R.B.1    1 A / V   W O M A N   & A V I E W J A N U A R Y    2 0 0 7

1 SERIAL NO. IM  448199

abc1:
[US imports channel, now defunct]
December 2006 Review
abc1 (that's a number one at the end) is essentially a lot of duff US sitcoms. Even Moonlighting's finished now. They do an odd thing at abc1... they place the ads immediately after the opening titles of a show. It's very curious and a novel gimmick. But it doesn't make the channel any better.

A for Andromeda:
[A remake of the classic sci-fi series, shown as one of three new B4 one-off dramas]
March 2006
I am all for one-off dramas, but even in the hey-day of one-off dramas this was a series. And the remake would've been more successful had it been at least a two-parter. If anything, the exposition was surplus to requirements. Those of us who've seen Contact don't really want to relive the experience of locating and interpreting an extra-terrestrial signal. I don't think it would be too daring or too brutal to begin with a block of text instead of half an hour of tedium. Better written, the time could be used to develop characters. As it was, I think characterisation was one of the things that got cut in the drive to 90mins. Which was a shame. Especially as key cast members die, it'd've been nice for us to have cared more about the mortal. The first half then was a well worn path of extra-terrestrial contact and scientific eagerness that was never really very believable. The alien computer seems to have been assembled in at most a month, in an isolated location, without recourse to the outside world. And a biological lab is happily set to industry without any sort of concern or precaution. Dubious yet expedient scientists. Then the ginger girl dies. In the original, I think I'm right in saying, the alien clone differs from her inspiration in that she is blonde. And this gives the drama an added Aryan kick. In this version the clone is still ginger, albeit with permanently greasy hair and intense blue eyes. Neither of which were referred to. The Nazi edge was therefore lacking, and the clone's aggression was far from subtle. In a series, the fall from grace of the aliens could've been (and probably was) a more gradual thing, but from the minute the human is grown, there can be no doubt that she is not acting with our best intentions at heart. Then there is the rather self-conscious depiction of military pig-headedness and aggression. This idea has been done to death now. At the time of the original it was no doubt a little fresher (and probably also better executed) but now the concept of soldiers interfering with (and perverting) science is so old hat and clichéd that it is probably best avoided. Personally I think it reached its peak with Day of the Dead. But here they are again. Thick as pigshit, and interested only in bio-weaponary, but never really in any believable sense. If this were some small military dictatorship island state in the Caribbean or something, the depiction given may be more believable, but otherwise this isolated research base is too tin-pot to be remotely credible... even for old cynics like me who have never had much faith in the sensibleness of this nation's (or any others') military. So in this post-modern era, the depiction of the army was a bit naff. We can always moan about believability, of course, when sci-fi is involved, and all too often it's a moan that is missing the point. But there was more suspension of disbelief here than in most sci-fi. We had to believe that a single scientist could discover AND crack an alien code, AND build an alien computer, AND have a biologist on hand who could build an alien human-making-machine in a matter of months, with no outside help, AND that one of the team would quite happily touch the big scary glowing spinning computer that could at the very least take off her hand or give her a nasty burn. Ok, she could be in its charm, but it was never satisfactorily established if she was. No one else was. Despite all this daftness, and despite the fact that even the second half was a rushed mess, and despite that the scientist preferred to watch his girlfriend immolate herself rather than bash her round the head with a fire-extinguisher... (ok... maybe he had moral issues with assisted suicide, but they again should've been more clearly established -- seems to me most people would not stand idly by while their girlfriend slowly burnt to death - even if this was to the benefit of human kind - when a bash round the bonce would suffice). No, despite all that, it was still better than the Kenneth Williams biopic the other week, and about as good as the Andrew Davies Lady Chatterly thing last week. This run of one-off dramas was not especially successful, producing nothing very exciting, though nothing genuinely bad. The Davies was the most original. This was probably the better story at heart, albeit a bit hackneyed 30 years on. And that is ultimately its problem. More so than the crop to an hour and a half. The story has been cannibalised so much and so often, that we've seen it all before and better done.

Airline:
[fly-on-the-wall documentary, I1]
July 2009
ITV gave us an episode of Airline that felt about thirty years old. I've always hated Airline, more for it having the worst music on any television programme ever, and for the vomit-inducing orange uniforms of Easyjet, than anything else. Though even on anything else terms it's dreadful.

Al Qaeda: Time to Talk?:
[Peter Taylor documentary; B2]
September 2006
Peter Taylor put together another Al-Qaeda doc this week. It was fairly dour, and ultimately told me nothing I didn't know already: namely that some disaffected Muslims are going "fundamental" and blowing themselves up in crowded places, largely because of their views on western foreign policy. In the last few minutes he made a half-hearted attempt to conjure some sort of potential response to this, but evidently had some dinner in the oven. This prog kicked off a slew of September 11th cash-ins about the place -- the term "9/11" appears now to have gained common acceptance despite the intrinsic datal confusion potential. It was always going to win America if only because it matches the phone-number. It's only natural that we take it on too. I don't sense our own dating conventions to be under threat as a result.

Amazon with Bruce Parry:
[anthropological travelogue, B2]
September 2008
The highlight of Amazon was close to the start, when we were shown the trickle of water that marked the river's source. I'd've liked more of Parry walking along the tiny Amazon but we were pretty much rushed straight into the typical sleepover anthropological video-diary for which Bruce has become a household name.
In his latest anthropological sleep-over, Bruce has his right tit sawn off before stashing up on cocaine and sideboards.
This week, Bruce learns a new way of fishing, and indulges in a hallucinogenic drug. So pretty much a usual afternoon for him.

American Dad!:
[US import animated satirical sit-com, B2]
Best Animated Comedy Series 2005, Best New Comedy Series 2005
[American Dad! had already charmed me during its first run in 2005, along with big sibling Family Guy].
November 2006
Why does this get a better slot than Family Guy? Not that it's an especially good slot, but still. This second series doesn't seem nearly as sharp as the first... It's all very slightly embarrassing.

Andrew Marr's History of Modern Britain:
[history doc series, B2]
May 2007
Andrew Marr set off on his modern history of Britain this week. It was rather good. The only thing he missed was Blue Streak. But he got Korea in so that'll do. This looks set to be an informative, educative and entertaining little series. With that and Meades, B2 is in top form at the moment.
June 2007
In the absence of AJP Taylor or Brian Walden, this is the closest we're going to get to a decent modern history doc these days. It continues to be rather wonderful, though could've benefited from a sixth episode. What is this new trend for 5pt doc series?

Andrew Marr's The Making of Modern Britain:
[history doc prequel series, B2]
October 2009
Andrew Marr's new series is enthusiastically presented, although the format is annoying: little ten-minute vignettes, ripe for chopping up and feeding to us in miniature at a later date. I'd rather a more continuous narrative. But what we get in this portmanteau programme is enlightening enough.
November 2009
Andrew Marr has improved a great deal as he's ploughed on into the history he knows a bit more about.

Another Flip for Dominick:
[time-travel drama sequel, repeated on B4]
August 2008
A sequel that lacks the tightness and cleverness of the original. It is not without point, but that point is but a coda to the original story and doesn't really amount to a full play.

Ant & Dec's Gameshow Marathon:
[Series of gameshow re-hashes to celebrate ITV's 50th birthday; I1]
September 2005
PJ & Duncan's latest vehicle sees them try out abandoned game-show formats for size, in the probable hope of reviving one of them. But they kick off with The Price is Right, which was only on the other year. It might be a classic of the genre, but would they not've been better resurrecting long dead formats? 3-2-1 perhaps? (Still... bonus points for managing to do a history of the programme that avoided any mention of William G. Stewart and Land of Hope and Glory).
October 2005
Take Your Pick was always boring, and this week's Ant & Dec was no exception. The presence of Dusty Bin at the start only served to highlight the series's failure to deliver something worthwhile. That said, at least Take Your Pick is a genuine dead format, unlike last week's effort. Interesting / erroneous play towards the end... holding off the box-opening destroyed any sense of strategy and made the Yes/No game pretty-much worthless. A problem with the overall format is that we're getting over-exposed to the shit celebrities. It better be Bullseye next week otherwise I'm giving up on it.
Next Week:
Ant & Dec finally found a decent and old format in The Golden Shot. And the combination of live television, crossbows and Ruby Wax was a brave stroke of genius (especially the sight of one of the hosts walking across the front of a loaded bow). Inevitably, copy-cat crossbow incidents have been triggered across the UK. Or at least in Mexbrough, where someone shot at a bus. Still, this was quality telly on a Saturday night. Hmm. There's an idea.
A couple of weeks later:
The dynamic duo revisit the world of ballistics this week with Bullseye. It's the one format I expected to work, but it fell over. The main problem was that their darts players were Andy Fordham and Eric Bristow rather than a couple of mediocre WMC league players. This meant that pretty much every dart went where it was meant to, and this pretty much destroyed all the original elements of the Bullseye format. Beyond that it's just getting questions right, and that is a strained format in LWT celebrity conditions. Not that it was terrible or anything, but it wasn't as good as the old Bullseye, and as an experiment into potential revivals it was doomed to failure from the moment celebrity contestants were involved.

Arena: Flames of Passion - the Other Side of British Cinema:
[film doc that came at the end of a season of British films on B2]
September 2007
The Arena doc was overly flippant and underly informative. What is more, it came too late in BBC2's season to be anything other than annoying (aw, but that quite good looking film was on a fortnight ago! etc). Also, I think an exploration of the first side of British Cinema (all those blockbuster romantic comedies that no-one has an appetite for this side of rationing) would've been far more informative and entertaining than yet another look at this comparatively well-trodden collection of then under-rated but now cherished classics.

Armistice:
[documentary, B4]
November 2008
Professor David Reynolds explores the dying moments (not literally, he'd be there several decades) of WWI.

Around the World in 80 Treasures:
[Dan Cruikshank art travelogue, B2]
February 2005
Considerably better than I expected really. I particularly enjoyed him enthusing about the statue of Jesus in Rio, when all we could see was fog.
[The series went on too long and only just held my interest.]

Arrested Development:
[US import sit-com, B4/2]
Best New Comedy Series 2004, Buffy Award 2004, Best TV Sitcom 2005, Best TV Sitcom 2006
[Arrested Development first arrived in 2004. Its self-referencing and lightly anarchic approach to narrative made it a cult favourite. A British attempt at a similar sort of thing, The Robinsons, was ok but not nearly as good.]
August 2005
Arrested Development felt better this week. It's that stair-truck that does it for me, I think.
[Amazingly, Arrested Development managed three series before its plug was pulled. It was a very good programme.]

Art Deco Icons:
[architecture and design series, B4]
October 2009
Art Deco Icons, viewed inappropriately on the iPlayer, is a simple enough concept, very much ripped off from Living with Modernism. Its simplicity (man experiences, first-hand, life in a deco building) is its triumph.

Ashes to Ashes:
['80s-retro cop-show sequel, B2]
February 2008
It's Life on Mars, but set in the '80s, and with a better looking version of John Simm to make an old man very happy. The most sensible slot to watch this really seems to be the week-old repeat. Unless you have friends with whom you wish to argue the qualities or not of this gimmick-filled nostalgia-fest. But if you have friends you probably also have a video recorder. Or who knows what else.
I was unsure how it would work, but actually they explained everything away pretty well. They even left it open for Sam [the lead character from Life on Mars] to return, should they find a few quid down the back of the diagonally striped sofa. Our central character awakes on the set of a Duran Duran video dressed like she's just stepped out of a VW Golf ad. Having seen the original series, she's keen to commune with radio static, but instead gets treated to dreams of the cast of Rainbow, and a fairly crap Ashes to Ashes pierrot. There's still time for her to seek out the testcard, but she'll probably end up having to read about her real plight on pages from Ceefax, sat there through terrible soft-jazz waiting for the screen to turn over. Gene Hunt and friends are depicted in an appropriately over-stylised fashion, like some spag-western, while our timetraveler looks constantly like a Vogue front-cover. The story is as flimsy as ever Life on Mars was, making this a triumph of style over substance. And this being 1981 rather than 1974, things are profoundly more stylish, in an off the shoulder, big-haired, 32-bit eye-shadow sort of way. The result, therefore, is that, so far, this seems better than Life on Mars. It can be a bit more post-modern about itself too, which is potentially interesting, though how long they'll keep such things up for remains to be seen. The '80s weren't all wine-bar glitz, just as the '70s weren't all brown depression. Far from it. But Ashes to Ashes can always play the "it's all a coma-induced fantasy" card and so therefore is free to be as stylish and as trashy as it likes. I'm hoping for some more god-shots and mini-dresses as things progress. I don't really care so much about the plot.
March 2008
Reasons why Ashes to Ashes is better than Life on Mars: 1) the protagonist is better looking, 2) the detective drama storylines are less flimsy, 3) the characters don't all reset at the start of each episode -- there's no determination to change Gene, who is mellower anyway, and to a moderate extent there's the sniff of continuity, 4) Drake knows her condition, and is able to play on it slightly (though not enough), allowing us a degree of postmodern deconstruction not allowed to us in the original, 5) received opinion has it that the '80s looked flashier than the '70s, 6) the opening titles are worth it on their own. All that said, Ashes is not perfect. Indeed, the testcard was a much better device than the pierrot, and more could be made in the way of references back to the original series. For someone aware of her situation, Drake is also a little too batty and screamy at times, presumably because she is a woman and therefore must be in peril at least once an episode. In that respect, the "will they / of course they will" romantic tease is also a tad dreary. And that godfather of hers better turn out to be a goody or else he may as well just go around with a Frankie Says T-shirt on that reads "BADDY (I BLEW UP YOUR MOMMY)". The '80s-iness of the series has come in for much stick, which I think is harsh, given that this is not the real 1981 but a construct of our protagonist's subconscious. And Life on Mars was just as guilty of throwing in Spangles, Raleigh Choppers and the like. Yes, Drake looks like she's walked in off Dynasty rather than off Cagney & Lacey, but those C&A jumpers are hard to get hold of these days. She even makes DS Makepeace look dowdy. And really that's what we have in Ashes: a reworking of Dempsey & Makepeace, which being from the mid-'80s, looked a lot more '70s than even Life on Mars did. [Dempsey & Makepeace earned itself a repeat run on I3 about a week later].
April 2008
I should sew up Ashes to Ashes: it was better than Life on Mars. It wasn't brilliant, but it looked quite good and didn't fall into cliché at the end. To continue the comparison with Dempsey & Makepeace, courtesy of ITV3, Ashes to Ashes had snappier dialogue and snappier pace, but it's early days in D&M.
April 2009
There's a problem with the world when Ashes to Ashes makes for more compelling viewing than Doctor Who. This series, to attract from the usual tedious messages-from-the-future schtick, we've got an added bit of genuine narrative intrigue in the form of some real (probably a little Wire-inspired) internal corruption. This is something of a relief, as it might give us something more to hang a programme on than just some faint nostalgia. Ashes to Ashes/Life on Mars has in the past had some really awful stories (Mars more than Ashes, I think it's fair to say). Now with more of a sense of direction the stories themselves might improve, or we might be able to forgive them more if we think the thing as a whole is going somewhere interesting (compare and contrast Life on Mars).

Athletics:
[Nietzchean game-show, B2]
August 2009
There's no University Challenge this week because people are trying to jump higher or longer than other people, throw things further and run faster. Some people find this sort of thing entertaining, perhaps for the suspense of it all, and so they're welcome to it. You won't find me complaining about sport on TV, even when it takes off one of my favourite programmes and I find the sport in question about as enjoyable as a feverish dream in which I repeatedly have to remove my toes and rearrange them in a triangular grid only to find that I constantly have one toe left over. Meanwhile, BBC1 is unaffected by the "I'm better than you" crowd; it instead chooses to gather a handful of geeks in an aircraft hangar and blow them up [Bang Goes the Theory].

Auf Wiedersehen Pet Special:
[Vintage comedy drama two-parter, B1]
December 2004
We say a Teutonic farewell to that wonderful fly-on-the-wall documentary series Pet Special, by sending some dodgy workmen to Thailand.

Autopsy:
[Body-slicing with Gunther von Hagens, C4]
November 2007
Ok, so let's discuss Autopsy. The original programme was an interesting novelty. The first series was genuinely interesting and educative. But this one was just... it didn't really add up. For a start, the autopsies themselves seemed quite gratuitous: we diagnosed the cause of death from an x-ray, which showed several broken ribs and a dark patch. So cutting her up on telly didn't really demonstrate anything except that x-rays work. Then we put a spine in a vice just to see what would happen. What happened was that some gristle buckled and snapped. Great. I'll not put my spine in a vice ever again. Important public information, there. I was hoping for some genuine insight into the complexities of internal injury, but what I got was some jelly in a radio-controlled car (actually it was petrol driven, and not radio-controlled, but that doesn't convey the image accurately enough; you were closer to the mark with what I said, image-wise). Even that didn't work properly. All we learnt was that the jelly gets a bit mushed if you whack it. To hammer this point home (literally), he proceeded to clout a cadaver's skull such that the brain jiggled about. Again, this was a pointless exercise. Three people died in the making of this film, and got dissected for no good reason. Even the previous episode (which was better, and scored a point) was pretty vacuous, really. They pumped some fake blood through a corpse to show that bigger blood vessels bleed more than smaller ones (something that had never occurred to me), and then demonstrated that most stabs to the torso will kill you. This latter demonstration was almost sensible in comparison to the rest of it, involving as it did a giant meat-slicer and a frozen corpse full of daggers. But it also felt a bit... seedy. The seedy nature is alleviated somewhat by the presence of our neatly shaven naked assistants who get prodded by a slightly embarrassed (and sadly fully-dressed) Red Cross first-aider and a very eager body artist. But what makes the whole thing so utterly absurd is that after all this disemboweling, the questions at the end are always things like "how do I splint a fracture?" or "what's the right way to treat a nose bleed?" and not "what should I do if the kidney falls out during an appendectomy?". What is more, the questions are clearly primed, as the Red Cross woman is always armed with just the right props for the answer.

Autumnwatch:
[wildlife voyeurism, B2]
October 2008
All this week, in a terrifying reality-TV horror saga, a nightmarsh creature rises from the earth to paw at the bejeaned legs of Kate Humble and mutter something about tits. Yes, that's right: Autumnwatch is back!

The Avengers:
[Repeat run of the classic ATV series, B4]
November 2005
Ah.... The Avengers. Well paced on the whole, and pleasantly spartan dialogue until they felt the need to explain things towards the end. Shame about that, cos it was really very silly. Maybe it would've been better in Japanese. Nice, comic-strippy fun. The fight sequences were amusingly floppy, but who cares when you're watching Emma Peel in a tight jump-suit? The Avengers is good if only for its understated humour (and Diana Rigg).
June 2006
The Avengers returns, this time in black and white, and starting from the arrival of Emma Peel. Nice one, B4. They have a knack of restoring my faith just at the moment it starts to ebb.

Bang Goes The Theory:
['science' magazine, B1]
July 2009
This Monday, BBC1 did its first bit of prime-time science programming (if one ignores health and natural history programming) since the demise of Tomorrow's World (actually, that's almost certainly not true but it feels right). Bang Goes the Theory has been described by the idle as the new Tomorrow's World which it isn't. Although two of the items were just about addressing new scientific developments, it was hardly the gadget-fest of TW. But then we have Dragon's Den for that sort of thing. No, Bang... is Open University does Top Gear. And for ease of comparison, they handily put the repeat of Sunday's Top Gear on BBC2 at the same time, cunningly erasing a modest chunk of audience without breaking a sweat. The OU celebrates its 40th anniversary this year (granting it a B4 doc next week [narrated by Lenny Henry!]) and is doubtless still performing a great service for its students. But for the idle telly-watcher it no-longer pulls its weight. The demise of broadcast lectures in 2006 was one of the most regrettable losses to late night and early morning television we will ever witness, on an educational level as well as on a comedic one. At both sides of that rubicon, the organization has also funded mainstream science education programming for genuine public consumption; in fact almost every science-related programme on the BBC (including health and natural history programming) is co-funded by the OU. This has included some very good programmes such as Rough Science, Science Shack, and the mighty Mark Steel Lectures. Recently it has mainly meant Coast and James May. Only one of the programmes I've just mentioned really stretched itself beyond the realms of the O-level, and that was the one presented by a comedian and ported from R4 (where the OU had no involvement). In other words, since 2006, advanced science has no place on our televisions. Anyone over the age of 16 who payed any sort of attention at school will learn nothing save that which has been forgotten or that which has been mis-taught: that is to say, that which might be taught more aptly by a Top Gear presenter than by a harangued comprehensive school science teacher with his arms full of photocopies and a classroom full of performing chimps. This refresher course is by no means a bad thing, but there's more to science than that. I know I'm stuck on my loop again, but you only have to look back at the demise of Horizon to see the destruction of TV science from Pelican level to Puffin. Radio is a different matter, with the World Service's Science in Action, and Radio 4's The Material World augmenting the true brilliance of the irreplaceable In Our Time. I was an avid viewer of Tomorrow's World up until the Vorderman re-vamp. For those who don't remember, the Blue Peter-ish TW arrangement of old was replaced by Carol Vorderman in a darkened studio presenting slick and shallow films from the likes of jazz DJ Jez Nelson (there to bring in the kiddies) and posh mountaineer Rebecca Stephens (there to bring in the masturbators). Gone were the days of the Christmas quiz, Bob Simes, and live demonstrations going hideously wrong. It was a disaster. The largely unseen final series, presented by Adam Hart Davis, Kate Humble and a runner, was considerably better, not just for the presenters but for the return to the old format. But by that point nobody was watching, and the thing was doomed. Of course, in those days Kate Humble was just that woman off Rough Science. Tomorrow's World with that same team today would get a lot more viewers just on account of her. But that's not what the BBC and the OU have chosen to do. They've chosen to get three youths: a gobby one called Dallas (late of C5's The Gadget Show), a woman-y one called Liz with some sort of accent (late of Top of the Pops and C4's ill-fated breakfast show RI:SE), and an engineer called Jem (who we may recall from such programmes as Science Shack and C4's Men in White). They sit in the Top Gear hangar, tastefully redecorated seemingly by the last Doctor Who, and exchange carefully rehearsed banter in a way which makes Jeremy Clarkson look spontaneous. Pretty much all the items were at the very least mildly annoying, and the only one which was any good at all involved Jem building a large funnel-shaped air-cannon and deafening himself with it. And yet precisely what is wrong with it is tricky to pin down. The one called Dallas does not help things by being naturally whacky and annoying. The one called Liz does not help things by being so mumsy and mature to the point of being boring. And the one called Jem does not help things by getting massively excited by things going bang. Perhaps there we might find the germ of the problem... it's there in the title: Bang Goes the Theory... This is a programme about things that go bang; all Jem is likely to be doing for the next 10 weeks is causing small controlled explosions, which is all well and good but I rather fear Top Gear have already beaten them to that. One explosion and two rather dull VTs, I fear will be the recipe. I hope I'm wrong. I don't expect it to be degree level chemistry or anything, but if you're stealing Top Gear's format and Top Gear's studio, then you also need to apply Top Gear's inventive and playful spirit. We need races between the presenters in which each tackles a particular problem in a different way. We need elaborate challenges and above all we need a bit more cynicism. These presenters are like new teachers; all springy and unsullied by chewing gum and arson. Yes, geekiness can be offputting to science-virgins but so can wild enthusiasm. Rough Science had that aspect down a lot better, particularly in the middle series when you seriously began to wonder if one of the experts might crack and kill the others. I suppose that sort of thing might be asking a little too much.
I just caught an And finally... on the ITV News about a YouTuber who's on-line make-up advice has proven so successful that she's now opening some kind of boutique in New York. ITV (and for that matter the BBC) should note just how cheap and easy it can be to generate a large audience on a low budget. Simple one-camera make-up advice was being doled out on television in the 1950s, in the days when talking straight to the viewer without a live studio audience, an epic score, articulated lighting systems and dancing bears was considered an acceptable use of the magic box. You do not need computer generated studios and lots of whizzy graphics. You just need somebody with a moderate amount of skill and charisma to stand in front of the lens and tell you something useful. You do not need to blow up the Top Gear studio with a suicide vest made from household cleaners (though I must admit I'm looking forward to seeing Jem try that one); you can get an audience simply by having a beardy man in a kipper tie with a piece of chalk and a black-board. In truth, of course, neither extreme is wholly satisfying. In truth, the best path strikes a balance between explanation and bombast. In truth, Johnny Ball revealed all.

Banned season:
[Season of programming (mainly docs) looking at censorship, C4]
March 2005
Channel 4's Banned season was a little disappointing. I'd've rather had a more TimeShift style approach than the crazee look that C4 gave us. But that's just old, fuddy-duddy me.

BBC Television Channels have their own page.

Beethoven season:
[Season of programming across the BBC to celebrate 200 years since Eroica]
May 2005
It's 200 years since the release of Beethoven's classic multi-palladium album Eroica. To celebrate, the BBC have been raiding the shelves marked "Be". In the course of this, they've accidentally programmed a Leonard Bernstein season on R3 this week, though next Sunday they kick off on a "complete works of Beethoven" marathon. In anticipation of this, BBC 4 has elected to prime us by repeating everything it's shown in the last three years that's had Beethoven in it in some way, and BBC 2 has produced a dramatised documentary on the world's favourite mad deaf German, presented by the slippery Charles Hazelwood. Chances are that this excessively glossy production will not live up to the high benchmark set by Mark Steel's lecture (which gets a repeat on Monday).
Beethoven Uncovered [a BBCi analysis with Charles Hazelwood] would be better if there was a score rather than just key blocks to follow, but still, nice of them to do even that. Hazelwood grew stubble for added hint of Gergiev as he sweatily conducted his way through this analysis of Symphony No 2. I look forward to the better symphonies that are to come.
[They didn't come. The selections seemed to get increasingly obscure.]

Being Human:
[Buffy-influenced comedy-drama, B3]
February 2009
Is Being Human any good? This is the question I have deliberately not been asking myself. It treads ground already well puddled by Ultraviolet and Buffy/Angel, which doesn't really help it any. It's fair to say that the latter pretty much covered the whole "vampire-angst" topic in as much depth as it is possible for a bathysphere to plumb. Does Being Human do anything new? No. Not really. It's not even as funny as Buffy. But as a stripped down British version of the concept goes, it does a fairly neat job and is far less annoying than the conspiratorial and up itself Ultraviolet. You are probably struggling to recall Ultraviolet. It was a modern take on vampires: a 'what if vampires were real and were around today' conspiracy drama series (complete with garlic bombs and carbon bullets). It's largely forgotten because a) not many people watched it, and b) Buffy came along and did it so much better, albeit with more fantasy and less science (a recipe which worked for Star Wars and will keep on working). While the the metaphysics of Being Human are closer to those of Ultraviolet, that is not really the point. Being Human is a social drama, concerned with the plight of the individuals involved, and in that respect it is just a rehash of all things Buffy. So it's unoriginal, definitely, but is that such a terrible crime? It is, after all, watchable. Give me this derivative but interesting nonsense over the glorified wallpaper of Madmen any day.
I'm still not sure if this programme is really truthfully any good or not, but it's better than Heroes which constantly surprises me by still being on.
March 2009
Last episode rather suddenly changed gear as we got our first stakings and things went a whole lot more Buffy than they had been. We've shifted from wacky domestic comedy-drama to all-out apocalypse in about five minutes, which is a bit of a jolt. Still, only another hour to go before things are either wrapped up nicely or left open for another series.

The Best of the Worst:
["Comedy" panel game, C4]
September 2006
The Best of the Worst... what can we say about that? Whatever we may have thought of Rob Brydon's Annually Retentive, it surely sounded the death knell for panel-based comedy. Surely. No-one in their right mind would commission another one? Especially if they'd not really got a very entertaining concept... just "which is the worst thing here?", and "which clip will end the worst?"... like a kind of comparative Question of Sport. Such a concept should never make it to our screens, and yet here we are... on C4... Have I mentioned before that I'm worried about C4? Of course I have. I despaired over the demise of C4 in the last two runs of this column. So now they reply by delivering a panel game presented by that tedious Armstrong fella, that annoying wideboy Johnny Vaughan geezer, and the generally amusing David Mitchell. The concept's thickness is measured in microns, and the entire programme is carried on Mitchell's remarks. And they are good, funny remarks. But they are in the context of a painful panel-game. Why not just have David Mitchell doing stand-up for 30 mins? Someone needs to tell Mitchell to stop bottom-feeding in the death-pits that are C4 panel toss, because whilever he is there raising their comic potential, they will keep oozing out of the woodwork. It is now imperative that funny people abandon panel shows, out of kindness. When a dog suffers, we hit it on the head with a brick. When a format is flailing its last, we should remove the life-support of amusing people. David Mitchell must, if necessary, be forcibly restrained from entering the studio.

