and I know Tennant best as the tenth incarnation of the titular Doctor, a roughly 900-year-old Time Lord, who travels through time and space looking for fun. That fun typically takes the form of homicidal aliens, Communist robots, or Nazi pepper shakers.

The 2005 revival of Doctor Who is one of our favorite shows of all time, and it was during Tennant’s tenure from Series 2 to the Series 4 Specials that it became so. His character ranges from silly to grave, over-the-top to carefully nuanced, chipper to melancholy to frightfully angry to grieving to boundlessly compassionate to chillingly dark. He’s wonderfully complex, and Tennant gives himself to the role so unreservedly that he can bring hearts to ache while talking about how he has been one-upped by screechy pepper shakers. The role of the Doctor has since been taken over by Matt Smith, who is excellent in his own right, but Tennant (and former show runner Russell T Davies) made the ridiculous sci-fi story real to me and made me care about a character who could easily have been too big, too genius, too far beyond the audience’s sympathy. Thank you, David Tennant!

Secret Smile

If, like me, you know Tennant best as the trustworthy and reliable Doctor, you may believe yourself incapable of being completely creeped out by him. You might change your mind after watching the two-part drama serial Secret Smile, in which Tennant plays Brandan Block, the sociopathic ex-boyfriend of the protagonist, Miranda (Kate Ashfield). Less than two months after she breaks up with him for being totally invasive (e.g., reading her diary, taking her spare key without permission), he becomes engaged to her sister, courts her family, moves into her apartment, enters the bathroom while she is bathing, pins her down on her bed, and is generally creepy.

Intriguing as the premise was, we found the script to be lacking; most of the conflict could have been quickly solved if the characters had better communication skills. Unfortunately, the lot of them were frustratingly stupid. Tennant was great, though, in a get-the-hell-away-from-me-oh-good-he’s-not-real sort of way.

Hamlet

Tennant stars as Hamlet in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 2009 film adaptation of the play by William Shakespeare. The film is excellent: dramatic, occasionally funny, and beautifully shot. Tennant completely exceeded my expectations as Hamlet. His delivery of the often esoteric lines is impressively natural, as if he were engaging in ordinary, unscripted conversation with the other characters and with the camera during his many soliloquies. His performance is dynamic and powerful, and I wish I had the skill with words that he has with acting so that I could praise him properly. If you have three hours to spare, I really recommend that you watch the film.

Fright Night

When a vampire (Colin Farrell) moves in next door to Charlie Brewster (Anton Yelchin) and starts killing all of his neighbors, Charlie enlists the help of the vulgar and perpetually inebriated Vegas magician Peter Vincent (Tennant). The movie was decent enough. It was satisfactorily scary and had lovely special effects, but I wouldn’t watch it again if Peter Vincent and his assistant Ginger (Sandra Vergara) weren’t so delightfully funny. As it is, I may have to watch their scenes a few dozen times more once the movie comes out on DVD. I wonder a bit if it’s just my bias that made Tennant the highlight of the movie, but I’m only biased because he is perfect, so.

The David Tennant Drinking Game

Or High Five Game, as we played it. Watching David Tennant in so many different roles in two days emphasized how versatile an actor he is, but it also drew our attention to certain mannerisms that follow him from one role to the next. As you are watching these or any other David Tennant films, drink or high five your mates when David does any of the following:

• snaps his teeth
• clicks his tongue while winking with the entire left side of his face
• says “Well!” very emphatically
• frowns and lifts his left eyebrow
• hesitates with “um” or “em”
• musses disappointingly neat hair such that it returns to godly status
• is devilishly handsome*

Have fun and take care of your livers. Ta.

* If you are as attracted to David as Meng is, you should probably not play with this rule.