Big Brother:
[contrived, zeitgeistal, fly-on-the-wall game-show, C4]
August 2009
The big news this week is that Channel 4 are to finally put their ailing cash-cow Big Brother out of its misery. Eleven years is quite short for a cow, really. It has to be said that three things in particular have nobbled the format: 1) the fact that only idiots want to play, 2) the fact that a series now seems to last about a year, and 3) the loss of 24 hour coverage. Surely the one central novelty of Big Brother is being able to turn on E4 in the middle of the night and watch a weirdo in his underpants cooking pasta. Crucially it's that sort of wall-to-wall coverage that used to draw perfectly respectable people like myself into becoming a casual viewer, appraised of certain key identities and able to talk to those odd women in the office who still watch the programme with an almost religious fervour, cursing Shazza or Gillette for having a funny way of looking at Mazooka. Never again will I photocopy to the mantra "I hope she gets evicted." The next question, of course, is how will the self-confessedly skint Channel 4 fund itself now? Perhaps this move demonstrates a confidence that some deal with the BBC will go through.

Blackbeard:
[2-part drama, B1]
September 2006
Pirates are very hip these days, thanks to Johnny Depp, the Rolling Stones, and the MP3 revolution. So here's a two-part, Sunday-night, madefor buckleswash. It's probably crap, but the publicity still makes old Mr Teach look like an Islamic terrorist.
[It wasn't brilliant.]

Bleak House:
[period serial, B1]
October 2005
Stars of all varieties are squeezed together in tight crinolines for Anthony Davis's 15 part adaptation of one of the chunkier Dickens tomes. The BBC are going for a soapy format, which is probably sensible. The consequence is that this looks interesting. Not especially interesting, just mildly interesting, but interesting all the same. That's not to say that it might turn out to be a rather average period drama when all is told (or even by the end of the week). Give it a goggle, anyway. It's in bite-sized chunks for a change.
November 2005
Bleak House is getting nowhere slowly, and thanks to the unique way in which Dickens likes to connect every character he writes to every other one, there's not very many blanks we can't fill for ourselves now. It's a case of waiting for the characters themselves to catch up with things. We must take pleasure only in the details and the intricacies of the relationships: just exactly how did x and y end up being tied in social knots... I'm finding it all rather disposable, and am becoming unaverse to missing bits as the fancy takes me. It's half past eight, Bleak House is on. Oh well let me just finish this book. I can really take or leave it. It is not keeping my interest.
December 2005
It's very dull and pretty humourless for an Andrew Davies script.
[Bleak House never lived up to its heritage or played up to its soap format.]

Blizzard: Race to the Pole:
[documentary by ordeal, B2]
August 2006
I've not seen much of this, because it's been on at the same time as I Claudius, but I saw the end of last Wednesday's. Basically, Bruce "Tribe" Parry swaps his penis gourd for a sturdy parka, and heads out into the snowy wastes in an attempt to prove that Scott was incompetent. Sunday's episode looks like it's this final instalment where he finally gets to eat his Oates.
Norway's dog-driven sleds could've gone to the pole and back about three times while Bruce Parry's Scott-ish crew slowly wasted away in the snowy wastes of Greenland in B2's Blizzard. Parry et al looked about 60 once shaven and naked, and Parry himself wasted little time in treating us to yet another shot of his tattooed arse. But ultimately, Blizzard was no Tribe, lacking as it did the penis gourds, and the well-subtitled comic exchanges with lip-plated elders.

Blue/Orange:
[one-off drama from a successful play about black culture and mental illness, B4]
February 2005
Its success was, I think, reliant on a strong cast. Without it, the production would've been all too close to the interaction twixt Jedi and Jar-Jar Binks.

Blue Peter at 50:
[documentary, B2]
October 2008
Blue Peter at 50 promises to be crammed full of smiles, nostalgia and tedious archive. Finally revealed is the fact that the original John Noakes died after only a day's presenting and had to be secretly replaced with a double. Even his wife had no idea.

Britain From Above:
[helicopter scenery documentary, B1 then B2 immediately after]
This looks set to be a big budget version of those local ITV helicopter tours. But the advantage of the regional versions is that they fly over places you know. So this is basically Andrew Marr in a light aircraft. The second programme is different to the first; some creative scheduling designed to perplex us all.

Britain's Got Talent:
[variety talent contest, I1]
June 2007
Variety has finally returned in all its glory to ITV1 in the form of Britain's Got Talent, a talent show that for once does not solely rely on people who think they sound like Whitney Houston. It's even presented by Ant and Dec, so should be just about acceptable programming. Unfortunately it's also got Piers Morgan on it, so I've not been watching. Simon Cowell and that woman from The Bill (or whatever it is she does for a living - did she have an affair with Dustin Gee?) I can cope with. But Piers Morgan is a step too far; tap dancing monkeys or not.

Britpop Night:
[a night of Britpop-related programming on B4]
August 2005
An evening of programming dedicated to that curious moment a decade ago when the British press decided that all this Balkans business was so depressing, they'd rather work for the NME. At least some of what's scheduled should be half-decent. Though TOTP2 (the good TOTP2, before Steve Wright cocked it up)'s A-Z of Britpop might've been worth adding to the list. Not the worst themed-night ever, by any means, but nothing we'll be telling our grandchildren about.

Britz:
[two-part drama, C4]
October/November 2007
C4 gives us a two part drama from Peter "Warriors" Kosminsky: Britz. Brother and sister: he works for MI5, she's a suicide bomber. Hilarity ensues. It wasn't nearly as bad as I expected, and just about bore out its far from snappy running time. But I'm not wholly sure the structure of the two episodes (Ep 1: his story; Ep 2: her story) worked fully. Perhaps a red button conceit may've been better, with the two narratives running simultaneously and the programme repeated (inverted for terrestrial viewers) the next day. But then I'm not sure you'd watch it any differently (except that the second ep wouldn't be so nippy as the shared scenes couldn't be cut down). The end message of the programme was that recent legislation (ASBOs, control orders etc.) is a bit dodgy. Which I think most of the audience that was watching knew anyway. In that respect it was on the wrong channel. The audience you need to hit with this stuff is watching the ITV. Liberal drama's long established prime hurdle is that, due to the unique way in which it is funded, it just ends up preaching to the converted. At least Warriors was on BBC1.

Bromwell High:
[animated sit-com; an attempt at a UK version of South Park; C4]
August 2005
Looks like a Monkey Dust sketch stretched to 25'. It was ok, but a little too over the top to be anything close to classic. It occasionally amused, but I won't be taping it while I watch Heimat.

Bus Night:
[themed evening of programming on B4]
July 2008
This weekend, BBC4 has what it calls Bus Night. But it's not Bus Night, otherwise there'd be a programme about public transport in Sheffield. No, it's actually London Bus Night as every single programme it's showing is about London's public transport system. Ok, the Routemaster was quite nice, but the rest of the country (indeed the rest of the world) has busses too. It will be interesting to see in what ways the opening of the Salford studios will change the BBC.

Capturing Mary:
[Poliakoff drama, B2]
November 2007
Now to talk Poliakoff. I don't think I like Poliakoff. I don't actively dislike him, but he's not the genius the BBC are deluded enough to believe he is. This year he sold them three more dramas about rich people in big houses. I didn't see the Michael Gambon one, but judging by the other two, I probably didn't loose out too much by it. Capturing Mary, its sister piece, was flotsum: already I have forgot I ever saw it. On the plus side, we could give Maggie Smith a full glaucoma exam as we watched. But the framing concept was pretty wobbly; the chirpy caretaker annoying, and as for the music... Poliakoff has to start shopping elsewhere for his music. He's been cranking that bloody record with its spiralling strings for so long now that it has finally snapped in my head. It has just about reached the point of self parody to the extent that it certainly detracted from the drama. There was no need to pull out from a woman in a big dress in a cellar to that needlessly sugary and over-the-top music. It's pointless, but then so was the whole thing. Better was the accompanying monologue A Real Summer, though this too was flawed, all the more so when you realise that there was little or no real glue binding it to its parent. If anything it was contradictory. But maybe that lends Capturing Mary depth. Maybe she's an unreliable narrator and David Walliams is just a projection of her. Ah... Etc.

Casanova:
[3-part period comedy-drama showing as part of the opening season on B3, and here repeated on B2]
March 2005
As Doctor Who approaches, we can sit and prepare with this other Russell T Davies effort, which is far from rubbish. This week, Casanova gets rich and goes to jail. A lot like Monopoly, or Enron.
[Casanova was played by David Tennant, who would revive the performance (minus frock-coat) in the second series of Who.]

Catterick:
[Vic & Bob sit-com, originally shown in the opening season of B3, and here repeated on B2]
May 2005
It's been about a year since this debuted on BBC Three, and it's probably been delayed because the powers that be thought it was crap. Indeed, had it crossed over at the time, it would likely have severely winged B3, cos people are fickle that way. Smoking Room and Little Britain 2 have jumped to analogue in the interim, and so now the way is secure for Vic and Bob's vanity vehicle, without worry. It is a vanity project, and at times it's a bit rubbish. But Catterick also has moments of brilliance, and it certainly pisses on the likes of Green Wing.

Channel 4 channels have their own page.

Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life:
[documentary, B1]
February 2009
National treasure David Attenborough takes the pruning sheers to the thicket of life. Make the most of him before he's replaced by some young tosspot with a "chattier and more informal" style. It was ok, with plenty of cute stock-footage, but the naffly titled What Darwin Didn't Know on B4 last month, and the In Our Time specials (also last month) did things better. Still, they had the benefit of longer running-times so it's not a fair comparison. They also had the benefit of coming earlier in the season.

Charles Wheeler - a Tribute:
[evening of programming brought about by the death of our best journalist, B2, B4]
July 2008
A couple of his docs follow on B4 in Sport Mastermind style: Charles Wheeler - JFK: Legend and Leader (where to dash and where to colon, the programme-titler's nightmare), and Charles Wheeler - a Shadow over Europe (2130-2210). Now Charles Wheeler was many things, but "a Shadow over Europe" seems disingenuous.

Charlie Brooker's Screen Wipe:
[comedic television review programme, here in its pilot run; B4]
March 2006
Brooker is clearly a man of taste. His biographical montage of Nicky Campbell, complete with blood, pentagrams and slashy fonts was great. As was his review of the vacuum that is Deal or No Deal. Funny and right. Good. Deserves a new series. It is currently the best programme of the year, though it's only March.
[It received a proper commission, though lost out to Planet Earth in the best programme stakes.]
February 2007
Nice to see Mr Brooker again. And nice to see him going through the Ofcom rulebook, like I did with the ITC some years ago. Tying it in with everything else worked very well. I'm a little bitter with Brooker for stealing my jokes about the Apple Mac campaign (Monday's Guardian). I was going to wait for the ads to reach a larger audience before doing my "I'm made for one fingered morons" spiel. Now he's beat me to it and made me look like a very bitter old man. Which, of course, I am.
March 2007
Nearly getting 3pts was The Screen Wipe Guide to TV, which was a recut of the documentary elements of the series so far. The quality in this compressed form was fantastic, and it would've been a 3 had the material been new. But in the end it was just a glorified repeat...
December 2008
Charlie Brooker went all straight this week, with a feature-length episode in which he lightly fawned against some of the richest screenwriters in the UK. It was informative and good PSB, but it lacked the usual seam of quiet vitriol.
[A week later:]
Konnie Huq was getting men to piss into the wind as part of a return to traditional form for Charlie Brooker. Nice.

The Charlotte Church Show:
[Celebrity-helmed chat magazine; C4]
August 2006
Lovers of kitsch may get something from The Charlotte Church Show, which already feels like it's descended into self-parody and it's not even gone out yet. Church herself looks more like a haggard cross between Liz Taylor, Jackie Collins and the Gladiator "Panther" with each passing babycham. When I saw her photo in the RT I assumed she was a 50-something failed chanteuse given a second chance in some Kay Mellor drama about the Cardiff burlesque scene. But I have a vivid imagination at times. And evidently from this rant I've been spending too much time in close proximity to the office copy of Heat. De Niro and Pacino together at last, but which looks the worst in a bikini?
September 2006
Speaking of battered formats in their dribbling dotage, we come inevitably to the most anticipated television show of the week... The Charlotte Church Show. It's been advertised wall-to-wall, and taken up more column inches than is humane. Normally I would've ignored it, but in my role as TV critic, and given that I was bedridden with ill-health on Friday evening, I found myself grazing on her pastures. Firstly, my views on the Church in history: Little girls singing hymns is not my thing, so my first real contact with her was in her troubled teenage years of tantrum. Her highly sexed performances on HIGNFY made an old man fairly happy -- she did a pretty good job, there. And that's pretty much my window on her talents, save seeing her bum in sniping bitch-mags. It was, therefore, with some surprise that I witnessed the Church grinning, cringing and pointing at celebrities on the beach as part of her show. A sketch about that Mills woman only served to enhance the Heat TV aspect of the programme. Some camp bloke that looked like a bloated Mike Read, and the irritating Denise Van Outen, were on hand to get on my tits, while Alan Partridge's geordie mate was a glittery-jacketed compere. The show wasn't quite an undisciplined mess, but it was a shabbier affair than its ultimate ancestry of the likes of Skinner and Norton. This third generation of celebrity chat variety is, ultimately, shabby toss, but alas not shabby enough. Most of the audience surely tuned in to watch some sort of car crash, but all they got was a limp Friday Show stand-in. It was neither good enough nor crap enough to have been worthy of our time.

Children in Need:
[B1 charity telethon]
November 2007
What's happened to Pudsey Bear? He looks like he's got mumps or something. Apparently, the reason for the redesign is to make him more web-friendly and easier to animate. I just find him scary. But then I found the old one scary too, so...

The Children's TV on Trial:
[week of programming examining kid's TV, B4]
May 2007
B4's Children's TV on Trial was not the rehash of TV on Trial I had hoped for. Rather it was a series of TimeShift style docs on each decade's programming. It was needfully selective but therefore also hopelessly flawed. Repeats have always been a large part of children's programming, and anyone watching kid's TV in the '90s can tell you that Trumton did not magically vanish from the screen in 1981 (even if it was rested for a couple of years). Likewise, '80s telly was more than just gritty social realism and toy adverts etc, etc. But then they only have one hour to tell us these things, so I suppose fair enough. The closest the week of programming got to the great TV on Trial was The Kids' Verdict, which was TV on Trial on speed, with children. They'd be locked in the appropriately decorated TV on Trial living room with only spangles, an Atari and videos of the Clangers for company. There were worrying moments: a suggestion that Peter Kaye was somehow good and that news without music behind it is somehow bad; the potential belief that Johnny Ball was a man who did a series of programming about chairs, and numerous other misapprehensions caused by a lack of a contemporary audience member (unlike TV on Trial). But at the end of the day the kids seemed to have come to a sufficient appraisal of children's TV: ie that Magic Roundabout was good, Johnny Ball was god, and Why Don't You... was the gravest abomination in TV history. Again, of course, the show had to be very selective about what it gave the kids to watch, but what they found for them seems to have been just about acceptable.

Chuck Berry in Concert:
[Repeat of a '70s BBC concert; B4]
May 2005
A fantastic concert, made all the better for the sense of cheapness and intimacy of the venue and the buzzing guitars. The best bit of gig was surely My Ding-a-ling, complete with disgusted audience-members slowly feeling compelled to join in and enjoy themselves. I am assured that they flagellated themselves later. Chuck himself was surprisingly normal and his amusing banter was worth the entry fee alone (£50 for a digi-box).

Classics Britannia:
[classical music doc in the much abused "Britannia" strain on B4]
July 2008
Our Verity picks through the '60s "classical" scene and stumbles upon Gavin Bryars and Cornelius Cardew hiding in a piano trying to avoid Harrison Birtwistle and Peter Maxwell Davies. The latter are carrying sticks. Verity holds her arms out and tries to act as a human shield. But her wart screams "They're in the piano!". "Found you!" booms Birtwistle; "You're it!" He lifts the piano lid, but Bryars and Cardew are gone.

Coast:
[natural history / geography travelogue, B2]
August 2005
Coast is a great concept, borrowed largely from ACNC TV's Pier Review, only real and not as good. What's right with it? Nicholas Crane, the idea of going round the coast, that lovely anthropologist with the hair and the accent. What's wrong with it? The magazine format is the worst problem. This weekend there was an item in which the historian with the Ross Noble haircut told us absolutely nothing for 10 minutes. It annoyed me. It would be better if it was simply Crane walking around some cliffs, telling us about them. Sort of AJP Taylor with a steadycam and a good cagool. There's also a bit of badly handled repetition, which doesn't help. Like with the historian this week, saying how unbelievable it was that a village might fall in the sea, despite the gorgeous anthropologist having told us about such a village the week before. Really, it's as good as its presenters' ability to cope with the material they're given, but inevitably this means that in every episode, at least half of the show will be a let-down. This same format was a strain on Adam Hart-Davis's last project, but it just about worked there. Here it reminds me of Why Don't You or something. Too many presenters, too little focus. Maybe they'd've been better with a Travels with Pevsner approach: a different presenter in each region.
Later that month:
Coast got itself a point this week. I'm afraid this was for nothing more than being local, but there you go. I've explained already why it's a flawed format, so I won't again. One thing I will mention: the saucy anthropologist made a mistake this week when she said that for the first time in over a century someone would make alum at Ravenscar. Had she been watching the works of her peers in BBC2 history programming, she would know that Adam Hart-Davis made alum with his own piss there in the last decade, and I would not be willing to risk putting money on him being the only person to have done this on telly over the last umpteen years. You can't afford to say things like that anymore. If you're planning a reconstruction, the chances are someone already did it five years earlier on C4...

Codex:
[gameshow set in the British Museum, with Tony Robinson; C4]
November 2006
Sorry this week's column is so hideously late. I'm afraid I was feeling too ill to come to the keyboard. I'm not entirely sure if my illness is causing hallucination or if this really is a gameshow set in the British Museum. It has the potential to be a real Chatsworth-like wonder. Or it could just be dreadful. All the publicity seems to involve Tony Robinson looking smug.
After watching:
Codex didn't really come off... mainly because the way they eliminate the contestants is so random and unfair [players guess nearest to a numerical answer; the furthest off is out]. It never lived up to its Chatsworthy pitch, perhaps cos it wasn't made by Chatsworth. It was mildly informative, but a pretty poor gameshow.

Comedy Lab:
[demonstration strand for new comedy; C4]
May 2005
This week saw the return of Comedy Lab. Glenn Wool came out on top, though I thought it was somewhat similar to Rich Hall's fishing thing on B3. Modern Toss didn't really work in the fourth dimension, and Whatever looked like the offcasts of Bravo's Banzai-rip-off progs. Speeding was an interesting set-up if not especially hilarious, and I'd put my money on that getting a commission above the rest (maybe have some on Wool each-way). None of the episodes in week two read up to much, and most delivered as much as I anticipated. I missed the uninvitingly named I'm Spazticus, alas. Of the other three, only one was actually a comedy. Pritch & Panch was a documentary (on a modestly amusing subject, perhaps, but a documentary all the same), while Blackout was a drama with no real hint of comedy at all. I assume it had been turned down by Afternoon Play (some of the Afternoon Plays were actually quite funny) or C4's late night short film slot. What it was doing in Comedy Lab is beyond me.

The Community Channel:
[public service broadcasting channel in the early hours]
December 2005/6 Report
The other day I finally got out of bed to see what this channel gets up to in the early hours of breakfast time. It seems it gets up to morning TV documentaries. And there was something with one of the Snows but I was too tired to remember which one. Anyway, what it isn't is Mrs Hendershaw from number 32 reading poetry in a shed. Which is a shame. Alas, kids, those days are gone. Except on webcasts, where she does an interesting thing with her thimbles. No, this is documentaries for people who for some reason are watching the telly at 6 in the morning. I suppose that's fair enough.

Coronation Street:
[long-running soap-opera, I1]
March 2006
Next week sees the death of Mike Baldwin. It's almost ten years since he survived Don Brennan's attempt on his life. The bridge still has that mucky mark that Baldwin's car left when it went up in flames (along with the soap itself). In recent months, the increasingly desperate writers of Coronation Street have been forced to steal from The Archers, and have their aging businessman interloper go increasingly batty with Alzheimer's. Never ones to stick with a concept for its full term, they're aborting with a tedious but by no means unprecedented heart attack. Or is it a shadowy taxi-driver returned from the grave for revenge? Given his mental condition, Baldwin's last words could be anything. It's an ideal opportunity for the writing team to search through the filing cabinet for some sort of Rosebud. But they won't. He'll probably have a moment of clarity and declare his undying love for Ken Barlow.
January 2008
Cora executed Vera in a rather sweet way really, which is quite novel for a soap. But it was curiously constructed: Jack and Vera have an unseen day out in Blackpool; Tyrone is the last to see her alive but his visit is also off camera. So Vera is almost entirely absent from her swansong, like when an actor dies unexpectedly and they have to kill the character off out of shot.
September 2008
I caught a moment of Coronation Street this week and was shocked to discover that Emily Bishop has some mucky photos of Rita Sullivan knocking about the house. It's about time we had a spot of aged lesbian action on the cobbles.
February 2009
Top channel this week is, rather unconventionally, ITV1. It achieved this mainly through Peeping Tom, but was helped out by their new Friday-night line-up, the rescheduling of Harry Hill's TV Burp, and, even-weirder, a half-decent script for the first episode of Coronation Street on Monday (Damon Rochefort was at the typewriter).
July 2009
Comedy remained firmly in the designated hands of Norris and new-butcher-on-the-block Graeme (Deirdre's mum was sadly not present this week). The latter is the beneficiary of some particularly good lines (obliquely comic dialogue remains a strength of Coronation Street). The main butcher -- the one with the silly voice -- no, all the butchers in Coronation Street have silly voices, don't they... -- still, him: Ashley -- he's still married to that frightening woman, who should probably hook up with farmer-boy in Emmerdale. Craig Charles is still in it. Steve McDonald is getting married, as usual. The young one from Life on Mars is hanging around too, for no clear reason; likewise Fawlty Towers butler and Troubleshooter narrator Andrew Sachs, presumably just to help join everything up neatly. He's buying Norris expensive trainers. It's probably a gay thing. And that ginger girl is getting married to that bloke who kidnapped Sally and Kevin's daughter. Kevin's been having an affair with Chucky from the Child's Play films. Sally's part is being played for laughs and she is increasingly annoying to the point that it's a wonder she's not been strangled. And Jack's got a new girlfriend. Tune in again in next year to see how they're getting along.

The Cosmos:
[OU astronomy series, B2]
August 2007
The Cosmos is all too vague for my like. I'd rather it get down into space-time and gravity and black holes and whatnot, rather than just 'this is a big telescope isn't it lovely'. I suppose the problem for any programme like this is that it can't help but rehash programmes of the past.

Countdown:
[repeat of the first ep of the classic C4 gameshow; M4]
October 2007
It is my firmly held belief, having seen the first episode of Countdown again this week, that the programme was actually a cunning parody that was so subtle as to be missed by the audience who loved it as the friendly tea-time gameshow it was trying to mock. From the contestants (a dismissive intellectual played by Patrick Marber, and a troubled middle-manager played by Steve Coogan), to Ted Moult in dictionary corner (I got "bedsocks" last time, but you never asked me, Richard), via Whiteley's trademark pun-fuelled stutterings of banter. The old woman with the dictionaries was only seen once, and the letters were a wonderfully disgusting yellow rounded serif face on brown card. And then there were the hostesses: the letters hostess wore a nighty, and managed to walk in front of the cards during the first game. Whenever the camera caught her off-guard she looked bored to self-mutilation. The numbers hostess, in black and silver (this being 1982), was not being paid to speak, and so Richard intoned the numbers as they appeared. And then there was Carol, black-eyed and prematurely grey, looking like she'd spent the night vomiting; the human calaculator armed only with a marker pen and a slender waist. As things went along, Carol noticably gained in confidence as she realised she was the only one on set with a brain of any kind. The highlight was the conundrum (at this point a simple anagram of nine jumbled letters): Marber held a lead in excess of ten points so the round was accademic, though this was not dwelled on by Whiteley. Marber buzzed with the correct answer. Whiteley turned to Coogan and asked if he'd seen the answer too. Coogan's reply: yes, I got it straight away, but I forgot to ring my bell. Whiteley moves slickly on, ignoring the contestants to pass back to Ted Moult for some more bollocks. Chris Morris and Armando Iannucci hastily scribble down notes.

Countrywise:
[rural magazine, I1]
July 2009
Countrywise looks all the world like a regional product, but few things on ITV are regional these days and this isn't one of them. It's a sort of Countryfile / Coast wannabe, with more than a sprinkling of Dales Diary et al, and with the benefit of C4's former 'historienne' pin-up Bethany Hughes. There's very little wrong with it with the possible exception of its lack of originality, but then originality is not something much prized or necessary in a rural history and activities magazine show. It is probably the most sensibly scheduled piece of television the ITV has put against EastEnders since the regional opt-out window was dissolved.

Coup!:
[one-off comedy-drama about that coup attempt Mark Thatcher was involved in, B2]
June 2006
It was ok. It had a few jokes, and a few torture scenes. It worked out ok. More of the Thatchers would've been welcome. Mark's limited involvement was so narrow as to pretty much pass me by un-noticed. Yeah, it was alright. Worse films have been made for cinematic release.

Crimewatch [UK]:
[police outreach series, B1]
January 2008
I could talk about some of the month's highlights, but it's much more entertaining to talk about dross. This month Crimewatch relaunched, and I was in the room at the time so I gave it a look. Ok... I have not seen Crimewatch in over 10 years, so how many of the changes were new and how many were the result of a decade of neglect I cannot be sure. I notice that the "UK" element of the title seems to have slipped away somewhere along the line, but I can't be sure where. As have PCs Trent and Hatcher. It remains to be seen whether or not Aladdin's Cave is gone too. That was never a monthly slot if memory serves. Anyway... in charge of events now is Kirsty Young, a woman whose only talent seems to me to be a unique ability to half-sit, half-stand in the vicinity of a news desk. She's supposedly younger than Fiona Bruce, which surprised me. She must've had a hard life interviewing all those company directors and concert pianists on Desert Island Discs. But in fairness she presents the programme perfectly satisfactorily, albeit in that strange posh-Scots accent of hers.
The first reconstruction is narrated by a very annoying man who shouts in a cockney voice. This reconstruction seems even hammier than the old days. It is dripping with pacy music, which is rather distracting. And as the crime is committed, all we get is squeaking tyres and big beats, with the occasional over the top commentary from the narrator, who seems to neglect to mention those key facts of date, time and precise location: Were you in the area? Did you see a man in a black blouson jacket? Etc. In fairness, the reason I stopped watching Crimewatch in the first place is because if I had been in the area, the chances are I'd've already told the police everything I know. And I was never in the area anyway, because the area was always Nottingham or London, or somewhere like that. But, had I been in the area, and had I not realised I was in the area at the time, I really do think that having that time and that area constantly shoved down my ears in the hope that the little bell of memory tinkles is far far more important to the fight against crime than some dramatic music.
Then another shouty cockney comes on and does the photofits. Only whereas in the '90s we'd be treated to a direct rostrum or scanned-in feed of the image taking up the whole of our screen so that we might study the reprobate mug in all its aspect-ratio glory, now we have to look at it over the shouty cockney's shoulder, where it hangs, printed on a bit of card, pinned to a display partition. This seems a curious backwards step. Kirsty's blouse is also bothering me. It looks as if a strong wind might blow it off. I begin to wonder why it is we're here.
The second reconstruction is worse than the first. It opens with a criminal sequence of diabetes inducing syrup, in which a man proposes to his girlfriend thanks to the endeavours of his precocious son. The man will, of course, be dead by the end of the reconstruction. This sort of thing was always an occasional element of the reconstructions but I don't remember it ever being so brazen and so treacly. It made me want all three of them dead, which is not good. Especially as these are real people being depicted. And probably perfectly pleasant reasonable people. Not the makers of disturbingly over-dramatised reconstructions, or the actors they employ, both groups of which should be taken out and experimented upon in the interests of humanity. So already things aren't going well. By the end of the reconstruction, we are treated to a needlessly lingering shot of a bleeding corpse (as opposed to a look at the killer and the direction of his escape). I get the impression that the purpose of these reconstructions is not to help solve crimes but rather to shock me into being a good law-abiding citizen. The actual effect is opposite, as already suggested. Suddenly I am filled with hatred. I turn off Crimewatch, probably missing three crimes of which only I had the vital evidence necessary for securing a prosecution, and head off on a murdering spree in Chelsea, where I expect the chances of killing a TV exec are higher than in most places I know.

The Curse of Steptoe:
[bio-pic drama, B4]
March 2008
Last week, BBC4 achieved its highest ever audience rating, with The Curse of Steptoe. It must be said that an episode of Steptoe (qv) would've made for more harrowing and emotionally involving viewing. This was a rather bitty and narratively liberal telling of the lives of Messrs Bramble and Corbett, and it was badly paced, lacking any real sense of temporal scale. But it was also well acted with some nice set-pieces. [See also Hancock & Joan].

Cutting Edge:
[US import doc, B4]
September 2005
Cutting Edge, an American-made doc on film editing, was ok, though at times a little patronising in that US doc way. I'd've like a bit more on technique really, but never mind.

The Dame Edna Treatment:
[comedy chat show series, I1]
Best New Comedy Series 2007, Best TV Presenter 2007
March 2007
Dame Edna returned after a long absence to quietly take the piss out of some very rich people. Which was nice.
April 2007
Edna reached giddy heights with the juxtaposition of Alan Alda, Sohie Ellis Bextor, Shane Warne and Boris Johnson, plus PCs Stamp and Hollis. It was like Noel's House Party without the masturbation.

Dan Cruikshank's Adventures in Architecture:
[architecture travelogue series, B2]
April 2008
So this is where he's been all this time... busy touring the globe and looking at buildings (quelle surprise...). It's episode one of an eight part series. Why doesn't Meades get eight hours to play with?
A rather wonderfully self-contained (expect reduction to 10 minute slots, Coast style, when it comes to repeats) tour of the world's architecture.
May 2008
To celebrate reaching the final episode, Dan pays a visit to the world's oldest brothel. Was there a single episode of Adventures in Architecture that didn't include a depiction of a penis? I'd like to think there wasn't. In fact, I'd be willing to bet real money that there wasn't. Crafty bugger.

Dave:
[UK Gold spin-off showing repeats of BBC comedy, UD]
December 2007 Report
The franchises for Freeview airspace got shaken up a bit this year, and out of the carnage emerged UKTV Gold 2, reborn as "Dave". It's aimed at men, but so is ITV4 and so was Men & Motors. It doesn't mean it has to all be tits and brum-brums. In this case it means it's a delicate mix of repeats of Top Gear and Never Mind the Buzzcocks. And that's hosted by a homosexual now, so... This is a bit better than your average lad-channel. But like UK History, it suffers from recent repeat syndrome. Everything on it is a recent repeat. I saw Top Gear and Buzzcocks when they were on BBC2. And they didn't have adverts in them them. Dave, in that respect, seems a little surplus to requirements. But it's by no means terrible. Just second hand.
December 2008 Report
UK Gold was for years the favourite channel of many a satellite owner. Now its decidedly battily named sibling has joined us here on Earth, offering a collection of BBC2 offcuts and the occasional piece of (far from dreadful) original programming. Dave takes the Ronseal approach to television programming and gives us unadulterated repetition. The schedule could be better arranged to avoid deserts of Top Gear, and suchlike, but that's a quibble. The trouble with Dave is, of course, that it's all (well almost all) repeats, and most of them are not that old. I saw Buzzcocks when it was on so why would I watch it now? In that respect though, Dave is like a sort of natural iPlayer: the official BBC2 catch-up channel.

Dave Gorman in America Unchained:
[True Stories documentary, M4]
February 2008
Having entertained us with his slide-show lectures on B2, Gorman has spent some time in the wilderness, wondering how he could ever top the graph-fest of his horoscope experiment. After watching Super-Size Me, he decides to go to America and see if he can cross it without using a chain store of any kind. Unfortunately this is not an especially filmable concept. Fortunately, Dave is very bad at sticking to the brief, and takes a rather meandering course, killing his first director in the process and meeting some lovely people who are going out of business. All a bit sad, really.

David Shrigley's Spin:
[art documentary, B3]
November 2005
A slightly odd fish, made all the odder by the Roy Mallard narration. AView Award winning artist David Shrigley must make a series of satirical works. The problem with satire is that it is very easy to do badly, as Shrigley found out. By half way through, he seemed to get the idea, and began to modify his own work to the events rather than create something new from the news. From that point on, the art took a turn for the better, though the best thing was probably the Bird Flu Will Kill Us All projection, and even that might've been better. Anyway, I'm not an art critic. That's someone else's job. As telly it was ok, but a bit tossed off. That's BBC3 for you though, I suppose.

Dead Set:
[horror-comedy-drama, E4]
October 2008
This week saw pop-culture zombie thriller Dead Set, which will go down in a footnote of history (alongside that episode of Doctor Who) as an indicator of the all-pervasive might of what will be seen to be the defining programme of its generation: Big Brother. The most obvious manifestation of the Big Brother connection in Dead Set is the zombie Davina, who has something of a starring role: she bangs doors, growls and eats flesh in a far more convincing and entertaining manner than she ever presented a TV programme. As for the rest of the BB conceit, it is really pretty thin: perhaps [writer: Charlie] Brooker employed it simply as a means to funding: the setting has hardly been central to the plot: they could be anywhere really. I was expecting a sort of commentary of the Big Brother process, with zombification replacing elimination within a closed set. But the set was far from closed: they'd broken out of the house by the end of the second episode. The arrival of the police in episode three introduced a greater edginess and a newfound sense of humour with a single scene, and I'm hoping this beveled tone will stretch into the final episode tonight. As a concept, this is what Romero's Land of the Dead should've been: a loose comment on "celebrity culture" and the media. But I'm not sure it lives up to its promises. It's a solid-enough MFI zombie piece with a nice frame, but it's no Dawn or Day of the Dead. It's good, but I feel that it had the potential to be great.

Deal or No Deal:
[quantum game-show, C4]
November 2005
This week, I finally saw an episode of Deal or No Deal. It wasn't as rubbish as I expected it to be. Though it was quite rubbish.
[The success of this programme is near inexplicable. Jon Ronson's Guardian analysis of the series as cult provides the most reasonable explanation.]

Decision '79:
[election coverage re-run, BP]
May 2009
The Snooker's looking increasingly likely that it'll be Higgins v Murphy. Which gives us the opportunity to ignore it and watch Decision '79: What better way to celebrate May than to travel back in time 30 years to relive the moment the social consensus completely collapsed and The End Of Civilization began. Yup, it's the election re-run it'd be nice to forget were it not so historically important that we don't. Watch in terror as we, as a nation, justifiably cut off our collective nose only to find that in so doing we bled to death. A timely reminder that one should never defer a tight election lest the country's infrastructure collapse in the interim and lead to the wrong kind of landslide. Or in other words: don't be greedy, lest the greedy get into power. What will my marxist diatribe be concerned with next week? Place your bets now.
Naturally, at around 1pm, as the enormity of the horror begins to come home, you might wish to look away, only to consider the prospect of two podgy men wielding sticks a little too dreary.

Demolition:
[public-voted architectural anti-chart, C4]
December 2005
Demolition was a lot better than I expected. I was expecting "somebody rid of us of these hideous brutalist monstrosities", and while there was a bit of that, it was pretty well tempered. I have to say that I quite liked some of the top 10, though some were indeed pretty bad. In all I think it did a pretty good job, and it gave Sheffield a fair bit of airtime (something lacking in the highrise doc on B4 the other month).
[A follow-up the following year showed little movement for the programme's aims.]

Derren Brown: the Event:
[(not very) magic show, C4 and allied channels]
September 2009
Derren Brown makes his big stab at world domination. He begins his coup in a curious ten minute slot on Wednesday, when presumably he will be activating his minions and foot-soldiers. Then on Friday, 11th September, as we blink and take in the new regime he has set into being: a world of leather overcoats and little beards, Pope Derren the first will deliver his inaugural speech to his subjects, explaining how his spoon-bending masterplan came off. Though by then we will believe anything he tells us.
I got a good deal of entertainment on Thursday reading the Guardian blog on the antics of Mr Derren Brown who appeared on all the C4 channels on Wednesday night to perform a rather old-fashioned Paul Daniels-ish trick of the "open that envelope... was that your card?" variety. Analysis of the footage proved what was obvious from the stage-set and curious camera-work, that this was a split screen piece of camera deviance. None-the-less, it was well executed, though as one poster said (I paraphrase:) "Penn & Teller would've got the bonus ball too". Many people, myself included, were a bit disappointed with his 'explanation' show on Friday, which lacked the plausibility of most of his 'explanations'. The tricks along the way were naff, slight of hand variants of the Wednesday night stunt, too, which was a bit boring. I think some element of plausibility (even blatantly dubious plausibility) is required for Derren to not look like an annoying git. Still, with Paul Daniels in panto and Ali Bongo in charge of Gabon, he's the only magician we have so we best make the most of him. And he makes for some entertaining forums.
[Later in the series, Darren tried to root us to our settees:]
Derren Brown failed to keep me glued to my chair with his rotating notepad, which is hardly surprising. In the next episode he will reveal that through his super mental powers of suggestion he has removed the word "gullible" from the dictionary. This seems to be the point of the current series: it seems to be a ploy to weed out stupid people. Clearly, the size of the audience by the final episode will be representative of the gullible population as a whole, the rational having been bored away. What Darren will then do to these cows one can only begin to dread. Maybe he'll tell them to buck their ideas up, or maybe he'll tell them to commandeer the local police station.

Des Lynam: Sport Mastermind:
[sport version of Mastermind, B2]
July 2008
I've only just noticed that Sport Mastermind is not actually called Sport Mastermind, but rather Des Lynam: Sport Mastermind, which gives the impression that it's a documentary about a Sport Mastermind called Des Lynam. Doesn't it make you want to hit the people in charge of television?

Digital Television:
[broadcasting mechanism at the heart of this ration book, all channels]
See the Signal Book for a full appraisal of DTV.
September 2009
On Wednesday, in some heavily trailed manoeuvering, Channel 5 swaps places with ITV4, and ITV3 swaps with ITV2+1. It's all to do with the new categorization of the digital multiplexes as "commerical" and "public service", so public service broadcaster Five leaves commercial Multiplex A for ITV & C4's public service Multiplex 2. ITV2+1 moves to the same place (from Multiplex D) as a place-holder for the intended ITV1+1 service. C5 will see a reduction of resolution and of average bitrate as a result of the move, changing from this picture quality to this. You may recall how, in my signal book project, ITV2+1 was noteworthy for having a superior picture-quality to ITV2. That channel will now be ITV3, which benefits from a higher resolution than it previously had (an improvement from this to this). The opposite is, of course, true for ITV2+1. ITV4 shares the C5-shaped space on Multiplex A with the new channel Quest (another much-needed repository of shit old US imports). It will therefore probably improve slightly but not dramatically in quality, in all likelihood to the standard of CITV which is already on that multiplex (assuming a good signal (which is quite an assumption) that's a change from this to this). Those testcard examples are of i-frame quality only. Multiplexes A and D use variable Groups of Pictures, at times in excess of 40 frames, and that can have a detrimental effect on picture quality over time (see the signal book for explanations of these terms).
Although C5 is now considerably crumbier, it does have a greater reach than before: certain more distant aerials cannot pick up the 'commercial'-designated multiplexes. It does mean, though, that some far-flung ITV3 and ITV4 fans will lose those channels, and many people have questioned why those have moved rather than the timeshift luxury of Channel 4+1. For most of us, though, it just means that ITV3 gets prettier and C5 gets even shittier.
Greater moves are at play in those lands where digital switchover has already taken place, all in an effort to clear Multiplex B (home of BBC4, BBC Parliament and BBCi) and create bandwidth for Freeview HD. Here in the shadow of Emley, that's a concern too far to worry about today.
October 2009
[see the entry at BBCi]

The Dinner Party:
[one-off drama, B1]
September 2007
The Dinner Party, as one might've guessed, was nothing very special, telling a well trodden tale with little of the panache of previous profferings. Adequate, but pointless. It would've been an Afternoon Play but for the fellatio.

Dispatches: Mark Thomas on Coca-Cola:
[episode of the shouty C4 documentary strand]
November 2007
Mark Thomas put on his Michael Moore trousers to uncover the evil heart of the Coca Cola Corporation. You'd think this would be quite an easy thing to do, really. And yet Thomas struggles, and it takes him two years to put together some rostrum shots of petitioners' parody advertising, and some hastily filmed VT of a dry well and a union bus. It was enough to embarrass even Nick Broomfield, and I came out of the whole experience actually feeling less guilty about drinking the oily stuff than I had before I started. Child labour at harvest-time, and industrial river pollution are commonplace across most agricultural and chemical-using businesses, and were only curbed in the UK within living memory. The other issue: Colombian union-members being shot, was not unraveled sufficiently for me to form a reasonable judgment. The impression I got was that Colombia is fucked up, not Coke.

Doctor David Kelly: The Conspiracy Files:
["real-life" conspiracy bullshit doc, B2]
February 2007
I stuck with B2 after Top Gear this week to watch Dr David Kelly: the Conspiracy Files. The lack of any sort of motive has always scuppered this particular conspiracy, and this programme was happy to make that point in a build them up and knock them down kind of way. Not sure I fully approved of the programme's style, but it could've been a lot more sensational than it was. The tipping point in the up/down relationship was a hilarious item on some lawyery type man, who began by giving us some slightly compelling material to mull over before blowing his credibility with talks of his direct lines to the Whitehouse etc. All very entertaining, but then it does feel like we're dancing on somebody's grave here. In the end, the prog settled in roughly the right area by pointing out his lying to parliament and his job worries (as a student of Hutton, I'd've made the point about him potentially losing his pension if he stayed alive much longer; the programme didn't). But ultimately this was a waste of an hour that I could've been spent better by going for a walk in the woods. 

Doctor Who has its own page.

Dollhouse:
[sci-fi inflected drama series, I4]
October 2009
With the assistance of the internet I have, of late, been enjoying the last series of Angel which has only served to remind me how utterly wonderful that series often was. I've still not seen Joss Whedon's first non-Buffy project Firefly (though the film showed a good deal of Blake's 7-y promise) but now, thanks to the ITV of all places, I can potentially enjoy his latest effort: Dollhouse, which appears to star the woman who played the tediously wooden alternate slayer Faith in Buffy-land.
The first ep of Dollhouse was entertaining if only as a game of 'spot the Angel cast-member'. It showed a number of signs of promise and stated its intentions fairly firmly. I look forward to the descent.
November 2009
The second ep of Dollhouse introduced another player in the form of the absconded psycho-doll, Alpha. I don't think it needed this. It smelt of Heroes. But hopefully it'll work out ok. Also, this ep was a bit humourless, but it's early days.

The Doomsday Code:
[religio-political doc; C4]
September 2006
Tony Robinson's latest C4 weekend epic doc, The Doomsday Code (title a clear cash-in on his last number about the Da Vinci Code) lacked the cheap and cheerful rawness or the meandering exploration of the Robin Hood and Richard III programmes that established his new line of output. It was a bit slick and a bit too straightforward. The evil whispering woman doing the biblical quotes rendered any textual analysis impossible as she was pretty much inaudible. But that was a problem of post-production. The content itself was cheerfully terrifying, but Robinson is better at historical investigation than he is at being Jon Ronson.

Dragon's Den:
[third series of the inventions enterprise platform, B2]
September 2006
BBC2's comedy night currently runs on Thursdays, like it did about 10 years ago. It is preceded, in a wonderful bit of scheduling, by Dragon's Den, which is at times reminiscent of those old Tomorrow's World Christmas quizzes. Its blend of mad invention and poker-like financial bartering is strangely enjoyable, but it'd be better with Maggie Philbin.

Dylan Moran:
[stand-up comedy gig, C4]
May 2005
Dylan Moran was on C4, doing an impressive impersonation of Eddie Izzard. It was jolly good fun. One man, on a stage, paid only in wine and fags. ITV could save a lot of money.

EastEnders:
[soap opera, B1]
January 2008
Never a soap to shy away from novelty, this week they promised something that read like an Alistair McGowan sketch: Dot does Krapp's Last Tape. In the end, her monologue seemed a little contrived and bizarre, like they'd come up with the concept but didn't really know how to deliver it. Still, novelty points all round.

Egyptian Journeys with Dan Cruikshank:
[history doc, B2]
October 2005
Just when you thought it was safe to dip into BBC2, their all-purpose historical bloke is sent back out to stand in some sand. Sensibly packaged in half-hour chunks, this is designed to tie in with BBC1's new drama-documentary series on Egypt. I don't recommend docudramas without good reason, especially if narration-prostitute Andrew Sachs is involved. But Dan is still just about welcome in my house. He might even be able to tell me how old it is.

Einstein and Eddington:
[bio-pic drama, B2]
November 2008
I got this week's dramatic injection from David Tennant and Andy Sirkis's histrionic historical Einstein and Eddington: Tennant got to blubber while Sirkis got to look all ramshackled and a bit crazy; both were in their respective elephants. It was an adequate if by numbers drama.

Election '05:
[Election night coverage, B1]
May 2005
Peter Snow's triangle was very nice, though it'd've been better if it was a bit more Battle Chess... lots of fighting and hacking of animated politicians. Election coverage is always entertaining, and this year's format was close to perfect. Paxman was fabulously tetchy, which certainly helped.

Election '74:
[Repeated election night coverage, BP]
October 2004
Election '74... I didn't recommend this BBC Parliament programme because it's been on before, it lasts 15 hours, and no-one in their right mind would watch it all, including me. It is, quite simply, a straight repeat of the BBC1 coverage of the second 1974 election. Complete with a young Michael Fish on the weather. Bob McKenzie on the swingometer, Charlie Wheeler in Brussels (for some reason) with some exciting body language... Esther Rantzen out on the streets. It was great stuff. Unfortunately, the bit I saw was after the winner had been ascertained. This was well worth a watch from both a political and media studies perspective. I'd've put it higher had I seen more.

Election 2007:
[Election night coverage, B1]
May 2007
The coverage suffered on two key counts: no Anthony King and no Andrew Marr. Without them some of the buzz was gone. Nick Robinson is, as we all know, not nearly as good as Marr was, while King is evidently now too busy with his think-tank.

Election Night 2008:
[Election night coverage, B1]
May 2008
Good to see Tony King back, but the proceedings were spoilt somewhat by the cringe-worthy antics of Mr Jeremy Vine (no Peter Snow / Robert McKenzie). Nick Robinson is no replacement for Andrew Marr, either, but we know that already.

Embarrassing Teenage Bodies:
[healthcare series, C4]
July 2009
An acceptable (if occasionally slightly freak-driven) piece of public-service health programming, tonally more at the Bodymatters end of the spectrum than the Miriam Stoppard, though lacking the roller-skating bloodcells and eight-foot epiglottis. Shame about the title, which is more embarrassing and offputting than most of the conditions contained within (being a teenager-pitched episode they were mostly hormonal blips).

Emmerdale:
[established appocalyptic soap, I1]
October 2007
Jack Sugden is a man who struggles to get home insurance. His mother nearly died in a house fire at the family farmhouse, and that house was subsequently levelled by a passing aeroplane. His wife got shot in a burning barn (by his stepson), and the village in which he lives, renamed after the ill-fated farm, has suffered lightening strikes, bus crashes, a handful of pubfires and more than a few small explosions. Then there's that deadly bend with the black and white arrowed sign that everyone seems to crash into. This week Jack met with another accident. Sarah, the dead wife, underwent a curious regeneration before her death, changing height, face and hair colour. Her daughter recently went through a similar though even more extreme metarmorphasis, and now she's pouring petrol all over the front room. Cue the second household explosion in Emmerdale in the last 12 months. Still, it'll all turn out in the end.
July 2009
Tradition has it that every five or six years Emmerdale's land-lord turned land-lord Alan Turner should be reunited with his biking past, and so it came to pass this week with the arrival of Avon from Blake's 7, much to the appreciation of Alan's little coven of sex-starved older women. Meanwhile, comedy cockney Viv was released from prison to the startled arms of her comedy husband, Bob, while last-farmer-in-the-village, now unemployed, Andy, gently went a bit more barmy in a rather charming and silly way, allowing another new family to be introduced.

English Heritage:
[architectural preservation documentary, B2]
April 2009
Alison Graham's an annoying bitch, and I only hope that this programme doesn't take the same wanky tone. You see, this week's subject is everyone's favourite brutalist horizon: Park Hill Flats in Sheffield, which, of course, we're all supposed to unanimously agree is a hideous, ugly monstrosity, not a utopian attempt at recreating street-level communal living in the vertical (an attempt which one ought to point out was very popular with the first generation of inhabitants and didn't really start going sour until the druggies got in and the police forgot how to walk). Of course, since they knocked down Hyde Park, Park Hill is now just an unremitting cliff of concrete with nothing to break it up (make your own pun if you want to). And it's rather crumbly concrete in places too. But well-meaning developers and the English Heritage would like to make something of this Corbusian shell (the scheme mainly consists of turning the apartments the right way round so that windows actually look out onto the streets in the sky, thus creating a degree of self-policing absent from the original scheme). With Simon Thurley involved, I hope this will be a reasonably sensitive look at a genuine attempt to save some of our post-war heritage. But I fear that as Thurley is more subject than presenter the tone will be altogether more flippant and tabloid. Those of you who saw episode one (in which Thurley tried to save a crumbling old ruin, the idiot), may have a better idea of the series's tone than I.

Enid:
[biopic drama, B4]
November 2009
I got very excited this week, when I opened up the digital pages of the RT and saw that Dennis Potter's Lipstick on Your Collar was going to be on UKTV Yesterday. This only a couple of weeks after the wonderful A Very British Coup. Alas, the naughty bits inevitable in any Potter series mean that Lipstick does not get the normally automatic daytime repeat: it's just going out at 9pm, outside the Freeview window of 6am-6pm. So, putting my crushing sense of disappointment and anger aside (Freeview used to have UK History full time, once, back in the days when the channel had nothing on it of any interest) I'll have to make do with the latest round of celebrity biopic weepies set to up the viewing figures on BBC4. This year's run kicks off with Enid Blyton: a woman who's signature is burnt into my retina and whose books disinterested me immensely, but who is played here by Helena Bonham Carter.
Enid was very much by numbers. Helena Bonham-Carter lent a touch of steamy, kinky glamour to the author (Blyton) which was perhaps not strictly accurate, and it ranks among the better examples of BBC4's tragi-biopic strand (though the quick, knocked-off, one-scene descent into dementia was somewhat strained).

Euro 2008:
[football tournament, B1, B2, I1]
June 2008
England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland failed to qualify, so UK football fans collectively dig out their orange.
I tried to watch the Holland v Russia game on the ITV. But rather curiously, the analogue TV signal was a good couple of seconds slower than the digital R5 signal, and that's just weird. Weird to the point that I can't help thinking this was a deliberate spoiler tactic by the ITV. Fortunately, the Beeb, in their fox-cunning, offer a delayed R5 signal on the BBCi stream. Unfortunately, this is timed to coincide with ITV's digital feed. Which is all well and good, but I can't watch digital and hear it at the same time, so I had a choice of R5 two seconds ahead of the picture or two seconds behind. Or, there was a third option (and this one is genius... praise the engineers at the BBC for this one); the other audio signal on the BBCi stream was noise crowd without commentary. However, the novelty of that soon wore off and I was back to the slow radio as the least painful option. It is my firm belief that it is this lack of synchronicity between TV and radio that led to Holland's departure.

Eurovision Song Contest:
[pan-European song contest, B1]
May 2007
Eurovision was not in best form this year, but this nonsense being spread about tactical voting must end. Phone-in after phone-in has criticised the Eastern Bloc nations for voting for each other. Who else were they going to vote for? The Western entries were crap. However, the semi-final must also end. It is damaging the main event. More and more classic Eurovision nations are disappearing on Thursday night.
May 2008
Iceland are through, at the expense of Macedonia. Ireland's puppet poultry was not so lucky. We at AView are stocked up as ever with Belgian beer and French bread, ready for an evening of tedious balladry and ostentatious keychanges. Ring up page 888 and enjoy Wogan in his full real-time subtitling glory.
December 2008
Graham bleeding Norton?! Ok. So he's Irish, and he has presented dance contests and other light-ents, but there the similarity ends. He's far too enthusiastic for one thing. The departure of Old Tel is a Bad Thing for the Eurovision Song Contest. Surely Peter Allen would've done it if they'd paid him enough. That'd be great. No. Graham Norton is far too camp. You need something to offset the pantomime, not to contribute to it. It'll be far too saccharine now. Of course, if you listen to the Radio 2 simulcast, you can enjoy the dulcet tones of Ken Bruce. That's a choice nobody should have to make. Bruce Forsythe would've been ok. Or, hey, if you wanted to use a Eurovision Dance Contest presenter, then Claudia Winkleman is readier with the cynicism than Norton. But I like the idea of someone from the news and current affairs department doing it. Peter Snow could work. Or Andrew Marr. (Paxman would probably fail to live up to expectations). But I still think Peter Allen would be perfect. Perhaps in partnership with Anita Anand.

Extras:
[sit-com, B2]
August 2005
Extras allows us to feel comfortable about our attempts to observe protocol and behave normally with those who are different, by having a character screw up around a spastic, as it were. But it does go a little over-kill, with his Brentish talent for digging himself into holes with his un-necessary lying. It's like Gervaise wants us to empathise with this character, but he still wants him to be Brent, cos that's how he gets laughs. My assumption, actually, is that Gervaise IS Brent (or very nearly), but that is just an aside.
We had a pathos bath in Extras this week, the best of the series thanks to a total lack of Brentiness, and plenty of slow deaths. Though no doubt the main thing we all took from it was that slight discomfort in watching Les Dennis play himself as a failed loser.
September 2006
This is the point where I should talk in depth about Ricky Gervais. But can I really be bothered? Extras returned this week and was as good as the first series, if not a bit better. The sitcom he's making turns out to be closer to Hardware than The Office which is probably insignificant. The pathos was thick in the air and at least one gag was borrowed from The Simpsons. Let us hope the series keeps up the ball of comedy.

The Fall: The Weird & Frightening World of Mark E. Smith:
[documentary about Mark E Smith and his musical adventures; B4]
January 2005
The Fall doc was nice enough, though blighted by the irritant Paul Morley. The '80s video clips were particularly entertaining.

Faith in the Frame:
[arts discussion show, I1]
September 2008
No, not another spin-off from ITV sitcom Second Thoughts, but another art programme. Two in one night! And neither on the BBC! This is a ten-parter (ten!) in which Melvyn and his hair contemplate religious art. Didn't Andrew Graham Dixon do that already? Yes, but he only had three hours to work in, and frankly his hair wasn't really up to the job.
Melvyn Bragg's Faith in the Frame, a round table discussion about a particular piece of religious art each week, is the sort of thing B4 might turn down as being too highbrow. Rather wonderfully it is on the ITV. Tim Marlow was a guest this week and I can't help but feel he'd probably do a better job on his own. But as a kind of In Our Time for paintings this show has a modicum of promise.
Melvyn gets up a little bit later each week. Actually, the ITV have been particularly stupid here (no surprise there) because tonight's episode is about Hieronymus Bosch's relatively well known triptych: The Garden of Earthly Delights. Had that been the opening episode, back when the programme was showing in the post-news South Bank Show slot, they might have managed to clock up something approaching what might convincingly be described as an audience. They didn't. Which is perhaps as well given the ever later scheduling.
Where Faith in the Frame fails yet In Our Time succeeds is the choice of guests: Ekow Eshun, for instance, is a man who has no great knowledge on the subject in hand (in this case Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights), and one therefore wonders why we should have to put up with his inane gawping. Likewise, Michael Berkley seems only to have been chosen because he was once sufficiently inspired by the subject as to write a tune with the same name; though at least this is considerably greater qualification than that of Eshun. A Friar, thrown into the mix to give a religious perspective, was the only one who seemed to have any views worthy of discussion but was largely ignored or dismissed by the other two. The despair showed on Melvyn's face, but surely he has a say in who gets picked for these things, so he's no-one to blame but himself; the tousle-headed loon.

Family Guy:
[US import animated sit-com; B2/3]
Best Animated Comedy Series 2006, Best TV Sitcom 2007
[The first series on analogue had gone out alongside little sibling American Dad! A new series creeped out with little fanfare in the lower recesses of the B3 listings.]
September 2006
The series of Family Guy now appearing on B3 is indeed new to real telly. And with it running at the same time as a new series of The Simpsons, it's a perfect opportunity to compare the two: Family Guy is better.
August 2007
Family Guy reverted to its greatest vice: musical numbers (the second episode ended more painfully than a Simpsons holiday). It's not big and it's not clever. Family Guy is not very good at the moment. Curiously, it's an affliction that appears to have hit mid-series.
May 2008
In a galaxy not so far away, Family Guy returned to our screens with their tribute to A New Soap V. Doing a Star Wars special, eh? How with it is that!? Yes, here we had an almost scene-for-scene parody of a thirty-year-old film whose renaissance ten years ago is now firmly over following a disappointing prequel cow-milking trilogy. What possessed them is beyond me. The best jokes were the least original: most of the material, as one might imagine, had been done before; I think I'd even written some of them. The whole thing reeked of Carbon 14. I can't bring to mind a single innovation; even an unfunny one. Yes, it was moderately amusing seeing the cast of Family Guy playing the cast of Star Wars, but only moderately. We may as well just look at the DVD cover for that. It served as a reminder that, when it was on form, The Simpsons could do really good film parodies. By missing the zeitgeist by about a decade, Family Guy just looked like it had gone mad. Indiana Jones would've made more sense, though it lacks both the range of characters and, I suppose, the degree of public exposure that Star Wars has. Maybe they should just stick to remembering the time... They could do an On Kawara special, perhaps.
Warning: Ep2 is entitled "Movin' Out (Brian's Song)". ^That sounds fantastic, doesn't it.^
June 2008
Family Guy is trying my patience, as Peter turns a bit more Bernard Manning with every episode. At least the songs seem to have petered out. Petered out. Get it. Ha. That's funnier than that time we watched Family Guy.

Five TV channels have their own page.

The Flipside of Dominick Hyde:
[time-travel drama, repeated several times on B4]
July 2008
I could, I suppose, discuss The Flipside of Dominick Hyde, but as it's going on for thirty years old it doesn't seem altogether right of me to do so. Oh, go on then... It was nicely written, cleverly achieved on a budget with some pretty good special effects. I was rather impressed. There. I've just reviewed something three decades after the fact. Happy now?

Formula One Coverage on ITV:
[motor racing coverage, I1]
[see also the reviews of the radio coverage on R5]
Best Sporting Event 2003 (Brazilian GP), Most Improved Series 2005, Best Sporting Event 2007
[F1 has suffered in recent years on several accounts. Adverts came with the move from B1 to I1. Senna died, leading to chicanes a-plenty. Overtaking became increasingly difficult. Schumacher rose to a position of untouchable dominance. All that fuel seemed such a waste. And perhaps most importantly, Murray Walker was replaced by an idiot.]
September 2005
It failed to rain during the Belgian GP, and the wet that was already there had only a limited effect.
October 2005
The Chinese Grand Prix gets a point for bringing the humble drain cover to the fore of motor racing.
March 2006
The Formula One qualifying is ridiculous this year, and consequently rather exciting. If only for the explanations of the complexities of the rules. I liked the tour of the car-park in the race-day coverage too.
September 2006
The Turkish GP was fun this week, with its first lap pile-up and subsequent smashery. Good to see, too, that the "Nurburgring", and chicaned-to-death Imola, have been dropped from next season, and that Spa is back. Now all we need is for tyres to stay together, and wings to function in dirty air, and we might see some motor-racing again. In fairness, there has been something approaching racing this season, for which we should all rejoice.
March 2008
Melbourne: To what extent have the political arseings about of last year impinged upon this year's cars? Who can say for sure, as it's the first race of the season, and if any new cars are out, they'll likely still be quite kinky. A dull track with little chance of rain. The sleep will do you good.
Sepang: Now the drivers are having to steer their cars again, corners suddenly become more important. But this is a '90s track so the corners are pretty predictable.
May 2008
Monaco: As with horse-racing, there is a Triple Crown of motorsport, made up of the Monaco GP, the Indy 500 and the Le Man 24hr. To date only one driver has achieved this title: Graham Hill (should Jacques Villeneuve win at Le Man next month he'll cause a small constitutional crisis by taking an alternative definition of the triple crown that accepts the F1 World Championship title in lieu of the Monaco win). Due to an age-old idiocy, the Indy 500 also takes place this weekend (there's even someone from Rotherham in it), but that's only on Sky so nothing to worry your pretty little heads over. And so what better way to get over Eurovision than a demolition-derby around a Mediterranean tax-haven?
July 2008
Two straights, some stands and a lot of trees became some chicanes and a lot of trees, became a massive shortcut and a field in the F1's ultimate insult to climate-change activists: Hockenheim.
September 2008
Belgium lived up to its reputation with an amazing close in the F1 (followed by the sort of hilariously self-destructive skulduggery that makes F1 truly great).
October 2008
Speaking of fake contests and transit mockery, we come to the Formula 1. Last week we lost Canada from the calendar, despite Montreal being one of the more interesting circuits of recent years. This week we lost Magny Cours. Magny Cours was one of the worst circuits on the list and so is no great loss in that respect. But it does mean that France is now missing from the lineup. Which is a bit like England being absent from an international cricket tournament. Still, there are better circuits in the world than those of France. French circuits are all miles from the nearest airport, are woefully lacking in five-star hotels, and probably couldn't afford to pay the F1 blood-money anyway. Better to go to some rich Asian state and race on their dual-carriageways and carparks. None of this diatribe has anything to do with what was on telly this week though, so let's move to that. The race was... interesting. But not for the right reasons. Hamilton was given a penalty for taking a corner under race conditions, Massa was given a penalty (a little more appropriately) for driving into Hamilton while Hamilton was overtaking him, and most unfairly, overshadowing all the penalties of the year so far, poor Seb Bourdais was given a penalty for staying on the track and maintaining his race position while Massa drove into him and spun a bit (a spin that did not lose Massa any places, except that which he may've gained at the expense of Bourdais). That Bourdais should've been given a penalty was what people in the sports world might describe as "an utter travesty of justice". If anyone should've received a penalty from that, it should've been Massa. But as he'd spun himself and Bourdais remained in motion, justice had already been done and no penalty should've been considered. The fact that the penalty ultimately imposed gave Massa an extra point is one for the conspiracy theorists to bandy about at their leisure. For my part I am more concerned about the use of penalties as a whole, especially as that use seems so massively inconsistent. I am not, of course, the only one saying this. Jackie Stewart is saying it, but then Jackie Stewart will say anything. Lauda likewise, though Lauda is usually more right than Stewart who on most things is usually very wrong indeed. But on the question of penalties it seems that Stewart, Lauda, me, and everyone else in the world, with the possible exception of the F1 stewarding union, are agreed that F1 penalties are a farce. But then F1's a farce anyway, so what's new? Still, imagine if Senna were alive; he'd spend pretty much the entire race driving along the pit lane. He might even win. Next week Hamilton could theoretically win the championship. But he will probably leave the start-line in reverse instead. And receive a stop-go penalty for turning his head in an aggressive manner.
November 2008
[Prediction:]
Lewis Hamilton wins only to be given a post-race penalty that puts him back to 6th place. He abandons the sport to play Snakes & Ladders for a living.
[Actuality:]
As is tradition in F1, all the action happened at the beginning and at the end. Alas, the most important bit of all: the mysterious disappearance of Timo Glock, not only passed un-noticed as it happened but also received no replay (well it was possible that it got replayed half an hour or so after the end of the race, while I was watching Bremner, but I doubt it). In the end I had to track the thing down on YouTube. Anyway, despite his best efforts, Hamilton is now World Champion Elect, and John McCain's stint at the Red Bull team is over.

Formula One Coverage on the BBC:
[motor racing coverage, B1, Bi]
April 2009
I'm actually quite excited. Slicks, fifteen-year-old aerodynamics, turbo boosters of a fashion, and a topsy-turvey grid, and that's before John McVie has played a single note. Jonathan Legard, ex- 5 Live Formula 1, is in the commentary box with Dr Brundle, and we're meant to have got all kinds of excitement on the red button streams. It almost makes up for the collection of right-angles that is Albert Park. One of the red-button gimmicks is a choice of the TV or radio commentary. Don't pick the radio commentary: the great Maurice Hamilton would seem to have been replaced by incompetent, sub-Button test-driver turned vacuous, irritant pundit Anthony Davison.
[one race later:]
Formula One is rather spiffing, though there's some serious wasted space on the on-board cameras stream. They ought to make use of the widescreen bands down the sides; nothing excessive, just a leaderboard or something. No reason they shouldn't put it to use. The inset shot is a bit too small to be of any use too. But it needn't be very much larger. Just get rid of the un-necessary borders and give us a few extra pixels of footage. [The on-board stream was indeed rejigged for later races]. As for the coverage itself, Legard is actually doing a decent enough job (the odd semantic filler aside), far superior to his televisual predecessor, and easily as good as David Croft on R5 (with the added bonus that he's not sat next to a moron but rather next to the already established talent of Martin Brundle). The fact that the spec changes seem to have made the sport itself all the more exciting have, of course, done their bit to help.
June 2009
As F1 disintegrates, there becomes no clear way of really knowing if this is the last visit to Silverstone for the while or not. But that is how it is billed. Silverstone, in its day, was four straights connected by four frightening corners. Then some pillock thought to add some chicanes, but that hasn't stopped the opening half of the lap from being one of the more frighteningly thrilling bits of any grand prix. If the FIA maintain control of the sport, we can probably forget the idea of Donington because, let's face it, it's not going to be finished in time. So in that scenario there will be no British grand prix next year. In the less likely scheme of FOTA setting out on their own, Silverstone is a likely venue, though the big question there will be who will have the broadcasting rights.
August 2009
Not as enticing as it could've been had Herr Schumacher's neck been in good order, but our second trip to Valencia is tasty enough anyway given the current standing of the championship.
September 2009
While primetime television struggles slightly, the internet delivers goods of interest, not least BBC F1's archive-raiding Classic F1 feature, occasionally sneaking onto 301/2 when nobody is looking.
[A month later, the red button channel 302 was taken off the air.]
November 2009
The lack of F1 Forum on the Red Button this week, perhaps the best feature of the BBC's coverage of the sport, was a vision of the future. I had to watch it on the net, with a slightly unstable connection. It was not fun. It makes me wish I'd been scoring the Forum as a separate entity instead of lumping it in with the rest of the programme as I would the extras to a comedy show. It would've been a way of punishing the BBC on these scoreboards. An opportunity is lost.

49 Up:
[instalment of the long-running septennial doc, I1]
September 2005
Yes. Another seven years have passed in one of the landmark serieseses of British television ever (and a reminder that ITV once had decent documentaries). It's a two-parter, so expect all the people you can remember in next week's episode. For those of you under the age of about 12, it's a documentary that revisits the same kids every seven years. As the title explains, they're nearly 50 (but some of them look much older). My video neglected to tape the picture track, but I listened to it, and it was pretty much what you'd expect. Some fairly ordinary 50 year-olds. Next week is where the action is.

Frankie Howerd: Rather You Than Me:
[bio-pic drama, B4]
April 2008
Gurning was to be found in Frankie Howerd: Rather You Than Me: the last in the Curse of Comedy season. Most of note was David Walliams' occasionally astoundingly well-observed impersonation of Howerd (although for the most part the impersonation was slight, for what it matters). Having already had Kenneth Williams and Wilfred Brambell, another tortured homosexual was a bit overkill. Indeed, save the famous quote about being willing to take a pill to cure it, Howerd was not portrayed as tremendously tortured in this regard. More his problem was the (comparatively hinted at) lull in his career. It wasn't even the end of his career: he went on to have immense success, and died pretty well respected (and not even particularly depressed as comics go). And so this final "curse" played pretty weak, and was more just fodder for the increasingly diverse Walliams CV.

Fred Dibnah's Made In Britain:
[posthumous documentary following Dibnah around in a traction engine, B2]
March 2005
Is watching Fred Dibnah shopping for nuts really good telly? There's 12 parts of this!

Funland:
[murky comedy-drama series on B3]
October 2005
Jeremy Dyson, the non-participating fourth League of Gentlemen gentleman, pens this "darkly comic thriller" set in Blackpool. It's been "interestingly" scheduled, which doesn't seem a terrific vote of confidence,
November 2005
Funland would have been plodding on drearily had it not been for the decision to show two eps back to back twice a week. At least this has enabled us to get into things. I was beginning to despair, until the female lead shot the Finn, and the taxidermist suddenly became relevant. This last episode was perhaps the best so far, but was nothing truly amazing. I'm still quite surprised the thing ever got made. Surely it covers too similar a ground to Blackpool. I guess if you're a League of Gentleman, you get certain freedoms of BBC3. I can't help feeling that the programme would also like me to compare it to Twin Peaks. If so, it can't expect such a comparison to be favourable. But an eccentric community, an outsider, intertwining relationships and land deals with Scandinavians are certainly common ground. I have more I could say about Funland and its failings, but I better leave something for next week.
Next Week
I spoke about this last week, and I will add some of what I couldn't be bothered to write then now. It was by no means rubbish, but it was by no means good. It was a diverting hour's watch. It was no better or worse than Blackpool before it. That wanted to be Potter, and was ridden with flaws. This wanted to be a bit Lynchily wacky and dark, in a League of Gentleman sort of way, but was ridden with flaws. One obvious flaw Funland had, if we compare the brief to the results is that it was not a "disturbingly funny new drama". Maybe it was disturbing, if you're easily disturbed, but it was never especially funny outside Mark Gattis's taxidermists. It was, of course, regularly mildly amusing, in a comedy-drama sort of way. And we shouldn't've expected anything more than that, had BBC3 not kept saying it over and over again. The end was disappointingly floppy; the gorilla business was never going to be especially rewarding, and if there is any law in Blackpool, all the remaining characters are going to be tied up in lengthy court cases and prison sentences in the wake of the events. But there probably isn't. Funland was nothing special, but it was ok if you're easily pleased with something a bit more unconventional than Taggart.

The Games:
[Celebrity sporting tournament, C4]
March 2006
So Jade (who is a man) won the mens' element of The Games. I've no idea who he is. Javine (who looks like a drag queen) won the womens'. I know who she is. She's the Beyonce impersonator from last year's Eurovision. Of the rest, I knew most of the women, only two of the men. The aptly named Adam Rickitt looks like he's close to death. Bless. That'll teach him to do these celebrity torturthons. He's in another on C5 next week.
[The other was a recreation of a cannibalistic air-crash, and was the explanation for Rickitt's gauntness.]

Gavin Stamp's Orient Express:
[architecture travelogue, C5]
May 2007
Gavin Stamp took avuncular to new heights in his trip round Vienna. Stamp is a bit tossy at times, and likes his buildings frothy, but is amusing nonetheless.

Genius:
[high-concept comedy discussion show, B2]
March 2009
Yet another port from radio to television, though in this case one can just about see the logic in it, just about, if one squints very hard. Dave Gorman, who began his career by giving us two fantastic experiments-cum-lectures but then ran out of ideas, sits in a mock-up shed and receives proposals for fantastic new inventions. However, there's always a bloody catch, isn't there. For fuck's sake, BBC... why do you do this to me? It's bad enough having Comic chuffing Relief this week... officially the least amusing telethon the world has ever devised, and also the most hideously patronising. Yes, well, not going down that particular cul-de-sac tonight. No. Anyway, casting an eye over proceedings in a slightly unnecessary way, this week's guest is the inimitable Catherine Tate.

The Genius of Photography:
[documentary series on the history of photography, B4]
October 2007
The Genius of Photography was not all it could've been. Early on we were shown two competing forms of photography (complete with a man exuberantly polishing a mirror) but were given none of the technical details to make us understand the differences. When I see a man putting a photo into a mirror, I want to know how it works, especially as no negative is involved. Instead we got some portentous philosophising about what it means to be a photograph etc. This was not the only failing. The show (I use show here because the thing is clearly largely an American project, given the talking heads on display) was amazingly snooty and dismissive about the impressionistic turn-of-the-(20th)century photography of the pictorialists in a way that all involved will no doubt feel terribly embarrassed about in future years when vaseline becomes trendy again. This lack of balance (and indeed lack of attention to a whole school of photography which, while it may've been up its own arse and backwards-looking, none-the-less kicked out some interesting photos) put me off the whole project somewhat. As did the poncy waffle that threaded through the whole thing. It makes me wonder if they'll even bother showing us any Man Ray, say, or if the talking heads involved will find that sort of thing un-cool too.
[Ivan was so turned off by this episode that he didn't bother with any of the rest. Charlie Brooker was more impressed.]

Gerry's Big Decision:
[Troubleshooter business analysis with Dragon's Den element, C4]
July 2009
Gerry's Big Decision is watchable and by no means evil, though Gerry Robinson is far less helpful and hands on than John Harvey-Jones ever was (or even Gordon Ramsey, who's really responsible for the revival of the Troubleshooter format, despite Robinson's previous BBC efforts); Robinson prefers instead to bridge his fingers and allow his mere presence to act as a catalyst for business decision-making. Bolted onto an otherwise friendly format is an un-necessary (and slightly distasteful) Dragon's Den 'will-he-or-won't-he invest' charade which would've been better left off. Gerry Robinson... let me tell you about Gerry Robinson. Gerry Robinson ran Granada from 1991 to 2001. Along with his long-time left hand, Charles Allen (who went on to replace him there), he is therefore largely responsible (with the help of Conservative government policy) for the demise of the ITV (pretty much his first action was to force out the legendary Granada boss David Plowright). Just think about that the next time he bridges his fingers in that Spiritan way of his anywhere near you.

Glastonbury:
[multi-channel music festival coverage on BBC]
Best Uses of BBCi Channels 2005
June 2005
Last year's red-button coverage of Glastonbury was impressive. This year though, we lack a certain round, bearded Liverpudlian. His beanbag is occupied by Mark Radcliffe, and Mark's a perfectly alright sort of bloke, so that's ok. Lauren Laverne is still on the team (hurrah) and so is Jo Whiley (hmph), while Colin & Edith have BBC3. As for the music... um... something will turn up on one of the channels, I expect... The White Stripes were lovely, and there's up to 5 screens of stuff this year, which is insane but great.
June 2009
Despite an increasing reliance on aging rock-stars for the big stages, the red button will likely continue to offer up some acts of interest in what remains one of the greatest uses of BBCi.
Jo Whiley has always been irritating but she is as nothing when compared to new prick on the block Zane Lowe, a man who you just hope will get the full weight of a collapsing sound-rig in his face before the weekend is over. Nothing life-threatening, just something that will damage his jaw to the point that he will be unable to broadcast again. I'm not normally a violent person, but some people are just asking for it (whoever accepted Mr Lowe's application for one).

God on Trial:
[TV play, B2]
September 2008
No, not another depressingly aggressive Richard Dawkins ego-massage, but rather another Wednesday Play, this time by Frank Cottrell Boyce and starring Anthony Sher (we're doing a play about Auschwitz; somebody'd better give him a call) and Stellan Skarsgard.
A number of thesps had their heads shaved for a one-set debate about the niceness or not of a certain deity who shall remain nameless. Oh, look, it's Justin - Justin - dear Justin from League of Gentlemen playing the same character only (theoretically) Polish. And there's that bloke from The Bill. And that Swedish fella... There was a lot of thesp-spotting to be had among the histrionics and theology. Having finally identified everyone it was time to sit back and enjoy the trial: though (perhaps inevitably) it wasn't an especially balanced trial. You know you're screwed when the rabbi lists all the reasons why God is not a particularly nice being. But who else are you going to pray to when the gas turns on? seemed to be the ultimate note of this Auschwitz-set drama. It's too late to find out whether or not Vishnu might be a better option.

Gok's Fashion Fix:
[fashion doc, C4]
July 2008
Gok's Fashion Fix is not nearly as half-decent as How to Look Good Naked; at the end of the day it's just another 'how to get couture-like clothing on the high street' prog. Though in fairness, he set himself a hard task taking on the rather ambiguous and label-obsessed 'style' of "Sex in the City". He still won his little contest, thanks to some obvious audience favouritism (they love a good gokking).

The Government Inspector:
[political drama about the last days of Dr David Kelly; C4]
March 2005
I was, on the whole, impressed with The Government Inspector, particularly with the way it gave us a better understanding of who this beardy bloke was. I especially liked the Americans burning non-evidence conspiracy stuff. There are, however, one or two minor quibbles I have:
1) The programme's general tilt was that the thing that pushed him over the edge was the Watts pseudo-betrayal and the resultant lie before the select committee. It is my view (from Hutton) that his pension worries were at least equal to if not greater than this factor, but this was barely touched on in the drama.
2) There are plenty of ways of showing that Gilligan was a bit shifty without recourse to depicting him as a sloth, incompetent, food-eating machine (although maybe he is); his phone-call to the MOD for one (though I wouldn't trust that Kate Wilson, all the same). And the prog should've made much more of the Chidgey text.
3) They could've rubbed the MOD's nose in it a bit more with the Q&A etc, although it might've been overkill. I thought the MOD got off lightly, and everything got blamed on Campbell, which is ok, but probably not 100% accurate.
Also, it was a shame that the prog ended with Kelly's death, as it meant we didn't get to see the incident with the burn-bag at the Metropole (Hutton, 03/ 09/03, Para 48) which always struck me as potentially dramatic for some reason. Always seemed rather State of Play, that. But it wouldn't really fit with this story, and we got the Americans burning evidence instead so that was ok.

Grand Designs:
[increasingly long-running house-building series, C4]
April 2005
This week, Kevin sucks his teeth and wonders, earnestly, just whether a carpenter can really build a log cabin before the programme deadline.
October 2005
Now if I'm honest, I'm getting a bit tired of this now. I've officially stopped watching Scrapheap because it's a very tired format that's been repeating itself for years, like some mad old man. But this is going the same way. Take one mad couple with too much money, give them a plot of land, a temperamental architect and a bunch of builders who can't make sense of his drawings, and allow to stew over a cold, wet winter (why do they always build in the winter?). Watch as they fail to move in by Christmas, New Year, Easter, etc. Hmm... maybe it does still have some life left in it. But I'm not convinced, and I may end up playing patience through most of it, if it's not careful.

Great British Journeys:
[cartologically based walking/cycling docs, B2]
August 2007
The BBC has become obsessed with country walks documentaries. So we have Mountain on BBC1, Wainwright's Walks on B4, and now Nicholas Crane returns to B2 with Great British Journeys. Nicholas Crane, as we've already ascertained, is not the most captivating of presenters, and is at his best in a pub with a map or in a crag with a kagool. Anything in between and I find myself glazing over. His debut outing, Map Man, was a simple and effective concept (follow the route of a map-maker and tell us about the map as we go along) but burnt itself out very quickly and began to repeat itself. Coast was an abomination. This new programme is not new at all. It is Map Man but extended to 60 minutes and minus any footage of maps. Map Man was dull at 30 minutes, Coast continues to be dull in ten minute chunks, so how they expected this to be anything other than soporific is anybody's guess. Walking television is a flawed concept as it can never adequately convey the experience and so just becomes an assortment of post-card pans. The perambulatory documentary is not flawed when done with an engaging presenter -- just look at War Walks for instance -- but Nicholas Crane, nice bloke as he may be, is not an engaging presenter. He is a fell walker with sturdy boots.

Greg Dyke on Nye Bevan:
[journey documentary, B4]
September 2008
While the content is perfectly sound and interesting, the delivery is painful. Firstly, Greg Dyke is no presenter. Having him do a programme on Reith made sense, given Dyke's recent history at the BBC, but this was just a vanity project. And it was still doing, albeit less than last time, that dreadful camera-crew follows camera-crew bullshit of having a second camera watching Greg talk to camera. "Over here!", we scream, but to no avail, and then someone out of shot asks Greg a question and suddenly he's looking at yet a different angle other than ours. But at least you feel he knows something of the subject.

The Grove Family:
[TimeShift tie-in repeat of a '50s soap; B4]
October 2004
The Grove Family was the first adult soap in Britain, we were told. I dunno what the kiddie soaps were like, but this was a glorified public information film. I may have given it too many points, but this is valuable and entertaining history. I thoroughly enjoyed it and it was worth all two points on that level.

Hammer House of Horror:
['70s series of one-off dramas with a horror bent, I3]
April 2005
Hammer House of Horror was, in my view, poorly layed out this week. Not enough was made of the female impersonator for a start. I think they should've kept up the ambiguity of the identity of the murder for a few scenes more. But there you go.
Later that Month:
It was another sub-standard Hammer House of Horror this week. And it's no better next week, because ITV3 have dropped it in favour of a Hitler night.
October 2005
ITV3 started repeating these again last week. This week, it's The Silent Scream, which is the best of the lot. Peter Cushing locks Brian Cox in a cage. What more could you want? Fantastic stuff.

Hancock & Joan:
[bio-pic drama, B4]
March 2008
The problem with this was the cliché of the story. Tony Hancock was one of the first great examples of an alcoholic suicidal self-destructive tortured genius in modern pop-culture (as distinguished from history in general which was already littered with the buggers). But this has become something of an archetype and it's difficult to breathe fresh life into such a familiar story. Hancock & Joan failed in this regard: here's the scene with the thrown bottle of generic brown spirit smashing against the wall -- someone'll have to pick that up; here's the weeping and the moaning and the gnashing of teeth. It is still possible to make something of this story (consider The Life & Death of Peter Sellers, for a very obvious example), but this didn't manage it. The same criticism could be thrown at The Curse of Steptoe (qv): oh, here's a tortured gay, oh, here's a type-cast actor... and again it didn't pursue these concepts with any great originality. But if only because it was two walking clichés for the price of one, The Curse was better value for money.

The Hard Sell:
[documentary on advertising, supporting Mad Men, B4]
February 2008
A bit naff, especially if, like me, you can recall Washes Whiter, a BBC2 series about the history of advertising that ran in the early '90s. That had a far higher standard of talking heads for a start: copy-editors and svengalis of all flavours. This remake relied on a series of all-too-familiar D-list rent-a-gobs doing their worst "I ♥ 1992" schtick: and now here's a montage of people likening the Flake add to oral sex. It was lazy and poorly cobbled together. Far better (and indeed far more informative) would've been to just show the adverts back to back. Indeed, the final ad they talked about, which by their own confession was hardly shown at the time, was hardly shown here too, and I went away not understanding what the fuss was supposed to be. Instead of throwing away valuable money on Dominic Sandbrook's new caravan fund, B4 could've just dusted off the rights management to the 15-year-old B2 series and given us a (gasp) repeat. [They did just this a few weeks later.]

Have I Got News For You:
[ageing comedy panel game, B1]
Buffy Award 2002
December 2005
Speaking of women I'm attracted to, Anna Ford was in cheeky spirits on HIGNFY. More of that sort of thing, please. With that and Dianna Rigg on The Avengers, I'm a very happy old man.
November 2007
I am bored of HIGNFY. I've been bored of it for a while, but now I'm really bored of it. I don't think it has any chance of recovery whilever Deayton is excluded.
May 2009
Please, someone, put Have I Got News For You out of its (and my) misery. First to the wall should be Paul Merton who has just got downright lazy. Then fire indiscriminately on any celebrities who approach the centre desk with the sole exception of Angus Deayton. And then, maybe, perhaps, HIGNFY might be standable once more.

Heimat 2:
[Heimat was an '80s German drama serial following a single family through the rigours of the twentieth century. It was very good. This was a sequel, set mainly in the '60s, and repeated on B4]
August 2005
Heimat is suffering from "tossy angst-ridden teenage artists" syndrome. Which can't be helped, cos it's about tossy angst-ridden teenage artists. When it's not being tossy, it's being epic and rather good with it. And maybe they'll be less tossy now that one of them has died, though I did enjoy their parties. It's not Heimat 1, but it's not crap by any means. Don't expect much temporal progress. We're still very much tied to the early '60s.
A few episodes later...
Heimat made some improvement this week. In the first episode of the week we broke free of Munich for some homely fun in a groovy attic, with Hermann proving a prize arsehole and Helga a proto-goth drama-queen. The second episode was something of a rite of passage, and was also the prettiest of the second series so far. Maybe now we can all stop being angsty twats, kids.

Heimat 3:
[Topping up the Heimat story for the new millennium; B4]
September 2005
Rather distressingly, Heimat 3 begins with the reunion of Hermann and Clarissa. It's a new Hermann. I suppose the old Hermann from Heimat 1 was doing something else. Which is a shame, cos he looked less like Hermann Munster and more like the creepy shag-monster he was meant to be, taking his cousin (or was it his half-niece or something? I forget) by the hand into the horizon of the closing shot. So I was hoping for a bit more of that. But evidently it's Heimat 2½ instead. Oh well. Maybe it'll work out ok. I worry.
Heimat 3 was better than I expected. The colour tricks aren't quite as exciting now computers are involved though. A better title for the episode might've been Goodbye, Liebling, given that it was for the most part a comedy-drama about a gang of displaced builders restoring a house. Though I don't remember any Henry Purcell in Auf Wiedersehen, Pet. It was good to see some Heimat 1 characters (and actors) returning. That was always one of the best things in Heimat 1: the sudden ageing of characters and the disorientation it would bring. It was something that was lacking in 2.
October 2005
Heimat 3 has been a bit nebulous and baggy. It's always been loose with its use of characters... bringing new ones in without fanfare and dropping others similarly. This week reached new extremes as we killed off the new character. The postscript was a nice touch but all in all it was a bit rubbish when compared to the marvellous first series. One more ep to go.
Heimat finally came to an end this week. And it was a bit of a damp squib that lacked any of the power of the previous two series. I still don't know who the transvestite was. Some lesser Simon clan-member at a guess, but one we never visited. The whole third series was a bit of a mess, that only served to make the second series look good. That's a shame. The first series was an epic depiction of the progress of a humble family from 1918 to 1984, via the depression, the Third Reich, the war, and the Economic Miracle™. When things happened, they happened to the family. Stuff actually had meaning. The second series suffered from its much more limited scope of a decade, and the events tended to be more remote, but at least they had some effect on the characters, or acted as a genuine metaphor for their own antics. The third series was some familiar faces doing inconsequential things while something of international note happened on the telly. The 1990s was not quite as exciting as the 1960s. We started with the Berlin Wall, passed through the football world cup and ended up with the eclipse and the millennium. And we all know what damp squibs the last two were. I was also surprised that Gisella never changed that laughable haircut over the course of the decade. Is this really the hip young woman Hermann copped off with at the end of Heimat 1? Shagging your uncle messes with your head in more ways than one it seems.

Heroes:
[US sci-fi fantasy series, B2/3]
July 2007
The writer clearly has a Moffattian approach to time, which is nice for starters. The whole thing is not nearly as comic book as I dreaded, with some pleasingly sinister overtones. The "baddy" seems a bit shit, but maybe he'll flesh out in time. Surely he can't be so one-dimensionally villainous as he's been portrayed so far. I also have concerns about the pretty young things they've cast as the homo-superiors, though here again, I am hoping that this will be something the script will play about with in future episodes. Partial eclipses and nuclear explosions add a nice touch but also show potential directions in which the series might go wrong. But for now there seems to be enough going on with each character to keep things more than ticking over in an interesting and entertaining way.
August 2007
Although I remain concerned about the fact that the only two super-women are girly blonde types, I still hope that this will be addressed in an appropriately humerous fashion. And in the meantime, who cares, because we have Hiro taking centre stage and he is clearly the best of the lot. Strands are beginning to come together now and so it will be interesting to see what direction things go in. Let us hope it remains as fun. It continues to potter about on the fringes of naffness, genius, fascism and self-parody. I'm still not wholly convinced it's any good, or indeed strictly kosher. A lot depends on which way it goes, but at least we seem to have found our nuclear bomb.
September 2007
Heroes continues to beat well trodden ground without the flair of predecessors. This week we reached our first plot milestone with the Buffy-inspired super-hero cheerleader being 'saved'. Well then we can all go home now, can't we. The second episode this week was utterly pointless, with some unnecessary background flesh. I wonder how long it took them to find somebody suitably Anthony Perkins-like for the part of Sylar. Anyway, at this key position in the story, what do we think of Heroes? Well, we think it's a bit rubbish, but watchable and faintly enjoyable rubbish all the same. The writer doesn't seem yet to have made his mind up what's happening which is a nice touch but potentially infuriating. And the minute he takes a wrong turn, it will be his undoing. Gnomic narrative bookends.
Heroes returned to form this week, thanks in part, it must be said, to the arrival of Christopher Eccleston. The trials and tribulations of cheerleading Claire are also making for one of the more compelling stories at the moment. As for Split-Personality Woman, I still couldn't care less. Hiro plods along but seems to have lost his way slightly. But what is increasingly infuriating is why, now they all just about know each other, they haven't teamed up properly. Heroes isn't perfect: it's just a mish-mash of other people's ideas bolted together with only a rough idea as to what it's supposed to look like when it's built. But it showed again this week that it's still capable of being entertaining and ever so slightly gripping.
October 2007
Heroes this week made me swear with its petty token (and probably pointless) plot-twists ("oh fuck off", I said to the telly, quite audibly). Nonetheless, it plods on entertainingly enough. The BBC3 ep of Heroes this week was really rather good. That's the first time I've felt I can say that. I'm glad I can. It showed genuine promise. Alas, I fear the thrill will be shortlived and we will fall back into the painful pace of before.
November 2007
Heroes is beginning to toy with politics as Gillette-boy comes to understand that a nuclear explosion in NYC may well be an acceptable loss. But at the same time, things are taking a decidedly Dickensian turn as just about every character appears to be related to every other. This is in danger of getting far far too silly. Also, is there anybody left in the world who doesn't have a special power? Finally, we appear to have developed something of a sonic screwdriver effect, what with Hiro's time-tweaking, nobody capable of staying dead, and now a woman with a crap special effect and the ability to disguise herself as any cast member she sees fit. She can't last long otherwise she may as well act out every role herself.
December 2007
Gillette-boy farted into the sunset in the clearly flawed final ep of Heroes: even if we forgive Nuclear Guy's inability to escape from his prison van, there's still the curious question as to why the finalé occurred in the middle of the night and not during the much alluded to solar eclipse. Furthermore, Sylar slithered into the sewer so that he might blow people up when the eclipse finally does show up. All rather pathetic, as was the attempt to include all the gang in the big confrontation. Ham-fisted and cack-handed, but not all that bad really.
April 2008
Oh, television television television. So many hours to fill, and yet, again, Thursday 9pm comes out so cluttered. This time it's two US imports fighting it out against B4's Medieval Mind. Episode 1 of Heroes is well repeated, but clearly the best technique for us all would be to get hitched onto B3's next episode wagon and so miss such a dilema in future weeks. How best to do that, though? There isn't even broadcast flow between Eps 1 and 2 on Thursday night; rather a 40 minute abyss filled by EastEnders. And 40 mins is not enough time to play back anything we might have taped at 9pm. The trick, therefore, will be to tape Ep2, watch the Ep1 repeat tomorrow, and then watch the taped Ep2. Or used the i-Player, presuming it's playing along (which I imagine it is). Alternatively, you could just abandon Heroes altogether: save a few moments of genius, it's self-important, ponderous, bloody daft nonsense anyway.
I missed the beginning. Did it explain how the policeman didn't have holes in him anymore? Sylar had turned him into a human colander at the end of the last ep so that's quite an impressive recovery after four months. Heroes was, as ever, a bit ploddy and a bit boring but with its heart somewhere around the torso.
May 2008
I've officially given up on Heroes. I saw some bits of the last two episodes and they were pretty boring. And as there are no showings of it at a sensible time, and as the first series was also rather arid and humourless (except when Christopher Eccleston paid a fleeting visit), that's enough for me.
October 2008
What I failed to mention last week was that I'd had the misfortune of seeing another episode of Heroes. Regular readers may recall that I had a love/hate relationship with the first series, tending more towards the latter in the final judgement, and that I found the second series impossible to care about. We're now into the third run of things and I would've quite happily ignored it entirely were it not on in front of me begging for my forgiveness. And so I watched. Heroes is a lot like a US soap-opera: the stories drag on week after week with hardly any development; most of the cast are abnormally pulchritudinous; characters you thought successfully gibbed beyond restoration, in some gruesome dispatch long ago, return from the dead with scarcely an eye-blink to the point at which narrative tension ceases to have any real grip; and every character is related to every other: whenever they're short of a more convincing cliff-hanger, they resort to "I am your father" hokum (this week saw yet another kinship exposé). Where US soaps have the upper hand is in the tendency to be at least moderately amusing. Maybe Heroes is now at last starting to descend into knowing self-parody but I'm not convinced. I've not spotted the tell-tale wink that says "we know this is silly". On the contrary, it still remains painfully up itself, and I doubt this constipation will ever really pass. The comedy of The Incredibles or the all-out comic-strip camp of X-Men are doubtless superior treatments of the mass super-hero concept: I really expected from Heroes a good deal more vividly coloured lycra, and that none of the cast seem as yet to have made themselves a suit and gone out fighting crime makes the programme at least one embarrassing cliché short of being anywhere near decent.

Heston Blumenthal: In Search of Perfection:
[cookery series, B2]
November 2006
I want to like the Heston Blumenthal series, but it really lets him down. It's not really his fault. He's fine. It's the format. It's all a bit too normal. Which is fine if he's doing something really mad (now take your ibex, and drop it into the nitrous oxide) but even Heston can't radicalise steak beyond the confines of the box he's been made to perform in. This really should've been "Heston does mad stuff with goggles on", but it isn't. And it's some nob-head TV exec's fault. Sorry... I nearly slipped into Brooker.

Heston's Feast:
[cookery series, C4]
March 2009
[Victorian:] Heston invites a ramshackle bunch of E-listers to a Mad Hatter's tea party, where he bakes Dawn Porter and feeds her her own legs.
Celebrity food technologist Heston Blumenthal was making a meal out of cutlery in what is his best TV adventure so far (essentially a series version of his Christmas Special the other year). There's a yet better series in him still to be tapped off, I think: a proper science programme in which he completely deconstructs cookery with the aid of a blowtorch and an electron microscope (maybe he could do the next Christmas Lectures), but the Bob Simes / Wilf Lunn mad-inventor business is always welcome.
[Roman:] During preparation of the giant and architecturally accurate flambé, guests are each given a small edible violin with which to fiddle. Anyone who successfully plays the theme-tune to I Claudius is doused in fish custard and presented as an alternate desert.

A History of British Art:
[art documentary, B4]
April 2008
A History of British Art gave us all a good laugh by showing us Andrew Graham Dixon a little over a decade ago, looking like a business studies teacher on steroids.

Hole in the Wall:
[Japanese-format game-show, B1]
September 2008
Phil Tufnell dons the bakofoil and is parboiled. Nell McAndrew, Josie d'Arby and Iwan Thomas are also given funny shapes to make.
This week something magical happened: this week the greatest game-show ever made quietly hit our screens. This week television reached the zenith of its potential, and it did so with Hole in the Wall. Concept: six celebrities, including at least one fat person, one old person, and one curvy young woman, are poured into figure-hugging tinfoil body-suits. They must pass through a (usually quite phallic) aperture cut into a polystyrene wall which approaches them at a modest speed. If they fail to make it through the gap, the wall will push them into a swimming pool. The years of intense research into wall densities to determine a material firm enough to push a celebrity into a swimming pool and yet yielding enough not to cause them lasting damage must have produced some hideous neck injuries. Indeed, that the shapely Blue Peter presenter still has a head is lasting testament to the genius of these back-room boffins. The concept is great enough as it is; it is a master-stroke indeed to have it presented by Dale Winton (balanced by Darren Gough and a toothy dancer as team captains). In all its years, It's a Knockout could never have dreamed of reaching such perfection as this. That Jonathan Pearce should provide commentary, giving technical name to each aperture takes the programme that step beyond anything we have ever dreamt of seeing before. And then it does the whole thing again. And again. And again. Each round, more thrillingly titled than the last, is none-the-less essentially the same. And then a mystery guest setting my mouth agog and bringing on lockjaw. Some of the wonder of this programme may perhaps be diluted as the team captains learn just what's going on. But maybe then it will develop new, more exciting modes of genius, the likes of which we can only salivate over in anticipation.

Hollywood UK:
[cinema documentary series, B4]
August 2005
Hollywood UK continues to provide an interesting tick-list of British films that don't make the matinee slot for reasons unclear. Some of the stuff from then looks about on a par with some foreign notables, and I think I'd like to get the chance to review one or two.

Homes for Heroes:
[doc showing in B4's Lost Decade season]
October 2005
Homes for Heroes, a doc on post-war housing, was fine but very London-centric. The furthest away I think they got was Norfolk. We did see about 4secs of Hyde Park in Sheffield as half of it was blown up, but no mention of that city's extensive housing projects, unlike in previous BBC4 docs on the matter. So that was a bit annoying.

Honda:
[car manufacturer and advertiser, commercial television]
July 2008
Honda have been widely imitated by other car makes since Cog at the very least: Ford in particular have been very Honda-y of late. But today I saw the latest BMW advert, complete with a Garrison Keillor-alike voice-over. What these manufacturers fail to appreciate is that by stealing the traits of another manufacturer's advertising they do not so much advertise themselves as the originator. If my memory were capable I would regail you with numerous examples of adverts that have ripped off other ads, but as if to prove my point, my brain can only remember the originators. Cars tend to be the worst parasites: there's an Audi ad at the moment that is indistinguishable from a Renault ad the other month, and that car that turns into lizards and stuff may as well be a Citroën Transformer. At least Seat's Zoom Zoom is annoying enough to be distinctive. Maybe I'm at a funny age, but it seems to me that ads are increasingly failing to establish a brand identity. Honda is the exception, and the more other car manufacturers mimic Honda, the more Honda gets free adverts for itself. Q. Why would you pay for an advert that looks like a Honda ad? A. Because you are a moron (albeit a very rich moron -- therein lies the rub).

Horrible Histories:
[children's historical sketch-show, B1]
May 2009
The best sketch show on TV in a long long time, and it's educational too.

Horizon:
[science magazine, B2]
December 2008
Do not stoop to Horizon which is plumbing yet deeper depths by being presented by Danny Wallace (a man who shouldn't be presenting anything, let alone Horizon).
May 2009
The pink-haired one from coast traces her family tree back quite a long way in The Incredible Human Journey. I expect this will be an awful slurry of computer generation and time-filling blather. But I expect it will be better than Horizon on Tuesday in which Michael Portillo considers violence and overlooks a recreation of the Milgram experiment. This, I think, is designed specifically to bait me. For Milgram himself presented an episode of Horizon back in 1974 (in the days when Horizon provided a televisual report for scientific papers): a brilliant, frightening, episode that perfectly explained Milgram's findings and theories. Not a grinning ex-Tory in sight. "The aim of Horizon is to provide a platform from which some of the world's greatest scientists and philosophers can communicate their curiosity, observations and reflections, and infuse into our common knowledge their changing views of the universe." said Richard Buckminster Fuller in the very first episode of Horizon. It was not meant to be a vehicle in which Michael Portillo is tortured (as was seemingly the purpose of his last visit to the programme) or in which he administers torture (be it through incremental electric shocks or through incremental shit stunts and as little actual science as they can get away with). I am really really really annoyed about the demise of science television. As someone who grew up on Tomorrow's World and Horizon, and who's lived through the Johnny Ball epoch and enjoyed the shortlived CERN-obsessed magazine-show Big Science (a sort of Tomorrow's World for cool people presented by documentary maker (and son of the producer of Ascent of Man) David Malone), I really really really miss science television. How much do you think it would cost for me to personally hire Judith Hann to stand in my living room and toy with a plastic model of the AIDS virus? It's got to be cheaper than a subscription to a decent science journal. Sorry, I've ranted.

House:
[US import hospital comedy-drama series, C5]
Best TV Drama Series 2006
[House met our screens in 2005, and turned out to be surprisingly good.]
June 2006
Who would've thought that foppish loon with the piano would turn out so well? Continuing the mild-mannered sit-com with Hugh Laurie as a befuddled bingo-caller.
As an end of series party goes, they were having fun in House, which was pleasingly silly, even if it was all a dream. Actually, it could've been dafter. Missed opportunity in that regard, I think. But still. Nice enough.
April 2007
I've drawn Phaeochromocytoma in this week's office sweepstake. I think my chances are good.
This week I've drawn Thyrotoxicosis. I'm less confident.
May 2007
House, while being quite novel, is straying dangerously close to plotty. I do not want to know about House's upbringing and inspirations. I just want him to entertainingly mistreat his clinic patients, and show godlike diagnostic abilities.
June 2007
This week's House was not very good, because it was not especially House-y. We should've had half an episode of clinical hilarity and then some detection. But instead we had some talking and very little humour. The writers are becoming too interested in the workings of House's noggin.
July 2007
House was back on form this week. Albeit a bit of a flight of fancy. But plenty of opportunity to kill a patient again not taken.
August 2007
Somebody did indeed die in House. It's been a while. House then ended with none of the trippy chaos of the last series, and seems to be gazing out to sea wondering whether or not it should strap on the skis and go looking for a shark. Fingers crossed they don't do anything too silly should a fourth series turn up [as it did:]
March 2008
Hugh Laurie straps on his finest water-skis and shouts to the speed-boat pilot to head for the nearest shark. Hopefully it will be further away than it looks. This is yet another programme vying for attention in the seemingly much coveted "9pm on Thursday" slot.
House returned with a decent lupus joke which was enough to get it a bonus point.
House sets about building up a new team. The old team persist in the credits. Comedy of manners with Hugh Laurie.
May 2008
It's the grand final. Who will win the coveted place in House's team? Having well and truly had babies with the shark by finally finding a case of lupus, it seems the medical book must surely be exhausted. Maybe House could be abducted by aliens and have a whole new planet of diseases to diagnose. Or maybe they could just spend the time doing jokes. He's not done clinic duty for a while. That should keep us entertained enough.
It's the middle of May, which can mean only one thing: time for the Christmas episode of House.
June 2008
Imagine me doing a joke about House calls.
Medicine show.
House bangs his head and begins to think he's an English toff. Only part of that sentence is true.
July 2008
House ended in a typically trippy fashion, jumped another seven sharks, but still seemed to come off ok.
May 2009
We must of course mourn the sad passing of House to that great graveyard in the Sky we call Astra 1. Yes, House will no longer be visible to the likes of us: C5 decided not to buy series five for "commercial and scheduling reasons". This normally means "because we can't afford it", but in this case there seems to be less to it than that. I quote a C5 spokeswoman from MediaGuardian: "The decision frees substantial funds for our new director of programmes, Richard Woolfe [incidentally, he joined C5 from Sky1 on the day the distribution rights changed hands; though he's since acquired a considerable quantity of his old Sky staff at C5 so maybe it was a fair swap from his perspective], to spend on originated programmes. The continuing popularity of our long-running acquired series such as the CSI franchise and NCIS, plus the tremendous performance of our hit acquisition, The Mentalist, means it has been very difficult to find a suitable slot for the next series of House." Why not do what the BBC do, and put it on in the middle of the night? Like you used to do with everything else worth watching. Oh well, it doesn't matter, because we know full well series five would've been rubbish anyway: there were no James Woods legal dramas left for Hugh Laurie to jump.

How Art Made the World:
[an attempt at a "landmark" doc about art, B2]
May 2005
How Art Made the World is awfully up itself. Too much of it is that faddy sort of C4/5 "archaeologists now believe" sludge. C5 will tell us that some archaeologists now believe coffee was planted by aliens, so I'm inclined to be excessively suspicious about every theory archaeologists have, no matter how compelling. This week, How Art Made the World concerned itself with how the human race got into painting stuff, and decided it was cos we were all getting high. It made too many questionable leaps for my like, and by the end I found myself questioning everything it was telling me. The Simon Schama -esque presenter seemed entirely satisfied with his new-found truth (presented in that increasingly popular faux voyage-of-discovery way - eurgh), but I was still saying to him that the dots on the horseys were not the same as the dots in the other cave: the horseys are clearly dappled. I also couldn't help but postulate that perhaps people were drawing on less permanent media before they found the fixative that is a dry cave. It was the summation of these little doubts that began to eat away at the whole thing for me. It's like a suspension of disbelief. He ran off before I'd followed his leap. How Art... is not as bad as a good many things, but it's closest relative in recent history, Light Fantastic, was so so so so so so so so so so so so so much better.
June 2005
I could rant about How Art Made the World again, making direct comparisons with Dan Cruikshank's last vehicle and suggesting that his treatment of exactly the same material was far far superior, but I won't.
Later:
It was the final week of How Art Made the World, thank god... Dr Nigel Spivey came across as a poor scientist. The opening of this week's show went something along the lines of: "I surround myself with pictures of dead relatives because I find them comforting mementoes. In the past, people kept their dead relative's skulls, and experts believe that this is because they were all in some sort of crazy cult" or some similarly bizarre jump of intuition - I forget the details. It wasn't as bad as some of the episodes to be fair. But it was poor all the same. Especially when compared to the Cruikshank series that directly preceded it - a very odd bit of scheduling / commissioning really. When you factor the Hart-Davis series in too, that's three series on pretty similar grounds: What the Ancients Did For Art. Cruikshank easily came out on top, though if you examine the common ground he had with Civilisation, the latter may... well it's a harder judgement that one.
Still, as I mentioned before, in its basic pitch How Art... was closer to Light Fantastic, the difference being that Light Fantastic was... fantastic. Why? It wasn't nearly so patronising, the science in it was far less speculative and there was a good deal more humour.
But what we should be comparing How Art... to is Civilisation. Clearly. That was a documentary about the development of western art and civilisation since Charlemagne. And it did it very well. How Art... was a mess in comparison. True, it only had half the time, but it would only need half the time to give pre-historic and pre-classical art a Civilisation style treatment. Sod the hip speculation about how cave paintings are actually early home-cinema systems. Leave that to Channel 5. No, tell us more about the evolution of art and how it ties in with the evolution of civilisation. Tell us how art made the world.

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?:
[Elimination talent contest, B1]
September 2006
Ah... How Do You Solve a Problem like Maria? which this week voted out someone because she had an East European accent. Such eccentric eliminations only serve to enhance the high camp wonderfility of it all. The main show, actually, is a bit rubbish, and is scarcely discernible from any other elimination talent contest -- except the judges are a bit friendlier. But the half-hour execution slot is truly beautiful: the remaining Marias, in matching colour-coded costumes, reduced to the two lowest voted who then must "sing off" in a Sound... classic for the delectation of the enthroned ALWebber. He saves the least crap performer, with imperial elegance, before the eye-melting splendour of the close: survivors and the evictee waving to each other as they sing So Long, Farewell...; Not an unlumpen throat in the house. It's the sort of programme I might dream after one too many Eurovisions: Televisual genius. Surely this is the last talent show.

How to Solve a Cryptic Crossword:
[TimeShift documentary, B4]
November 2008
Creator of Morse Code taking first of lights in Times to Her Majesty... (5,6)
...in addition to an undated... (3)
...opera: "Don Pedro"; ably serving initially in the capacity of the French... (8)
...Prince Regent. Ximenes finally adopted for good now. (7)
Note: any quotes or punctuation should be thoroughly disregarded as utterly spurious.

How to Start Your Own Country:
[comic documentary series, B2]
August 2005
How to Start Your Own Country was ok, but a bit shouty and flippant, and the BBCi tie-in (an ill-conceived phone-in) was a waste of time that reminded me of student television.

How We Built Britain:
[architectural history series, B1]
June 2007
This is a pretty pathetic piece of tripe with some pretty chocolate-box photography and far too much poncing about. It appears to be some sort of pro-Dimbleby propaganda. Is he going to launch a coup? This is not a programme about building. Rather it is a programme about David Dimbleby's hair. Was Cruikshank suddenly taken ill?

The Huw Wheldon Lecture:
[annual media lecture, B1]
September 2005
The last Huw Wheldon lecture was some cow from Sky. I didn't enjoy it. This time though it was Paul Abbott, and he was a damn site better. He credited the audience with some intelligence, which is always nice.

ITV channels have their own page.

ITV 50th:
[one-off nostalgia doc, YTV]
September 2005
YTV's ITV 50th was the only meaningful nostalgia trip I saw during the anniversary celebrations, and even that was a bit flimsy. Still, it (and 49 Up for that matter) reminded us of the days when ITV had documentaries (World in Action, This Week, First Tuesday). The only doc they have now (unless you count DIY Badlads from Hell) is the abomination that is Tonight with Trevor McDonald. More an advert than a doc. YTV were also very keen to remind us about how great their contributions to the network were, and indeed they were. Sad to note that the chevron is no longer there on the side of the studio. It's not really possible to discuss the demise of ITV without mentioning Thatcher and that stupid bloody franchise auction that was the beginning of the end. Still, we have eighteen trips to Wetherfield a week, and an endless garage full of Naughtiest Blunders. So that's ok. The BBC might've made us a TimeShift on the ITV story though. Shame.

ITV's Best Ever Ads:
[one-off "chart" doc, I1]
September 2005
A total waste of money that would've been better spent buying the rights to C4's larger and more meaningful chart of adverts (while we're on the subject, surely the best Carling Black Label ad was the one that ran through into a number of other adverts? Or am I the only one that remembers that?).

James May's Top Toys:
[one-off documentary, B2]
December 2005
In this Top Gear spin-off, the hairy fairly sensible one plays with some toys. A televisual equivalent of slamming your Tonka trucks into each other.
[Actually this proved to be a fairly straight and enjoyable look at the history of the British toy industry in the last century.]

James May's Toy Stories:
[journeyman toy challenge series, B2]
October 2009
James May's Toy Stories is simple at heart and is essentially a vehicle for an enthusiastic man to entertain himself in the hope that some of it rubs off on us. Which thankfully it does.
November 2009
The last episode of James May was surprisingly good and enjoyable.

James May's 20th Century:
[OU science series, B2]
July 2007
He tries, certainly. He's rather amusing. But there's something dodgy on a production level. It's all a bit cheap and skittish. Not enough science for an OU production. Nice aqualung sequence though.

John Peel's Record Box:
[one-off documentary, C4]
November 2005
These things are always rubbish. And the self-acclaimed "UK Music Hall of Fame" has a hand in this too, which makes things even less promising. But Sheila's involved, and so, more importantly, are John Peel's records. What we really want is a radio show that précis the records. A TV show isn't going to do that, quite clearly. This will be rubbish.
[It wasn't as bad as I feared. It took a chart format, and gave us some half-decent snippets of material plus some half-decent talking heads.]

Jonathan Meades: Abroad Again:
[architecture documentary series, B2]
May 2007
Only last week, I was sat on the toilet wondering if we'd ever see Meades again. And, as if he'd been reading my stools, up he pops, waving a cheery hello. Since he's lost a bit of weight he's not been quite as good as he was at the turn of the millennium, but he's still been pretty good all the same. This week he takes us back to his childhood...
Meades is back to his old self again, which is something of a relief after the disappointing last series. He proves that what Gavin Stamp lacks as much as anything else is a false moustache and a comedy brummy accent. Meades was on form with a dwarf, some nudes and some quick-blooming flowers on hand to liven things up.
June 2007
Meades found the Quantel machine in the attic and used it until it broke for a chroma-keyed tribute to all things Capability Brown. Thursday's statue marked the point where this episode became an Abroad of traditional proportions. Here's hoping another series comes along one day. And in the meantime, how about some repetition on B4?

Jonathan Meades: Magnetic North:
[architecture documentary travelogues, B4]
February 2008
B4 wheels out the biggest weapon available to it short of a Fred Harris retrospective. The mighty Meades makes his way from Belgium to a rather plastic-looking building in Finland in search of all things "northern", which is hopefully just a lattice-framework for some silly moustaches, ranting and a spot of camera-play. It may well prove to be the highlight of the televisual year. And so, quite without fanfare, it came to pass that Jonathan Meades returned to our screens. And lo, twas a wonderous thing. I could talk in rapture about Magnetic North but it would not be very entertaining. Better just for you to go and watch the bugger. The second part wasn't as good as the first, but that's like saying Hedy Lamarr isn't as good looking as Greta Garbo.
June 2009
I didn't watch much telly this week, as I've been converting some of my videos to DVD; a thankless task that's made me dizzy on Meades. Compared to the finest Meades, the appeal of television is but the tugging of an annoying child upon the lower trouser: a deft flick of the foot suffices to quench the nag. Watching good television on video is the stiffest depressant yet brewed.

Jonathan Meades: Off-Kilter:
[architecture documentary series, B4]
September 2009
Another year of licence-fee paying finally matures with Meades sent to darkest Scotland for our pleasure and enlightenment.
Jonathan Meades is back, hurrah!

Jonathan Miller's Brief History of Disbelief:
[documentary series, B4]
October 2004
Jonathan Miller does a good documentary when unencumbered by modern trends. The visual inserts are entertaining but distracting, and the first half hour of the show was a waste of time introducing and previewing various aspects of the programme. Miller would agree that these aspects were a negative force in his documentary, as he said both in the programme and his interview. Give me AJP Taylor style straight-to-camera documentary making any day. But aside from these drawbacks, this looks set to be a genuinely interesting and predominantly old-school documentary. Which is good.
[It turned out to be pretty poor: a scene in a wine bar where Miller's middle-class chums sat dissing the concept of religion would've made even Dawkins question atheism if atheism means tossers like this. Such a stance of philosophical superiority is obnoxious irrespective of how true it may prove to be. But that was not why it was a poor series. The overuse of silent comedy inserts was painful, and then there was Miller's buggering about with a laptop on which he would play us clips for no good reason other than that some backroom twat decided it'd liven things up. It didn't liven things up, it cheapened them by making the programme (and Miller) look ridiculous. Had the series been the straight doc Miller wanted it to be, it may well have been some good. And this makes his opening "Walking with Atheists" protestation all the more compelling. Clearly this was an adequate doc that was bollocksed up by powers that be. As one of B4's earlier forays into documentary commissioning, it was disappointing that even on an art-house channel we weren't allowed to have unadulterated documentary lest it be seen as a bit boring. I can feel by blood pressure rising. I should stop.]

Journey of Life:
["documentary" series; B1]
May 2005
I had the misfortune of seeing bits of the first half hour of the last episode of BBC1 doc Journey of Life. It was dreadful. The first five minutes was Steve "not very good" Leonard telling us about what he'll be looking at in the programme. How anyone could stick that without browsing over to the other side, I don't know. It was like Horizon or something. Shut up and get on with it, for pity's sake. That finally being done we spent a lot of time looking at whizzy graphics while being told nothing of any real substance. At one point Leonard took the time out to point out that if we share 99% of our genes with chimps, we are only different by 1%. Thanks for that, Steve. I'm glad you think we're thick. I mean, I accept that some people don't know what percentage means, but the next sentence in the script addressed a 1% difference anyway, so we really didn't need to be patronised. Around this point I had to start flicking about the channels. But as it went on, he consistently suggested that chimps are a bit thick. Now, chimps are a bit thick, but not nearly as thick as he seemed to be suggesting. They hunt and use tools. If he touched the former, I was on the other side, and his analysis of the latter was pitifully lacking in any real depth. Further more, in those 30 minutes, he not once addressed the bonobo. In fact he intimated that tight-knit social groups developed only on the savannah, something which is demonstrably untrue. So it was a garish, vacuous, shoddy, shallow production that made me seethe. And I know from the wasted five minutes at the start of the episode, that the next half was destined to be even crapper: sub-Tomorrow's World futurology bullshit. An awful lot of TV docs, particularly on prime-time main stations, are dreadful, overlong toss. It's the Horizon thing: an hour long programme that could've been over in half the time if they stopped saying "in this programme" and showing endless, constantly repeated comp-gen blurs.

The Keith Barret Show:
[comedy chat-show, B2]
December 2004
Perhaps I'm being harsh on Barret... Truth is, you can't really keep peddling this format. Perhaps the first of the new series, with Leslie Ash and her definitely not handy with his fists husband, might be interesting through pure tabloid cringeworthyness, but it's going to be tough to better that for another five weeks or so. This episode was more of the old routine (albeit with the worn-out Mr & Mrs gag sensibly dropped).

Kevin McCloud and the Big Town Plan:
[town planning documentary, C4]
August 2008
When the presenter's name is bigger than the title, things should be left on the shelf in the airport. In this series, the lamp-designer turned hard-hat wearer to the stars follows the progress of Castleford as it attempts a spot of urban regeneration. But Castleford have chosen to build their town without any formal plans, and refuse to employ a site manager to oversee the project. Instead, mayor David will be running the regeneration himself from a caravan in his back garden, while his wife, Angelise, will be designing the furnishings.

Kingdom:
[comedy-drama series, I1]
July 2009
Kingdom, as you will be aware, is Lars von Trier's latest Sunday night offering for the ITV, starring Stephen Fry as... well I couldn't quite work out what he was meant to be, but it's not really important. Kingdom seems to me to be almost entirely indistinguishable from Doc Martin and follows that all-to-familiar tried-and-tested Sunday night blue-print established by Hamish Macbeth (city person cast adrift in mad rural location full of lovable eccentrics). It pisses on Heartbeat but that doesn't count for much. It is no Lovejoy, but it is better than Monarch of the Glen.

The Krypton Factor:
[Nietzschean game-show, I1]
February 2009
The new version is a bit too slick-but-cheap to live up to past glories. The programme seemed to peter out after the assault course, and I think I either fell asleep or there wasn't a flight simulator. The VT for the memory round was second-hand, which must make it potentially unfair. And as for the assault course, could they not find one that was laid out a little better for the cameras? I always found Krypton Factor a mixture of annoying and strangely endearing, and this new version certainly continues to offer the former. Given some patience it might even manage the latter. But I won't be hanging around to find out. Not unless someone buys me a large plastic 3D puzzle in a light-box so that I might play along at home.

Kombat Opera:
[comedy "Jerry Springer"-style "opera" series, B2]
February 2007
Ee gads. This was dreadful. I had to pull out after ten minutes. Strangely more tuneful than Jerry Springer, but just bollocks. It may have made a nice sketch in the middle of French & Saunders or something. The concept struggles in spasms of pain when exercised as R4's Fifteen Minute Musical (quarter of an hour best spent elsewhere). Here it's dragged out to a full thirty minutes of agonising mock-opera bullshit pinned to the dry bones of a sub-standard sketch. Why?

Kröd Mändoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire:
[Matt Lucas vanity fantasy sit-com, B2]
June 2009
Golden child Matt Lucas has been given five hours to play with. It's a sit-com set in a dungeons and dragons world (so far so Princess Bride) and so it might be ok. But an hour of it?
[after about twenty minutes of it:]
Krod Mandoon was shit.

Lab Rats:
[research-science sit-com, B2]
July 2008
This week, BBC2 had another go at a new sit-com. Lab Rats was clearly flawed, but with moments of comedy dotted about. The biggest flaw was probably that it was just a rip-off of C4's IT Crowd. Perhaps the brummy girl and the dean should just do a double-act, because they were the main sources of comedy. though perhaps that was more down to their comedy accents than anything else.

Let's Write Non-Fiction:
[schools and colleges, B2]
June 2009
The best comedy this week, perhaps unsurprisingly, came in the form of childrens television; schools and colleges even; a repeat of an episode of Let's Write Non-Fiction starring this column's favourite comedy double act: Noble and Silver.

Life in Cold Blood:
[Attenborough natural history doc series, B1]
February 2008
Life in Cold Blood marks the end of a broadcasting era, what with Attenbrough getting on in years, and budgets not being what they used to be. And so we make the most of it. It's not quite Planet Earth in its mindblowing scope and looks, but it is a lot of lizards and one of the most important figures in television history. And that's good enough.

Life in the Undergrowth:
[Attenborough natural history doc series, B1]
Best Factual TV Programme 2005
November 2005
There was something cheerfully nostalgic about watching David Attenborough playing with worms. Invertebrate life tends not to get a great deal out of telly. Usually its fifteen minute slices of fame are quickly followed by retching C-list celebrities telling themselves it's for the good of the camp. But this week, not all the spiders and grubs were being eaten or poured on people. Some were being shown in their natural habitat (or at least in a tank with an endoscope). There was a twitchy single dad spider who was oddly endearing, but by far the most loveable creature ever seen on telly is the springtail. They were really very cute as invertebrates go. I could've done without the slug-sex though.
December 2005
Parasites and symbionts go under the lens, where they sizzle in the magnified heat. Nice stuff that makes spiders look cute. Meanwhile, the social insects celebrate Christmas.

Life on Mars:
[existentialist period cop drama, B1/4]
The Buffy Award 2007
February 2007
This week saw the return of Life on Mars. It's being shown in one of those self-destructive analogue/digital double bills, which I took advantage of in the interests of journalism. After both eps I had this nagging sense of emptiness like someone'd come in while I was watching it and stole all my spangles. There's a celebrated episode of Buffy where she wakes up from a coma to find that all her vampire-slaying days were a fantasy, only to voluntarily return to that fantasy to save her imaginary friends. This is a series that takes that concept and chews on it like one might chew on a refresher. At the start of every episode, our hero begs the question is this a coma, am I back in time or am I mad? The answer is obvious: he's in a coma. And yet he can influence events in the future. Unless that's just fantasy too, which one must sensibly assume it is. Still. This allows for some fun games arising in this series, with the Hyde Branch mop becoming tangible. Ep1 had the rather clever (albeit somewhat tortured) concept of reversing the roles of our dynamic duo, with the '00s one's view of the future interfering with his usual book of rules. But the conclusion failed to live up to the set-up, and the WPC's revulsion at Tyler's sectioning tactic was woefully shortlived. To return to Buffy, by the second series such conduct would've had lengthy ramifications: another example of why the Vampire Slayer was a good thing. Finally, am I alone in finding the portrayal of the woman limp and lifeless? Were all policewomen in the '70s as floppy? Perhaps that's why she forgot about Tylor's misdemeanour so quickly. Because she's just a cuddly toy.
The gaping hole in Life on Mars is the lack or any sort of development along the course of the series. Each week, Tyler's relationship with Hunt is back to sqaure one. But perhaps this is because the comatosed Tyler hasn't got much of an imagination. This is a very silly programme held together by the two main leads and a moderately interesting premise.
April 2007
This week saw the end of Life on Mars. Throwing yourself off a tall building seems a risky way to induce a coma if you ask me. The attempt to do a "hah, he's not in a coma, he really is from Hyde" twist fell a bit flat, especially with the overdone graveyard scene. But the ultimate ending was fair enough. What else were you expecting? A spin off with Gene Hunt and the gang, set in London in 1980? That's a crazy idea in at least three different ways. Ho and hum. As usual.

Light Fantastic:
[physics documentary series; B4, repeated B2]
Best Factual TV Programme 2004
December 2004
I shall be defending Light Fantastic in the upcoming AView Awards. It lived up to its name. I hope there's a second series as there is still much unegsplored terridory (as the presenter might say). The digitally impotent should look out for this when it comes to BBC2. One of the best docs of the year.
August 2005
It's been eight or nine months, but BBC4's appropriately named documentary finally sees the light of analogue. When it arrived last year, it was amidst much excitement not for itself but for Jonathan Miller's atheism doc. But this blew that firmly out of the water, and also sent some shock-waves in the direction of Meades' Abroad ship. Don't get me wrong, Light Fantastic isn't Even Further Abroad, it's much more normal than that, and it isn't Ascent of Man, but Meades aside, it's perhaps the best documentary series the BBC has had in a long time, and pisses on all of C4's efforts in this area in the last decade or so. Imagine if Horizon had content... No. Forget I mentioned that abomination. I mean... who'd've thought a documentary on light would be even workable. Fuck Emmerdale and get an education with this broad and glitzy four-parter, desperately in need of a sequel.

Little Britain:
[comedy sketch series, B3/1]
December 2005
I should probably say a few words about Little Britain, though I really can't be bothered. It's still the same old routine of one-trick gags about eccentric homosexuals who are consistently surprised that the world doesn't care that they're eccentric homosexuals. I preferred the first series, which had a bit more variety and seemingly more one-offs. Any entertainment I might've got from Orville doing the shopping was buggered up by the Radio Times raving about it. Ho hum. Enough.

Little Kinsey:
[documentary from B4's Lost Decade season]
October 2005
A doc about Mass Observation's 1949 sex survey. How did the syphilitic after-effects of putting it about during the war damage the nation's collective penis? I'd've liked a lot more Mass Observation style statistics, and less natter. But then, I guess I can buy a book for that.

Live Commons Speaker Election:
[democracy in action, BP]
June 2009
Also on Monday, giving my notes for this column the rather pleasing line of "Speaker/Wire", Live Commons Speaker Election is to be found on BBC Parliament, 1425-1900. Who wins? MPs decide. With commentary from Daniel Brittain and Betty Boothroyd.

Living with the Future:
[architecture documentary series, B4]
February 2007
Living with the Future, in which a delightfully upper middle class fellow spends the weekend in some novel architecture, came to a close in a fantastic house that made me drooly. Not keen on the electric taps though. I couldn't be doing with them. What if there was a power cut?

The Lost World of Tibet:
[Dan Cruikshank travelogue, B4]
March 2008
A mish-mash of old film, interviews with the Dali Lama, and some quite good bits of our host demonstrating Buddhist prayer to the bemusement of passing pilgrims. The result was a bit formless and lacking in direction, but the general impression it left was one of Cruikshank being charmingly shambolic, yet competent, like a good history teacher.

Louis Theroux: The Most Hated Family in America:
[one-off doc about a religious cult, B2]
April 2007
Apocalypse Today, the international journal for cult leaders, has been circulating Jon Ronson's photo on a quarterly basis, so gone are the days that he could infiltrate a band of nutters and ask them rubbery questions about the nature of sin. Instead we have to make do with Louis Theroux, who is less paranoid that they're all going to kill him, but is also not quite as good. Maybe they could trade places, and Ronson can have a series where he spends a week with a weird celebrity. Or how about they both have to live together for a week, and make their own reports out of the resultant footage... "Louis does this thing with his lips... I think he wants to eat me."; "I've noticed that Jon is a terribly nervous person. I think if I can get him to go out for a meal I might put him more at ease". That sort of thing... Mm.

Man Stroke Woman:
[comedy sketch series, B3]
November 2005
Man Stroke Woman is a 30-somethings relationship-based sketch-show that comes on the heels of Spoons and that one on C5 whose name history has already bid me to forget. Neither of those were any good, which may help make this look better than it is. It's no Smack the Pony it should be said, and that was patchy, but compared to recent sketch shows, it was Python or something. M/W will not shake the world, but it's watchable at least.

Map Man:
[cartographic documentary series, B2]
October 2004
This is a series that has improved with age. The first episodes were on the cusp, but since then we've had some genuinely good stuff. This week he was on a boat.
September 2005
After boring us rigid with his patchy tour of the British coast (minus the Galloway peninsula, you won't have noticed), Nicholas Crane returns to what he does best, namely wandering around the country with an obscure map.
Map Man, was ok, but really it was revisiting territory already covered in the first series. One pioneering map of the wilds of Scotland is very much like the next to the casual observer.

Marco's Great British Feast:
[culinary 'journey'-format documentary, I1]
July 2008
Marco's Great British Feast had moments of interest and entertainment (Mr Ishy for example) but was mainly Pierre-White doing his Ross Kemp impersonation. Maybe he and Ramsay could work their respective issues out together in some sort of pay-per-view food fight.

Mark Lawson Talks to Jonathan Meades:
[interview, B4]
July 2008
Mark Lawson comes close to unmitigatedly rubbish. His inability to select a decent range of remotely interesting questions for Jonathan Meades demonstrated that Lawson is a poor interviewer. Meades seemed at times to despair. "Why are you asking that?" he and we collectively thought to ourselves. There was a feeling that perhaps Lawson was not quite as familiar with the Meades back-catalogue as he should be: that he'd cram-watched a few select episodes the previous night while eating cold pizza. Admittedly he wasn't helped by the fact that the selected clips of Meades-product seldom had any connection at all with the topic being discussed. A discussion of Surreal Film, would be followed by a clip of Further Abroad etc. This was a poorly cobbled together interview, not even backed by a decent archive raid for the surrounding schedule. But what's new? These Newsnight Review interviews are seldom of any interest or relevance. You could have God as the guest and not get any decent questions out of Lawson or Wark. It'd all be "Your latest project is a mass judgement of souls. And one of your early novels was, of course, the hugely successful Judges. Would you say that you are particularly motivated by your interest in the judiciary?" When B4 shows the occasional repeat of Face to Face, it only shows up its modern interview strand as a terrible pile of frogs' testicles.

The Mark Steel Lectures:
[comic biography series, B4/2]
Best TV Presenter 2004
[after a couple of very good series (well one very good series and one quite good series), largely recycled from the radio, Steel returned with some new names for a third go.]
March 2006
Whereas last week's Mark Steel [Chaplin] suffered from too much use of the actor, this week's [Descartes] arguably had too little. And the lecture concentrated too much on Descartes' empiricism. Admittedly it was a key aspect of his work, but he did other stuff too. Like the second series, the third series is struggling with the balance between comic parody and biography. The gems of series one, especially Freud, Newton and Aristotle, seemed to have had some real research put in. There's not been the same recourse to amusing quotes, and the same risible historical re-enactment. Instead, the actor has been directed almost solely to sketches, and the lecture itself has been sweeping, vague and fairly obvious. Must try harder.

Mastermind:
[quiz show, B2]
June 2009
I do not claim to be a big Mastermind fan. Indeed I did not even realise it had been on. No; Mastermind, as nice as it is, has never really gripped my testicles and called me Nancy. But I do like to watch the final, as a token gesture to a quiz with the occasional tough question or three.

Men in White:
[problem-solving makes series, C4]
September 2006
That pesky Scrapheap / Time Team slot of a Sunday-afternoon... Three young men, two with doctorates, put on their best Johnny Ball trousers for some scientastic edutainment. Science Shack's second-in-command, Jem Stansfield,  plucked two doctored friends from obscurity to deliver Channel 4's latest Sunday teatime offering: Men In White. The far from original concept at work here is for three clever-clogs to solve a problem via their inventing genius. Here the twist seems to be that the budget's quite small and they want to get through three makes per show. So we get a tediously fiddly aquatic bike, a failed dog-repellant, and (the main feature) some "ghost" generators. The result is a bit naff, but its heart is in the right place.
[Jem stayed in the slot to help out in Bill Bailey's curious Wild Thing...]

Men, Women and Clothes:
[1957 fashion documentary, B4]
February 2009
Men, Women and Clothes marks Ration-book hero Roly Keating's first cartload of gold from the BBC Archive mines: a 1957 documentary on the history of fashion, which somehow got made in colour. It's presented by a wonderful woman whose accent roams across the full expanse of the Home Counties, and features a range of '50s celebrities (some distinctly less familiar than others) modeling a variety of historic costumes. And each episode is only 15 minutes, which is just right for the subject matter. It's an entertaining little find and it's all available to watch online, which is a promising development.

Messiah:
[ludicrous crime drama, B1]
[The first Messiah, a straight rip-off of Se7en, but with the added plot-device of a deaf wife, was great. The second outing struggled to come up with a suitable follow up. But the franchise kept on going...]
September 2005
Messiah returned to the Se7en style serial-killings of the original run, and was splendidly silly for it. But the choice of murderer is starting to get ridiculous. It was obvious it was a woman from the start, but alas we were only given one realistic suspect, and it was never going to be her. Consequently we were left with the daft solution we had. Heh. Doesn't leave much scope for the next one though. My money's on Ken Stott. That is if there IS a next one. We've already lost a couple of key cast members (particularly missed was Red's deaf wife), though Maxine Peake's replacement woman detective was probably an improvement, if only cos she wasn't so wet. It's good these serial killers adhere so strictly to their literature, isn't it...
[Another Messiah turned up in 2008, with a completely new cast. Ivan didn't watch.]

Michael Palin's New Europe:
[travelogue, B1]
September 2007
Michael Palin was sent packing again this week, this time to the Eastern Bloc. But his zig-zag whistlestop tour of ex-Yugoslavia (+ Albania) was not especially satisfactory. His attempts to engage with the politics of the area were never more than cheap gloss, and his cultural analyses were fairly whispy too. Palin's rounds seem pretty dire when compared with Gavin Stamp's critical detour through the Balkans in his Orient Express series for C5 earlier this year. There we had a thorough exploration of the main cities, their peoples, their histories, with some sarcastic asides and transport VTs thrown in for good measure. At first glance they're similar concepts: elderly English gent with battered suitcase and panama hat explores Eastern Europe. Oddly the trained comedian is not only less informative than the architecture writer, but also less funny.

Mighty Boosh:
[studenty sit-com, B3]
August 2005
Mighty Boosh continues undisciplined, and just short of what you'd really call funny.
September 2005
The last episode of Mighty Boosh just about broke through the comedy barrier.

Mock the Week:
[satirical comedy panel-game, B2]
July 2008
While in Finland, watching the VIVA World Cup, I stumbled upon some 0pters by connecting my Finlandia TV set to the arse of a reindeer. Mock the Week has always been rubbish, forced and awkward, but it was all the more so on account of that bloke who looks like Mike Read being on it (Michael McIntyre -ed), repeating everyone's jokes about a minute after they've been told, in his annoying laughy voice. God, I want to punch him. Is that wrong of me?

Monday Monday:
[office-based comedy-drama series, I1]
July 2009
A new office-based comedy-drama played with all the strength and conviction of a pilot but apparently continuing for a full series. Its greatest failing is that The Office has pretty much done for that workplace what Fawlty Towers did for hotels. It attempts to counter this by focusing its ire not so much at management as at human resources: a type of sub-human race ranked lower in the collective imagination than any politician or estate agent. But the programme doesn't have enough confidence to operate all-out as a HR-baiting comedy; somewhere along the line (perhaps at the very beginning) a rom-com sub-plot was bolted on, forcing immediate comparison with BBC3's new 'Sex In The Office' comedy drama series Personal Affairs (which I've not seen but which I imagine is probably a bit better). While many of the jokes were tired and stock, the casting of Fay Ripley as a personnel manager was, at least, inspired bordering on predestined. Monday Monday was scheduled against The Street and deservedly lost.

Monkey Trousers:
[sketch series, I1]
May 2005
ITV are having a really tough time of it at the moment. This is their 50th anniversary year, and they seem to be having a very extreme mid-life crisis (Celebrity Wrestling, Love Island). Perhaps the solution is to get Vic & Bob to write a sketch show. But no. All that ITV touch turns to shit. It wouldn't be so bad if this were genuinely a new programme, but it's not. At least two sketches were recycled from a previous all-star ITV Vic & Bob toss-off. Monkey Trousers was wall to wall shit conducted by people who ought to know better. Presumably they were being well paid.

Mountain:
[series about British mountains, B1]
August 2007
Mountain shows the sort of thing that could potentially be achieved by this sort of programme [cf. Great British Journeys]. But Mountain has its own problems, not least its syrupy chocolate-box Sunday-night comfortable-slipperryness, but also its incompetent sound engineering. It makes me feel old to say that Mountain is spoiled in part by the music being too loud, but for once this is a statement of fact and not merely an indication of the felled state of my cochlear cilia.

Moving Wallpaper:
[media comedy-drama series, I1]
January 2008
Dead-Donkey / Studio-60 -alike set behind the scenes of the ITV's new soap. It's a perfectly acceptable piece of backroom comedy: rather competent for I1, perhaps it'd've been a bit tame for the likes of B2 or C4, but it's not a million miles away from Absolute Power in its style (and in its cast). But as far as the soap itself, Echo Beach, goes... one wonders which came first: crap soap or twin-programme concept... Echo Beach is not competent enough to be a decent soap, not terrible enough to be parody, and really there isn't nearly enough cross over to make watching it at all worth while for any fan of its sister.

Mud, Sweat and Tractors:
[agricultural social-history documentary series, B4]
April 2009
Mud, Sweat and Tractors looked set to be rubbish, and I was very worried when ten minutes in we started getting personal stories and ciné-film. But it turned out that this was not some mawkish milk-parlour romance but in-fact two engaging case-studies: an analysis of the history of milk production with recourse to two divergent models. And so it was actually quite good: a documentary with in-vision source material (albeit a sample of two; that's still two more than usual).
May 2009
The last episode looks at edible cows.

Music of the Primes:
[one-off maths doc with Marcus du Sautoy, B4]
October 2005
Music of the Primes was not as good as its sister programme on BBC1 (The Story of 1). It was full of unnecessary graphics and shots of irrelevant numbers, and failed to explain properly what was going on with the Riemann Hypothesis. Saying that Riemann walked in a mirror and saw some mountains didn't really help in any way, and from that point on I was slightly lost.

My Zinc Bed:
[TV play, B2]
August 2008
I'm not seriously expecting you to watch a David Hare play, because as we all know he's a corrupt, anti-Pakistan, aggressive-email sender. Unless I'm very much mistaken.
Ivan's nemesis, Graham Allison, writes: "That most obnoxious of things: a one off TV drama ported from the West End. The dreary story of betrayal and alcoholism was only pepped up by the presence of Uma Thurman: gorgeous as ever. But that alone was insufficient to make up for the tedious, wordy headache that was the play itself. Give me Coronation Street any day."

Nation on Film:
[cine-film nostalgia doc series, B4]
January 2005
Nation on Film is a good project, analysing social history through archive public information films et hoc. Given its place on BBC 4 though, they could make far more of it. Why not operate the old TimeShift gimmick of showing related films afterwards? Let's see the whole films, not just these little clips. It's not like BBC 4 is short of space.
[a later series, with David Jason on narration, began to get a bit too specialised.]

Never Mind the Buzzcocks:
[comedy panel show, B2]
Best TV Presenter, 2006 (Simon Amstell), Most Disappointing Return Series 2007
[The original Mark Lamarr version was ok. The addition of Bill Bailey was a marked improvement, and the arrival of Simon Amstell was a revolution of wonder. This review comes from a period when Bill was off and replaced by Noel Fielding:]
December 2007
Is it me, or does Noel Fielding seem to sap all the humour out of the room? Is he some sort of comedy sponge? Is he the anti-Bill? Anyway, today's his last day. This series has been a bit weak, but we muscle on. Simon Amstel will find a way to bring light where there was darkness.
[The series did indeed recover in the new year.]
November 2008
The televisual highlight this week was Never Mind the Buzzcocks, which seemingly rushed out this episode as a swift response to all the silliness of last week when a scheduled ep of Buzzcocks was quietly put aside for containing traces of Brand-"X". [The ep of Buzzcocks with Russell Brand was never shown].

The New Avengers:
[not so new secret-service comedy-drama series, B4]
May 2009
This week The New Avengers went to Canada and were pitted against a deadly computer-operated building: a great idea but one they wasted, buried as it was in the usual cast-on-tour jokes (imagine a similarly decamped episode of, say, Friends... though that flexes muscles reserved only for the most extreme cringes).
June 2009
Come saddle your milk-white Steed. Repeated with signing for added comedy, 0250.

New Homes From Hell:
['documentary' horror, I1]
July 2009
Worst of all this week, by far, was New Homes from Hell. For the uninitiated among you, you lucky lucky people, this is a programme about people who have bought new homes only for them to be destroyed one way or another, be it through natural disaster, wiring fault, or more often than not, continental planning regulations. It's a mawkish nightmare of a programme, the purpose of which bemuses me. It is not a cautionary tale as never is there depicted an alternative to the flames or the bulldozer, save perhaps never leaving this island (most of the houses seem to have been built overseas by lobsterish ex-patriots), which makes the whole thing look like it's simply been put here to scare us out of our wits: any minute we might find our home and all our worldly goods engulfed in flame or swallowed up into the Earth. It's enough to force one into a state of agoraphobia, or, with my cynical head on, it's designed to foster in us a mistrust of the foreign as uncontrollable and lawless, unlike the comforting apron-strings of Nurse Britain where homes are never destroyed by flooding or compulsorily demolished to make way for an airport expansion. Perhaps I'm reacting all wrong. Perhaps the actual response is meant to be one of some form of cathartic relief and schadenfreude, in which case its aims are equally distasteful. What is worse, this torturous conveyor-belt of broken dreams, shattered lives, and massive human suffering on a truly consumerist scale... this parade of smouldering ruins and anguished, tear-streaked, sun-burnt faces bereft of property, wealth and shelter goes on not just for 30 interval-pierced minutes but a whole bloody hour! A whole hour of real people losing everything except their loved ones. Still, at least they're getting paid for it; even the ones who were stupid and didn't bother filling in all the appropriate forms (not that they are ever blamed for this in-programme). Perhaps, perhaps, we're supposed to be ignited into some sort of compassionate spirit. Perhaps we're supposed to leap out of our armchairs, running into the streets without a second thought for the front door to our useless collection of detritus and holiday photos, and tearfully grip the first human we see, screaming into their startled face the words "I love you, I love you! The world's a frighteningly horrible place but together maybe we can make it a little bit better!" But then why's the programme cobbled together with lots of scary black and red graphics and flame effects? No, it's just meant to make us tremble and worry and have sleepless nights and so stay up in our dressing gowns, clutching a shotgun to our breasts and playing phone-in games. And in the morning we will call Bid-Up TV and buy a better lock for the door (even though fire and bulldozers are impervious to locks, at least it'll make us feel a bit better). Shit happens, but it doesn't mean we should have our noses rubbed in it for an hour. ITV happens. Likewise.

News Programming:
[a window on the world, public-service broadcasters and evil geniuses]
August 2009
C4N is to ditch its lunchtime slot (and More4 News) and use the money to protect the quality of the evening programme. Krish's cheeky daytime antics will surely be missed.
What, then, is the future of news? Bizarrely, as the BBC strides ever closer to a news monopoly, the quality of its presentation gets exponentially worse. The increasingly magazine Six o'Clock News is bearable, but a glance across to the web-site headlines on my side-bar all too often reveals a frightening array of naff puns and a disturbing predilection towards the inconsequential. Particularly of a weekend, about 50% of stories are press agency tat, though that, at least, is nothing new.
What might counter the BBC's monopoly of tat? I used to assume that the Murdoch press would remain forever, but if they're playing daft games like pay-per-view news-content, one has to wonder. It flies entirely in the face of everything they've ever achieved with the Sun by selling it for minus ten pence or whatever it is these days. As advertisers begin to do what we all hoped might never happen and start questioning the firmness of the clouds they walk on, even the internet starts to feel a little short of credit. Perhaps the first thing to watch for is the demise of the middle-man and the advent of the press agency as a public news service. The list of agency feeds that make up the other half of my side bar stand as evidence of their increasing public face. But with nobody to buy their news, a press agency is no more viable an organization than the press itself. So where does that leave us? Wiki-news? Experiments with public-generated news content have been pretty shit so far. The biggest problem it faces, in fairness, is the old trouble of establishing a central location at which to do it. But just as Facebook has emerged as the social networking tool to be on, and Twitter has established itself as a handy way to get news (and disinformation) from anywhere where there's a mobile phone, just as Napster, YouTube, and the likes gained their footholds through word-of-mouth, so might yet rise a public news-service. The same is true, already, on a local level, where the town web-forum is the new shambles: the essential place for the trading of gossip and polemic. The worry, of course, is that good journalism gets lost in all this.
Thankfully, the superstition of advertisers will pull us through. There may be a lot of net, but certain key sites constantly emerge as safe bets. The challenge the UK press faces is to maintain itself in that hierarchy and hence maintain its advertising revenue. By charging for content, the Murdoch press is essentially pulling out of this contest, which only strengthens the hand of somewhere like The Guardian, which, let's face it, has placed pretty much all of its chips squarely into the on-line box. For The Guardian to succeed, it really needs to set its sights (and, frankly, has done) on the BBC News site. That has to be The Guardian's competition. That it is owned by a charity in the form of the Scott Trust gives some level of web-acceptability in a world where the Wikipedia keeps going without any advertising at all.
C4N's troubles are decidedly different in character. C4N is a product of the ITN for Channel 4. ITN is 40% owned by the ITV, 20% by the Daily Mail, 20% by the Reuters news agency and 20% by United Business Media (another wire company cum magazine publisher). Consequently its powers on-line are entirely restricted to the market of Channel 4. And the future of Channel 4 is looking increasingly state-funded. C4N's survival is entirely dependent on the future of television, and the arrangements of its news provision, but given that the programme's importance to the channel is generally understood, I think it is unlikely to be getting into too much trouble quite yet.
Clearly I am being unduly optimistic.

Newswipe with Charlie Brooker:
[media lid-lifting documentary series, B4]
March 2009
Newswipe was not up to Screen Wipe standards, though it had its moments. Perhaps it would've been better to start from first principles and explain the operations of news agencies, publicists, embargoed stories and the likes straight away before getting stuck into story hierarchies and plot-summaries. Part of the problem is Brooker's admitted lack of knowledge in the area of TV news. He could've done with a more seasoned partner (Peter Allen would be great; John Craven would be workable), rather than some tacky BBC3 insert item about rebranding the recession. Still, it's not dreadful, and could potentially be quite insightful, even if it does feel a little in the shadow of The Day Today at times.
April 2009
Newswipe seems to have found its feet, with Brooker turning back to what he does best (pointing at idiots and simulating masturbation).
It had a shaky start, built into something rather good and then sort of fizzled out (thanks in substantial part to a pointless "highlights" episode like some bad US sitcom). The concept was a good one but it was fundamentally flawed by Brooker's self-confessed lack of knowledge on the subject, meaning he had to fall back on the likes of Peter Oborne. This was not a terrible thing, but it compromised things a little. Newswipe would've been better either as a talking-heads expose of broadcast news or as Charlie Brooker laughing at Fox presenters. Jamming the two together just meant that we had insufficient time to properly explore either angle (never helped by wasting two or three minutes on poetry). Still, by no means an indecent effort and one that was much appreciated. But the best bits could all have been covered in Screenwipe.

Nighty Night:
[twisted sit-com, B3]
September 2005
Last series was pretty good, though I missed half of it on account of BBC3's impenetrable, repeat-sodden scheduling. Should be ok, though it's been rather heavily trailed.
October 2005
Nighty Night is ticking along like an unexploded bomb. It's sub Blue Jam black humour approach tends on the whole to rely more on the sick than on the gag, but who out there cannot raise a titter at the site of a woman having a steak and kidney pie scraped into her womb? It certainly amused me. For that alone it clocked up a point. Last week's plastic surgery was quite amusing too, though the set-up was weak. Not that that tends to be a major concern. I remain to be convinced that Nighty Night is actually any good, but I'm still watching it, so it must be doing something.

Not Only But Always:
[one-off biopic drama, C4]
December 2006
The biopicle adventures of Pete & Dud, movingly portrayed by Rhys Ifans and Aidan McArdle.

Nuts TV:
[lad-mag TV channel, NT]
December 2007 Report
Lad-mag telly that launched this year... on a very low budget. But with big knockers. Looks up to sky and shakes head. I dunno what it's for. It doesn't even seem to function as a masturbatory aid. It just seems like a waste of everybody's time and effort. But what do I know...
December 2008 Report
Alas, Nuts has not had a good year, and this despite a programme called Book at Bedtime with Lucy Pinder in which the titular lady read the classics and Shakespeare to a discerning audience. Nope, the wobbly setted live ladsmag channel is with us for only a few days more. Later this month it is set to become CNN International. Now that could be fun.

On Tour with the Queen:
[travelogue and historical documentary series, C4]
August 2009
Kwame Kwei-Armah traces the route of the current Queen's coronation tour of the Commonwealth which occurred in 1953. It is essentially an excuse for a programme on the Commonwealth, what it was, what it is, what it means, and all that, with the odd bit of stock film of a posh woman in a shiny dress.
[A week later] the historically minded travelogue moves onto the Antipodes where Kwame doubtless gets to stick out his tongue.

Oz & James's Big Wine Adventure:
[comic documentary series, B2]
November 2006
James May likes beer. Oz Clarke likes wine. The two go wine-tasting. Hilarity doesn't quite ensue.

Paul Merton's Silent Clowns:
[documentary series with supporting films, B4]
June 2006
Paul Merton does his best Tim Marlow (qv) lecture shtick, which is nice. He could probably make more of it. This week he was let down by his material. No matter what Merton says, Chaplin just wasn't funny. Annoying, soppy, whimsical even, but not funny. Especially once he had control of his material.

Peep Show:
[first-person sit-com, C4]
Best New Comedy Series 2003, Best TV Sitcom 2003, Best TV Sitcom 2004, Most Disappointing Return Series 2005
[Peep Show had a good first two series, but clearly should've left it at that. Alas, someone had other ideas.]
November 2005
I'm not entirely sure Peep Show can manage a third series, but it's going to have a go, so we may aswell watch, like the gathering crowd at a playground fight.
So Peep Show has returned, and so has my stingy marking. The first in the new series of Peep Show always suffers slightly from our collective bad memories. Not that that ever seems to be a problem. Wasn't there a wedding? Who? I don't know. And probably nor does anybody else. But I didn't find this week's episode especially funny. Webb seemed to have confused his two main-income characters slightly [ie his role in Smoking Room]. Mitchell was the same old car-crash but it was only a Capri into a garden fence rather than a full on high speed pile up. Still, he can't always kill a cat and serve it to Sophie as an evening meal, and expect her to still show interest next week. That sort of thing has to be spread out. You should, of course, give it chance. You should also never serve cat as an evening meal. It is bad form. Cat is traditionally a luncheon dish.
December 2005
Peep Show maintained the pallor of this current series. It's just not as funny, mainly because it's not nearly as cringy by any stretch of the imagination.
The disappointing third series of Peep Show came to an end this week. It never made me cringe.
April 2007
Two episodes into Peep Show. How is it? I think it's better than Series 3, just. But it's not up to its old standards. It still isn't making me cringe. It lunged into brain tumours with no sense of conviction, which is a shame as that could've given us a whole box of cringes to go at. Oh well.
[a week later:]
Peep Show regained the power to induce cringe, but failed to couple it with any real humour, and so still flails limply like a Dalek un-binned.
May 2007
Peep Show took another step into stock sit-com territory with a false-address good-impression scenario. Must try harder.

Pevsner Revisited:
[one-off biographical doc, B4]
August 2005
Meades's Pevsner biography was far far too normal, and gave the impression that Meades had been drafted in at the last minute. Aside from an ant and some personal opinions slotted in occasionally, it was a perfectly ordinary doc and nothing to have set the video for.

Phoo Action:
[comic-strip comedy-drama pilot, B3]
February 2008
The first in a series of B3 comedy-drama pilots. Had they spent the money on a script rather than on a latex basketball with a mouth (speaking the voice of Phil Cornwall), this Batman/Avengers wannabe might've come off alright. But a script was woefully lacking, and what few nice ideas were present were washed away in a sea of directionless wackiness. All rather reminiscent of the equally style-over-script B2 early '90s comedy crime-fighters The Glam-Metal Detectives (also featuring Phil Cornwall).

Pinter Night:
[evening of programming commemorating the death of a playwright, B4]
July 2009
We've been waiting for seven months, and inevitably it's a bit of an anticlimax. The Arenas, and One for the Road were both shown on BBC2 as part of the major Pinter retrospective in 2002. The Birthday Party was also shown then but on BBC4. In the middle, a play that's not even by him [Krapp's Last Tape], last shown in 2007. On Saturday night, a similarly spartan evening is dedicated to Pinter's old chum Simon Gray.
I don't know about you, but I felt a little cheated by Pinter Night. BBC4 might argue that by showing nigh-on the complete works of Pinter as recently as 2002, it's frankly done its bit for one lifetime. And by selecting three plays (two self-penned) in which he himself starred, they were ticking both the playwright box and the actor box of the televisual obituary form. Of those three plays, one was a production of perhaps his most celebrated work and one his most recent television performance as an actor. Again, the boxes are well ticked. But something felt missing. It all seemed a bit knocked off. Perhaps we were spoilt in 2002 (I say "we"; I don't know about you but I didn't have digital back then). I don't expect a rerun of the 2002 retrospective, but I did kind of expect a week's worth rather than a night for one of the most respected playwrights of the 20th century. Mind you I'm the sort of mad crazy type who expects Ionesco to be on television. I'm still waiting.

Planet Earth:
[Attenborough natural history series, B1]
Best Factual TV Programme 2006
March 2006
Planet Earth was pretty, but I'm not sure it was much more than that, which was always my fear. Still. It really was pretty. It delivered on the prettiness stakes in abundance. I want more content in coming episodes.
[The second run towards the end of the year seemed to contain a bit more info, and was just as jaw-droppingly stunning.]

Poker has its own page.

Police Camera Action!:
[police-footage compendium, I1]
July 2008
Police Camera Action! has an exclamation mark in the title, which is never a good sign. But this episode had people taking their driving tests again, just for a laugh, which was moderately interesting in a way. And then there's some car crashes. But at the same time, some frightening chauvinistic narration that notched up my blood pressure to "geyser": (I paraphrase:) "This woman looks the motherly type, but she's surely not on the school run at this time of night." No. That doesn't do it justice. It was worse than that, but my memory is out of room.

Popworld:
[teen pop magazine, C4/E4]
Best TV Music Show 2005, Best TV Music Show 2006, Best TV Presenter 2005 (Simon Amstell), Best TV Presenter 2006 (Simon Amstell)
September 2005
I used to watch the late night showing because it was more convenient. Until they started putting it on at 4am. Now the only repeat is on Sunday afternoon on E4. Which doesn't really suffice. So I'll probably not see as much of Popworld as I might like if it means getting up in the morning or finding out a blank tape. This is a shame, because Popworld is a good thing.
November 2005
Popworld is losing momentum. The main problem is that Simon hasn't done anything for months. Once he'd go out and put on a silly wig and shout at someone with a megaphone. Now he just sits in the studio with Miquita. Too big to do clever interviews now, are we?
A Week Later
After my criticisms of Popworld last week, Simon finally got out of bed and recorded something. But it wasn't especially brilliant. Still. It's a start, isn't it.
December 2005
We need to talk about Popworld. There was a time, back when it was on late at night, that it was really good. You'd be there, lightly under the effects of alcohol, amused at Simon's elaborate new approaches to interviewing people he obviously had little interest in. But now it's not on at night. And Simon can't be arsed to go off to a hotel and speak through a megaphone with a paper bag on his head. He's too busy doing voiceovers for car adverts. Beyond him and Miquita doing their links, the comedy value of Popworld is diminishing week by week, with only the very occasional genuinely amusing feature. It's not good enough. Especially now the truly wonderful Lauren Laverne is doing CDUK. Really really must try harder.
A couple of weeks later:
Popworld finally got itself a point. Shame it was a clip show.
[A short way into the new year, Simon and Miquita retired from Popworld in a dramatic final episode during which they met God. They were replaced by two very good looking young people who have carried on the Popworld tradition. But it's not really the same.]

Price-Drop TV:
[TV auction-house channel]
December 2005 Report
Peter Simon is reduced to presenting one of these now. The women always seem to wear pinstriped trouser-suits and the men are always exceptionally tanned. Would you buy something from these people? Then you are a fool.

Prime Ministers and the Press Barons:
[documentary, B4]
March 2008
Prime Ministers and the Press Barons suffered somewhat from the same malady as Selling the Sixties (qv) last week: industry insiders, full of their own importance, overstate their role in history. Consequently, the earlier material, and some of the more sceptical talking heads made for the more interesting content, and Andrew Neill's naval gazing could well have been left aside.

Proms on BBC4/i:
[music festival with performance notes]
August 2006
So Gergiev conducts an opera in one of this year's proms highlights. But does it get a TV simulcast? What a barmy notion. The use of the BBCi streams for Proms purposes never fails to underwhelm. They habitually waste one on an identical feed to B4 but with some teletext over the top. Which is fine if B4 is simulcasting, but last week we saw that this was not necessarily the case. Now, B4 IS simulcasting, but why has it taken so long? Why did B4 seemingly sleep through the first weeks of the proms? Oh well...

Psychoville:
[dark 'comedy' series from the Scuderia League of Gentlemen, B2]
June 2009
I ought to talk about Psychoville, the follow-up to The League of Gentlemen. It is, like the last series of that, a triumph of style over substance. A few more jokes would not go amiss. But compared to Krud Mandung (you see what I did there?) it is a work of genius.

Public Service Broadcasting:
[concept at the core of British television, BBC, ITV, 4TV, 5TV]
January 2009
This month Ofcom's report into the future of public service broadcasting came out. It consisted of two sections:
SECTION 1
Channel 4 is fucked. How can we fix it? They could merge with Five or BBC Worldwide, or we could come up with something more drastic. It'll be alright.
SECTION 2
ITV are being mardy. They're threatening to give up their PSB licences. What would we do then? We don't have a back-up plan. Therefore we must: a) come up with a backup plan for next time they try this malarkey, and b) pay them off in the interim. We shall pay them off by allowing them to all but wipe out their local news services. We'll even let them use bits of footage from the BBC. But we're not happy about it. They've got us over a barrel. But they won't have us this way for long. Because if C4 becomes great again it's entirely plausible that they could have local news, or even a third party. Likewise kids' TV. And the ITV can come and say "here, stuff your licence", and we can say "piss off, then you useless bags of shit", or words to that effect, and hopefully by then we'll've worked out a way of making it painful for them, probably through our multiplex allocations, because it'll be post Digital-Switchover and we'll have all that room to play with. It'll be great!
That's quite a flippant reduction, but you get the idea. Running throughout is a sense that the ITV is going to end up looking like Virgin1 or something, that a new super-power Channel 4 is going to be brilliant, and that the internet is going to have a much larger role in things. But at the same time, nobody seems really sure quite how, and so it's a case of waiting for somebody (i.e. the government, through regulation, to do something).

QI:
[comedy panel game, B2]
Most Improved Series 2004, Buffy Award 2005
[The first series of QI was a bit twatty. Guest line-ups were improved for series two. This is series three, I think.]
October 2005
QI returns. Alas it still has that shite theme tune. But the content was ok. Slightly ropier line-up on the second episode, but nothing the wrong side of the good/bad divide. Slightly tossier content too, but it is QI so it's hard to complain in that regard.
A Week Later
QI seems to be doing well so far this series. Quite funny and not too many (if any) twats. Shame about the music. Did I say that last week?
November 2008
Something amazing happened this week: the B2 news-alternative in Children in Need, QI, did not contain one of those dreary "and now lets take a break to see just why your money is so desperately desperately needed" VT sections. Something to celebrate, I think. And, of course, B2's tributary repeat of Father Ted was free of its "important messages" too. QI even had some creative censorship in the form of a quacking "wank" ("shit" was allowed to go unfettered to the air).
December 2009
[After an episode with five contestants: one of them uncomfortably squeezed in, seemingly at the last minute]
Not sure what was going on in QI this week. Was somebody double-booked? Was it some sort of in-joke? The odd American fellow had most of his early contributions talked over by the other contestants and seemed to give up after that. It was most curious. 

QI XL:
[45'-length extended version of comedy panel game, B2]
January 2009
Surely that should be QI VL?

Question Time '79:
[archive political debate, BP]
September 2009
To celebrate 30 years of stifled debate, Robin Day's bow-tie keeps the peace between Michael Foot, Teddy Taylor, Edna O'Brien and Archbishop Derek Worlock in a repeat of the first ever episode of the Any Questions clone.

Quiz Call:
[phone-in "quiz" channel]
September 2005
On Friday I lost an hour of my life to the Quiz Call channel. It was mesmerising. I got sucked in. There was a picture of £110 in mixed notes. And we were told, by the woman on the telly, to "count the pounds; every pound counts". I'd already come in half way through, and was staggered to hear £110 declared wrong. There must be some mistake. They've screwed up. But no... It's a stupider puzzle than this. Actually, I'm told that Watchdog have already been onto this. They had a puzzle expert baffled by similar very open-ended Quiz Call questions. Anyway... the phone-in keeps going. The prize-money is racking up. The woman seems convinced that if they offer us more, we'll get it right. But the best thing, aside from the clunky, impenetrable gameplay and the consistent inability for callers to speak when spoken to, is the long periods of dead air... After a few incorrect guesses had passed, people showed the sense to give in. No-one was calling. The presenter was getting increasingly infuriated. Every so often, the music would run out and she'd stop speaking. At one bit, for about one minute, she just stood there, silent, staring alternately at the camera and the floorman. It made for fantastic viewing. I thought she might walk off at first, but she's probably getting paid well from all those peak-rate phone-calls she sometimes gets. Let's face it, you'd be mad to call in (and most of the callers were the same four or five people, it seemed), and watching it would probably drive you sufficiently barmy after a while, but the combination of all that dead air and the infuriatingly wrong right answer was just fascinating. Consequently, I've given them a point. Genius.
December 2005 Report
Normally this would be exempt, but I was feeling generous when I gave an hour of this a point. QuizCall is a decidedly dodgy looking affair in which seemingly obvious visual puzzles turn out to be so cryptic as to be impossible. Viewers call in and give their usually wrong answers, selected for airtime at the whim of the station. Worth looking at as a studypiece or for some curious entertainment, but really a bit of a bad thing as they go. I think there's another wounded CBBC presenter in there too.
[eventually closed down but maintained as a programme strand on C5].

The Qu'ran:
[religious documentary, C4]
July 2008
A proper, lengthy, meaty and informative documentary, like they used to be. No Bristol comedians chipping in with their inane recollections of Sura An-Nisa. But as solid as it was, it wasn't perfect and, dare I say it, could maybe have been a bit tighter.

QVC:
[a home-shopping catalogue on your screen]
December 2007 Report
I would never wish the demise of QVC. It's a lovely thing. It's nice to be able to flick through the channels and graze on the image of a woman's arm in a terry-toweling smock for a few minutes while they discuss how wonderful this tat is. QVC is relaxing, life-affirming television. It's is utter tat and I would have it no other way. Long live QVC.
December 2008 Report
Bless its little cotton socks. Still purveying tat after all these years.

Random Quest:
[one-off sci-fi romance, B4]
December 2006
A reworking of Quest for Love: parallel universe romance. Firstly, a basic comparison between the two shows us that Joan Collins was a far more interesting Ottilie. But the look of the remake is somewhat more stylish and creepy. The problem comes not in the parallel universe, but on the return home, when Sam West determinedly seeks his love out, and in the space of five minutes meets and marries her without even the slightest hitch. Call me a miserable old cynic, but I think a better film would've been generated by the emphasis being on his experiences after the quantum leap rather than during it: as he desperately tries to woo his "wife" only to find that she's quite different. As it was, she wasn't quite different. She was as empty, dull and uninteresting as her alternate self., and what he saw in her is far from clear. What should've been a 90 minute drama was therefore spoilt by rushing the end and taking too long with the middle.

Red Dwarf:
[sci-fi sit-com revival, Dave]
April 2009
Red Dwarf was never very funny. Delete the "very" as necessary. But it had some half-decent ideas and some nice moments, and it almost made up for a lack of Doctor Who and Blackadder in the lives of those for whom a Venn diagram of the two existed. But it was never very funny. Blake's 7 was funnier. I mean that. That's not me being funny. Blake's 7 was genuinely more of a comedy than Red Dwarf. And when Blake's 7 went shark-jumping it would do it in style. Red Dwarf has consistently embarrassed itself since the first time it donned the water-skis in series three. And thanks to UKTV Dave, here's another opportunity for collective humiliation. Remember, if Red Dwarf were set in present-day Basingstoke it would be pulled before the end of the first series. It survived (as did Hyperdrive) because it had the novelty of being set on a space-ship. The first of the new trio of episodes maintained this high standard by being rather crap and obvious but for the fact that tentacled space-aliens were involved. It fills me with a wave of mild depression; or is that just the thought of the impending Doctor Who special? Anyway, as poor as it was, it was novelty enough to secure a generous point of my attention.

Red Riding:
[self-consciously gritty northern period cop-drama, C4]
March 2009
Red Riding is a sort of Our Friends in the West Yorkshire Constabulary by the looks of things, starring Sean Bean, Warren Clarke and David Morrissey. Because it's set in the 1970s, it's certain to be filmed in that shitty brown Guinness-ad filmstock. I don't expect it to be up to Our Friends in the North standards, or even the seedy South Yorkshire police classic Out of the Blue. But I do expect it to be a bit better than Life on Mars. All of this does rather point up the fact that Red Riding is occupying some quite well-trodden ground.

Reichenbach Falls:
[one-off supernatural crime drama, B4]
March 2007
A cheap and flicked off piece of detective fiction, but surprisingly not actually that bad. The storyline was scribbled on the back of a matchbox, and after a while everything came a little too obvious and so so; right you are. But nice touches (Richard Wilson) and a free ad for Ardbeg if nothing else. Cheap tat can entertain.

Reith Night:
[evening of docs and archive, B4]
April 2007
A reminder that B4 can do some lovely stuff. The highlight of the evening was a late '60s interview of Reith by Malcolm Muggeridge. It was held in a carefully reconstructed library complete with chiming clock. Muggeridge slouched and asked probing questions that burried deep under Reith's skin. Reith for his part sat, arms folded, facing away from both questioner and camera. Compelling television that shows we've learnt nothing new when it comes to insightful interviewing.

Repeats:
[bread and butter lies a mouldering in the cupboard, all channels]
October 2009
To celebrate the 40th anniversary of Monty Python, BBC2 puts in a usual half-hearted effort, with a new doc that may as well be a repeat of 1999 or 1994's docs, and with a showing of the worst of their films. Perhaps there are rights issues (Python DVD sales are probably still quite toasty) but BBC3 and BBC4 could easily make room for some repeat episodes. We're creating a generation that doesn't know what to expect from the Spanish Inquisition. A healthy and staple diet of repetition allowed the children of the '60s, '70s, '80s and '90s to share certain common ground of televisual experience (Trumpton was still a regular feature of children's television up to the turn of the millennium). This next generation will be culturally alienated. It's a question of commercial rights, and consequently we can blame Thatcher. As ever.

RIBA Stirling Prize:
[architectural award, C4]
October 2005
I've just noticed I missed the RIBA Stirling Prize on Saturday. I think that's the second year running I've done that. I apologise profusely, and ram forks into my eyes. Though this won't help improve my observation, it'll give me a better excuse for next year.
[I missed it again in 2006. I am blind to architecture.]
October 2008
Kevin McCloud slurps Martini from the glass domed head of Norman Foster. Herzog and de Meuron watch on in horror.

Ripping Yarns:
[classic post-python comedy series, B4]
September 2005
For reasons I'm unaware of, B4 are having a Michael Palin night. So they've dragged out that rather battered copy of The Cycling Tour from Monty Python Series 3, and an episode of Himalaya. And a Ripping Yarn about a boring boy. Not one of the most legendary ones really. It would be very nice of B4 to use this as a launch-pad for a full re-run. But they won't. The repeated episode of Ripping Yarns was ok, though nothing very special. We had a Yorkshire version of Arthur Pewtey, and the whole thing was reminiscent of those one-sketch Python episodes they had in the later series'. I liked the racing vultures and one or two other things. On the whole it was comparable to Coogan's Bluff and other such offerings. It'd be nice to see the others, BBC.
[B4 heard, and obliged, with a rerun at the start of 2006].

Robin Hood:
[family period comedy-drama series, B1]
October 2006
To say that it is flawed would be profoundly accurate. It is so flawed as to require two tins of Ronseal. That is not to say that it is shit. It clearly is not shit. It is just a bit floppy. The initial problem that the series faces is the immense weight of previous hoodery. The consensus of most Hoods in the past has been to play up the camp, and throw in plenty of stick-fighting. This series seems at first to have wanted to avoid big hair and tights, and go for something a bit grittier, but somewhere along the line, the Robin Hood bug bit everyone involved and we end up with Guy of Gisborne with floppy hair and black leather, and at least two merry men who are a bit gay. The choice of Keith Allen for Sheriff was a mistake. He plays the pantomime villain with none of the penache of Alan Rickman, and ends up looking a bit pathetic. While the diminutive Robin never really comes up with a truly watertight case for not killing said Sheriff on the six hundred or so occasions per episode that he has the opportunity. For me, there were two directions this series could've taken with some success: either go totally straight and make a serious, mud-splattered drama about the feudal predicament, with a dark and brooding Robin, or go the other way and give us a proper comedy drama series with a thigh-slapping Robin running about the five trees left in the South Yorkshire Forest. This falls between the two stools like a very drunk person at a bar. Thing is, when all is said and done, Maid Marion and her Merry Men probably sounded the death bugle for any reasonable attempt at a comic Hood, while a dark Robin would not really fit the Doctor Who slot. So in a way, this series was destined to sit in that pool of beer at the foot of the bar. It could go nowhere else. That's something they should've worked out early on in pre-production. But nonetheless, what has been produced, while lacking in anything we might call classicism, is perfectly good saturday night filler. And in these days of Strictly Come Dancing, the BBC hardly needs to worry so long as Robin is just about watchable. Which it certainly is.
November 2007
Robin Hood can be quite boring, but at least it has a delightful streak of outright silliness to stop it from getting too turgid.
May 2009
Robin Hood decided to play its joker this week by unleashing a delightfully high-camp Prince John and (Ming-the-)mercilessly killing off Keith Allen. I can't help but hope that the sheriff will regenerate in some twisted parody of the '80s series, but it seems unlikely. More typical (to the point that it broadcasts in stereo) would be for Robin and his drunken chums to have to team up with the zombie ex-sheriff in order to rid Nottingham-Loxley of its new regent. So expect that old chestnut to be roasted before the series is over.
June 2009
Robin Hood this week travels to the Hungarian metropolis of York. For a city whose medieval heritage is well documented and in many cases still standing, the CGI programmers evidently can't do castles with round walls.

Rome:
[period drama series, B2]
November 2005
I nearly switched off after ten minutes on account of some dreadful acting from Octavian, but I stuck with it. The soldiers were adequately entertaining, but the real meat of the politics was only just beginning as the episode ended. I want plenty of political intrigue, and hope that the next episode might deliver some. We shall have to wait and see. For now I reserve judgement. Rome would be better with more politics and better acting, but I'm still watching.
[As it was, I didn't continue to watch.]

Rory Bremner - Who Else?:
[repeat from the early '90s, shown on M4]
October 2007
Seeing Rory Bremner - Who Else? was interesting, not just to hear some of his less perfected voices, or to relive old favourites (Des, Ian McCaskill). The sketches were much longer then than they are now, for one thing.

Rough Science:
[problem-solving makes series, B2]
[Rough Science began as a simple concept: a group of scientists are stranded on a desert island and must systematically rebuild society. So in the first series they developed basic amenities, first aid materials, medicines, soap etc... culminating in a record player (for those desert island discs) and a radio (to listen to other stranded souls). Subsequent series toyed slightly with the format in order to find new challenges for the team. Some series worked better than others. But by the fifth series, things were beginning to get repetitive.]
October 2005
Rough Science outstays its welcome on Wednesday. It's the sixth series, and there's a new member of staff in the form of Hermione Cockburn. I don't know of any other cast changes, but it wouldn't surprise me. The sharks are circling, looking for somebody to jump them.
November 2005
I finally caught an episode of Rough Science. We have, alas, lost one of the key cast: namely Kathy Sykes. I always enjoyed that frisson of sexual chemistry between her and Jonathan. She has been replaced by a geologist (their second attempt at bringing one in) in the form of Hermione Cockburn, who we met on Adam Hart-Davis's last effort [...Ancients...]. I'd rather they'd brought in Marty [from ...Ancients...], though Hermione is adequate, and seems more a part of the team than the Scottish bloke they tried a couple of series ago. The tasks were mixed. Much of it was as stagey as ever, which is a shame. And there is an ill-advised return to video-diary -making, complete with naff graphics. Judging by their clothes, the diaries were made the next morning, and not the night they claimed to be.

The Sarah Jane Adventures are on the Doctor Who page.

Saxondale:
[Steve Coogan sit-com, B2]
June 2006
We can all agree, I am sure, that it was not wonderful. But nor was it a disaster. It was, quite simply, 'alright'. There was a glimmer of promise there that it might grow into something more than 'alright' but for now I reserve such speculative mumbles. It is perhaps unfortunate for it that the more amusing moments were also the most Partridge.

Scheduling:
[not so dark an art as Schedulers would have us believe]
February 2009
The malaise in television that makes University Challenge the best thing on at the moment is not wholly down to the broadcasters. As a consumer, encumbered by financial depression, I find I can't be arsed to waste my precious time watching the box. Part of the problem is, I think, down to the availability of programming nowadays. There is nothing new in what I am about to say, but once there was a time when a programme was on, just the once, at a particular time on one of two, three, four, five channels. You made time in your hectic life to watch it, and then you saw your friends the next day and discussed how wonderful or shit it was. It made sense to watch it at the scheduled time not just because it was the only time to watch it but also because it allowed you certain social inroads in the staff/classroom. The arrival of the video recorder meant that we could watch programmes whenever we wanted, although, if TV-industry studies are to be believed, most people who taped stuff never got round to watching it. The social function of television and the time-consuming action of VCR programming perhaps helped maintain the sanctity of the schedule. Fast-forward a few years to the multi-channel, multi-platform, Sky+ed, post-Tivo, multiplex-scheduled, repeat-ridden, iPlayered world of today. The conversational after-burn of television programming is a shadow of its former self, limited to only a handful of high-profile or cult shows which are still watched as per the old conventions. Most of what is on does not really fit into that bracket. It is stuff which your household will see but will never share the experience of seeing. Not that even your household is likely to watch as a unit; most households have at least two televisions. And so, with the vast majority of programming, it is increasingly the case that one can watch it when one can be arsed to do so, be that on a video, on a repeat broadcast (increasingly obligatory), on a hard-drive or on the internet. The programme once demanded an audience with you at a time of its specification. Now the tables are turned. The trouble is, now the programme has been demoted to a mere bothersome chore to be slotted in at whenever is least inconvenient, it loses its import. Just as with the video, we fall into a trap of never getting round to watching that which no longer demands our immediate attention. So for instance, I thought to myself this week "shall I watch that Jeremy Paxman thing about Victorian art? [The Victorians]" and the programme came and went without me watching, and I thought "shall I watch it on the iPlayer?" yet still I haven't. This is not in itself a tragic state of affairs. In fact it's quite a positive thing, purging the system of television that, when put into the grand scheme of things in your life, fails to measure up. The reason you don't get round to watching a programme is because you feel you have better things to do (even if sometimes you don't really). Ok, the Paxman thing might actually have been really good, and I will have missed out on something I might actually have appreciated; but in most cases the stuff you never get round to watching tends to fall to the wayside for a reason. However... having accepted the repeat / iPlayer culture, I'm starting to get lax about stuff I do genuinely want to see or hear. This week, for instance, I forgot to download the podcast of In Our Time, which is terribly inconvenient as I will now have to stream it from the archive. At least IOT has an archive. It's a rare programme in that respect. I also forgot the first showing of The New Avengers, which does not have a programme archive but does, at least, have a repeat (albeit a late night one). I intend to tape this repeat but will I? Has the transient nature of modern viewing infected me to such an extent that I will let an episode of IOT or The Avengers slip by? It wouldn't be the first time this year that I'd missed an Avenging. I've fallen into a complacency which has mutated into just plain lazy forgetfulness and apathy. Much as it pains me to say it of something I love, the iPlayer is killing television. Of course, it's only television. It's about time it had a damn good kicking.
May 2009
On the subject of curious scheduling, viewers may experience a sense of déjà vu this Sunday on C4, when they show the uninspiring Ben Stiller film Night at the Museum for the second week running. I hope they're getting paid a small fortune by the distributors of Night at the Museum 2 for this painful ransoming of prime-time. Never mind politicians, it's time we had a thorough overhaul of TV schedulers. But now I'm sounding like that bloke down the pub. I blame the heat.
September 2009
In a curious bit of scheduling, James Cameron's Titanic completes a tour of three different channels in the course of a week and a half this Wednesday. Last week in was on Channel 5 and Fiver, presumably because it'd fallen down the back of the settee at 5TV and they only remembered it just days before the contract was over. This week it moves to Film4, which should keep their schedules full for a few months.
October 2009
Marr steps back another 50 years to concentrate on the first half of the 20th Century in Andrew Marr's the Making of Modern Britain. Bizarrely, the BBC scheduled this against part of BBC4's inter-war history strand, but that pales into insignificance considering Tuesday night when BBC1 and C4 go to war with rival documentaries on skin-bleaching (Make Me White, B1, 2235-2315, v Bleach, Nip, Tuck: the White Beauty Myth, C4, 2200-2305).
December 2009
In another master-stroke of scheduling genius, the BBC runs an Alan Bennett season in the same week as the UK snooker championship. George Dixon, head of scheduling, go and ask your great aunt why this is a mistake. "My focus is on making sure BBC1 to 4 offer something for different audiences at any given time" (RT, 05/12/09, p153). When he's talked to his great aunt he should look back over recent weeks at what he put on BBC4 when Andrew Marr was doing his early 20th century history show on BBC2. If he finds the answer to be "early 20th century history" he should go back to his great aunt and observe, shame-faced, how she has to miss the first ten minutes of A Chip in the Sugar on Sunday because Songs of Praise hasn't finished yet.

Science Fiction Britannia Season:
[season about British sci-fi television; B4]
November 2006
So, BBC4 has a sci-fi season. What does it consist of? Well so far, a familiar Doctor Who episode, a lone episode of the too daft to repeat seriously Adam Adamant, and the start of a welcome re-run of Triffids. Oh, and a fairly obvious documentary with the usual suspects popping up. The trailers promise Blake's 7, but I fear this is likely to fall in the "Cult" bracket of one-off eps. A shame. Oh, they've also brought out their recent remakes of Andromeda and Quatermass, but they're rubbish and best avoided. No sign of any post-Kneale slew yet. They needn't think that this'll do.
[The season showed Triffids, two short serials of Who, an episode of Adamant, an episode of Doomwatch and the remakes of Andromeda and Quatermass. Plus some docs, a couple of Star Treks and the Random Quest thing. This was not up to standard. The very least they could've done is support every episode of the "Cult" docs with an episode of that week's subject. What we should've got is a proper Kneale season (the very least they could've mustered given he'd died the week before) and some solid repetition of key classics. I'm not suggesting a total rerun of Blake's 7 (though it'd be nice) but something more than the dregs we got. This is not what BBC4 is for. If you're having a season, it should be laden with archival material. It never does to have a doc about a subject without giving us some of the subject, despite what B2 theme nights might think.]

Scooby Doo:
[US import animated children's comedy-horror revamp, I1]
October 2005
I just saw a bit of the new Scooby Doo... No Scrappy (hurrah) but strange things have happened to the girls. Velma is thin and Daphne is not as attractive somehow - badly drawn face for one. I can just about get over Daphne not looking as good, but making Velma thin is just wrong.

Scrapheap Challenge:
[mechanical game-show, C4]
August 2009
A new series of Scrapheap Challenge starts on Sunday. I know, I know... why? But this series is different: there's no scrapheap and it's presented by Dick Stawbridge. Still, they'll not be making anything new, which is the biggest problem the programme has.

The Sculpture Diaries:
[arts doc, C4]
September 2008
Arts programming, eh? What's that all about? So might ask Matt Collings and Tim Marlow respectively. Alas, they are out of the office at the moment, so we'll have to make do with Waldemar Januszczak nosing around some lumps of marble. Make the most of it.
Januszczak scores 30 in Scrabble, excluding premiums and 7-letter bonuses.
The Sculpture Diaries finished on a high (or maybe I was just paying more attention) with a look at the thrill of the large, and all things land-art.

Selling the Sixties:
[advertising documentary, cashing in on Mad Men, B4]
March 2008
Maybe its because we've been spoilt lately by the likes of Meades and Attenborough, but Selling the Sixties really annoyed me. Ok, I accept that, as far as TV advertising is concerned, fifties America was of massive importance. But this rather blinkered doc seemed to credit New York moguls with everything (without really providing any evidence that they deserved our praise). It was very much a case of swallowing your own hype, which is something advertisers are very good at, so perhaps it was entirely appropriate here. Another peddler of a received wisdom which is somewhat questionable. Consider the examples we were given of New York ad-men's print-advertising genius (the Volkswagen Beetle campaign, and its followers): while perhaps wildly innovative in the US market, this sort of thing was pretty much old hat on these shores (and no-doubt others; maybe even the US -- it wouldn't surprise me). The '40s magazines this website usually steals its cover-art from are full of slightly barmy, oblique and off-the-wall approaches. Print advertising, after all, was already a good few hundred years old by WWII, so it was already, necessarily, well evolved. Furthermore, the list of adverts they connected to the assassination of JFK was entirely fatuous: One could apply the same technique to the assassination of Lincoln; no doubt his hat was advertised somewhere along the line. And that beard... I bet there was a poster in a barbers for that too... And he was in a theatre, for Gods' sake... theatres are one of the greatest print advertisers in the historical record. Annoying, as I say... 

Self Portraits: The Me Generation:
[art documentary mini-series, C4]
Best TV Presenter 2003 (Matthew Collings)
[Matt Collings gave us a few brief series on art, and managed an AView award in 2003. Two years later, he returned with a new doc.]
September 2005
Hi. Welcome back. Self portraits. Now there's a funny thing. And in such a manner, the hedgehog of art, Matthew Collings, will deliver some thoughts and images on the subject. So that'll be nice. It's a three parter. Fantastic stuff. Nearly got a three for his use of the technical term "green arses" in conjunction with a renaissance church mural, but Saturday was a week ago, so I'll have to hedge my bets slightly and give it 2pts instead. Still, great stuff.

Shakespeare Retold:
[run of one-off dramas based on Shakespeare plays, B1]
November 2005
Having done Chaucer with mixed success, B1 moves onto the storylines of Shakespeare. Sarah Parish, late of Blackpool stars as a local news anchor in this adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing,, and the slot is curiously up against Broken News (though after half an hour of that last week, I'm sure we could all cope with missing another). Expect something along the same lines as the Chaucer series, ie. nothing amazing, but usually watchable. It would've been an ideal opportunity for B4 to put on some low-budget dramatisation of the Shakespeare itself, but all we get is a repeat of Richard II and a modern re-telling of Othello (not the ITV one, an American film). Oh well.
James "out of quite a lot of pretty decent stuff" McAvoy stars in this modernisation of Macbeth. Tarot cards and mobsters would be my approach, but perhaps that would be too obvious. Instead we have bin-men foretelling a chef's destiny. Will it be any good? It could fall either way. We shall have to watch and see.
Taming of the Shrew was a curious choice for reworking. Not least on account of the much shown Hollywood reworking: Ten Things I Hate About You. It's a difficult story to rework on the grounds that gender politics have changed somewhat in the intervening centuries. Ten Things got around this by setting events in the still somewhat backward world of the American High School: all jocks, cheer-leaders and prom-night pairing-off. The BBC version stretched reality to breaking point, and tried to play on this as a virtue. I'm not really sure it succeeded. They'd've been much better off having a go at something else... something comparatively untouched. Anthony and Cleopatra might've been fun. Oh well.

Shepperton Babylon:
[documentary on '30s British cinema, B4]
August 2005
Shepperton Babylon was an interesting experience, not least for being narrated by Charles Higson doing a Kenny Everett impression. Still, it had some interesting stories to tell, albeit on the sensationalist side of things, and proved a passable insight into the '30s celeb-set if nothing else.

Shooting Stars:
[comedy celebrity panel game-show, B2]
August 2009
It's easy to feel trepidness in the face of a new series of the once brilliant Shooting Stars. Fortunately, the RT's Alison Graham has given it a bad review, so we can rest safe in the knowledge that all will be fine.
[After the first episode:]
I thought Shooting Stars was adequately good.
[The second episode was not adequately good, and I came to the conclusion that what was needed was to...]]
Add alcohol to taste.
[I was wrong.]
September 2009
Yet more disappointment.
Shooting Stars failed entirely to make me laugh (it didn't help that it followed Meades: a far superior comedian to Messrs R&M these days).
October 2009
The repeat of the Shooting Stars Christmas Special proved that the Shooting Stars Christmas Special was funny. Shame the new series wasn't.

The Simpsons:
[US import animated sit-com, C4]
Most Improved Series 2003, Best Animated Comedy Series 2004, Most Disappointing Return Series 2006
[A classic, much abused through endless repetition. C4 poached it off B2 in 2004.]
August 2006
I watched a couple of old Simpsons episodes today - a couple that I remember really liking. And I was not especially shocked when I noticed that they weren't really exciting me in the way they once did. In these post- Family Guy days, The Simpsons needs to do a great deal to revive my interest in it. And what with the endless repeats, and the adverts, it's an uphill struggle. Titles like "The Parent Rap" hardly do anything to encourage me, but all that said, we should all do our bit and tune in... if not for The Simpsons, then for C4 itself, lest it go the way of ITV...
The Simpsons returned adequately and not unpleasantly. It's not Family Guy though... The usurper benefits from a healthy cartoon disdain for natural laws, which The Simpsons always feels compelled to stick to, unless it's a Halloween special, in which case it goes too far the other way. There is a happy medium inhabited by Peter Griffin, in which it is ok for people to be decapitated once in a while, so long as there's a talking dog to see us through it. The Simpsons should be the Homer show, and all too often isn't. And that's another thing where Family Guy has the upper hand. Like Watt's steam engine and Marconi's television system, Family Guy shows the merits of innovation. To paraphrase Tracy Emin, The Simpsons is stuck. Stuck stuck stuck. But at least it's stuck in a nice toffee goo... mmmm... toffee goo...
November 2006
The Simpsons has just got incredibly lazy. Homer being a bit crazy is not sufficient. The Simpsons has always had to overcome three obstacles: Marge, Lisa and Bart, but now, increasingly, Homer is not coming up to scratch. I no-longer like the Simpsons. It has gone rubbish.

Sky 3:
[digital detritus channel, formerly Sky Travel]
December 2005 Report
For most of the year, this was Sky Travel, and it still looks like Sky Travel whenever I flick to it. I never really watched Sky Travel, but I have seen good things on it: repeats of Rough Guide and Floyd, and I'm pretty sure that thing with Ewan McGregor and his mate on motorbikes got there in the end. Still, travel isn't really much of an interest to me. Now it is apparently Sky 3, but I still see Floyd and Airline. But later it gets barrel-scraping import dramas too. I've not watched.
December 2006 Report
I keep an eye on the Sky 3 listings in case they decide to show something good. But so far they haven't really. They've made moves in that direction: Futurama, and Long Way Round spring to mind. But it hardly seems worth bothering. In this respect, Sky 3 is the gatekeeper to those digital channels we've not quite grown to accept as part of the furniture.
December 2007 Report
Sky Three is not much cop. It's a mess of airport docs and sub-standard US imports. It's not an especially nice place to visit. And it smells of Rupert.
December 2008 Report
Futurama was always a bit of a disappointment, and it remains the stand-out item in S3's menu of repetition. But soon Sky 3 will reposition itself, to become more "female orientated". What does that mean? Apparently it means entertainment shows and dramas. So a lot like all the other channels out there in the digital jungle.

Smoking Room:
[sit-com, B3/2]
August 2005
Smoking Room was of note if only for the glimpse of (somewhat pathos) backstory. As a sentimentalist I enjoyed it, though as a realist, I worry if this is perhaps a signpost towards the beginning of the end.
[The programme came to a near indisputable end after two perfectly acceptable series.]

Snooker:
[the defining game of 4:3 colour television, now taking to digital; B1/2/i]
Best Use of BBCi Channels 2004, Best Use of BBCi Channels 2006
April 2005
The snooker took a surreal turn mid-week, with Ebdon playing in slow-motion and o'Sullivan tearing off his forehead. Also nice to see o'Sullivan having a quick fag in the post match interview. I'm hoping for Murphy v McCulloch in the final, with Murphy winning. So that's doomed.
[Murphy did win. But I think he played Ebdon or somebody. Anyway; that's not the point. Snooker is brilliant for Bi. It's not as suited to widescreen as it is 4:3, but that's a minor issue which it can safely disregard. Recent seasons have been a bit dull with the Dott ascendancy and o'Sulivan going increasingly weird. But when it is good, Snooker is great.
January 2009
The biggest piece of broadcasting idiocy this month comes courtesy of BBC Sport, who have decided to all but sack their only competent snooker commentator. Why? Well he's old and he's never been a professional snooker-player. The ex-pros in the commentary box tend to spend their time saying: "oh I wouldn't have played that shot, not in a million years". Of course you wouldn't, Willie, that's why you never won owt. They're terribly infuriating, always droning on about "our day", and all their snooker mates: "look, there's so-and-so in the audience". Clive was brilliant because he feigned a certain detachment from all that; and he knew how to keep quiet, too, which helps. Above all, Clive's got a sense of humour, and a good one at that. He's the cheekiest of the regular commentators and by far the least annoying. But he was banned from the Masters and will only be covering the early stages of the World Championship. Apparently his style is too "traditional" and not "chatty and informal" enough (excuse me while I punch something). His removal is an attempt to make snooker more accessible and groovy-like to the kids, bitchin'. Well it's not like we can see him, being all old and stuff. We just hear him, occasionally, expressing competent opinion on shots and play. Which is a damn-site more inviting than hearing a whining ex-player jabbering on about how it was different in their day, oh I don't know, these young 'uns etc. Thorne and Virgo sound far "older" than Everton does, and are far more annoying. Oh, I was livid when I found out. I'm still seething somewhat. The idiocy of it. This is a man who's gained a reputation as something of a rebel against the governing body; he edits a magazine that is often critical of the way the sport is run. He's like an older, fatter, print-based Ronnie, with less mood-swings and an aversion to jogging. He should be a role model. Or do BBC Sport want its young viewers to become moaning, suicidal, gambling addicts who hang around with dodgy right-wing comedians and question shot selection at every opportunity? On the plus-side, it allows Steve Davis into the booth, which is always good fun. But there again it's still another crusty old snooker-player in the eyes of this questionably existent potential youth audience. Fact is that the kids aren't watching snooker not because there is an old man in the commentary box but cos they're playing "Super Death-Smack Snooker" on the Playstation, or out under-age drinking down the snooker club. Or because the idea of watching two men in evening dress pushing coloured balls around a table with sticks seems a bit silly to them. A change in commentary team is not the solution, and will only serve to drive away the audience you already have. Because I'm getting to the stage now whereby if it's Willie and Virgo in the box I'm not sure if I can be bothered watching. It'd have to be Steve Davis v Mark Williams or something. If it's Carter v King, I've got better things to do with my heart. Don't get me wrong, they may be very nice people, but they're not nice commentators and they wind me up something chronic. Like the fucking dickhead that demoted Everton. Philip Bernie seems to be his name. Well thanks, Philip. I think we can duly crown you the Saviour of Snooker. Excuse me while I take my blood-pressure.
April 2009
As I type, O'Sullivan is out of the Snooker. I didn't see him play at all. Nor did I see Williams. I've really seen bugger all in fact so far. Either I've been out in the real world or I've been in my office here where the telly has only five channels. Anyway, all this means I've probably also missed Clive Everton. But it also means that so far I've not had to hear Willie Thorn. So swings and slides there.
December 2009
The first championship of the post-302 era. We are witnessing the death throes of television as a broadcasting medium.

Spiral:
[French import conspiracy drama series, B4]
June 2006
I nearly turned off Spiral after the first twenty minutes, but I persevered. By the end it had started to get a bit interesting, but it's no State of Play, and perhaps the most interesting thing is the mechanism of French Law itself. The script seems fairly limp and unoriginal in comparison.

Springwatch:
[gritty wildlife voyeurism, B2]
June 2007
Springwatch this year is going head-to-head with Big Brother. Forget racism... this has sibling canibalism which is far more entertaining/unpleasant. Badgers are fun. Owls are mad. Educational, even if the best bits are all repeats from the weekend.
May 2008
A glorious concept that puts girl-next-door Kate Humble in a wired-up barn for a month with a lascivious manic-depressive, filming what happens in night-vision. But so far, I've not seen a single badger. So that's no good.
June 2008
Springwatch is still woefully short of badger action. I've had more than my fill of scraggly chicks this week. Give me more mammals. Pine martens will do, but they're no badgers. Bill Oddie is not an acceptable replacement.
More slightly edgy presentation of birds killing their babies.
May 2009
Bill Oddie has regenerated into Chris Packham, which kind of makes me wonder if there is any point in watching. The thing always had a sort of Network style frisson with Oddie there, as if he might suddenly... well... put some tits in his mouth or something.
It's tradition (well, a tradition established last year) that I moan about Springwatch; not about the programme itself, but about us not being treated (as we were so memorably and enjoyably two years ago) to late-night streams of the various animals doing their things. It was really good when they did that. Why aren't they doing that? What's wrong with them? What else are they going to show at that time of night? The Wire?
June 2009
Funnier than all the billed 'comedy' of this week were the team from Springwatch, especially on their red-button extra-time slot, which sadly I discovered far too late in the day.

Stanley Kubrick's Boxes:
[Jon Ronson documentary, C4]
September 2008
Stanley Kubrick's Boxes, another showing for an increasingly apparent Jon Ronson, was a bit loose, and not really as insightful as it might've been. Ronson's Guardian article on the subject was far superior. I think I'd've liked the programme to have been far more organized and compartmentalized, just like the boxes themselves. It wasn't anal enough.

Star Trek:
[US import sci-fi series, B2/4]
December 2006
The Trek is currently being repeated on BBC2 of a weekend, but also strayed to BBC4 this week, for a laugh. Most of the time Star Trek was painfully earnest, and aside from the high camp, rather dreary. But occasionally it would let its hair down, like Shore Leave the other week, and Mirror Mirror this week. DS9 was also quite good at taking the piss out of itself. TNG less so, as seen in the BBC4 selection this week.

Stephen Fry in America:
[travelogue, B1]
October 2008
It's time we were all thoroughly fed up of Stephen Fry, and what better way to achieve this than through a travelogue from the makers of the Palin films. Still, it can be no worse than watching Paul Merton embarrassing himself in the east for C5.
Speaking of indecent cliché, we come to Stephen Fry in America. We look at it. We think... surely all this has been done now? What were we injecting Michael Palin for for all those years if he wasn't going round the globe making gentle English chat with crazy foreigners for our delectation? Palin was always more at home being cut-throat shaved by an Arab with a love for Tottenham Hotspur than discussing with a blotchy, becapped and beshorted citizen of the Eastern Seaboard the finer points of crab-fishing, say, which is why we also employed sundry other travelogue manufacturers from Robbie Coltraine all the way round the gamut of taste and decency to Louis Theroux. Popping Fry on a jumbo and hiring him a black cab at the other side for a fully paid jaunt across North America seems rather a lot like an indulgent waste of money for something we already have tins of in the cupboard. A more original twist might've been to have Hugh Laurie going with him. They might then at least have made the odd joke with each other, which would be more entertaining than watching a portly gent stuffing himself with novelty ice-cream. Unfortunately, for some reason, TV travelogue makers are still working from a textbook published in 1990 that heralded last year's Around the World in 80 Days to be the greatest work of tourism documentary ever spliced together. It infects so much documentary now (consider Cruikshank or Gavin Stamp) which wouldn't be so bad if it were really any good. But with its meticulously planned itinerary and obligatory mock-transit footage it all seems increasingly false in an era when TV companies aren't even allowed to fake phone-in competitions.

Stephen Fry Weekend:
[a weekend of Fry-related programming on B4]
August 2007
Turning on BBC4, what do I find? A series of Bergman or Antonioni films, perhaps [they had just died]? No. Rather it appears that Stephen Fry has died. As it happens, it turns out that he is not dead; merely he has been upon this twittering little planet for some two score years and ten. And this is worthy of some talking heads praising him from every direction. The only up-side of the evening is that we get to see an episode of A Bit of Fry and Laurie. I have given this episode two points, not because it deserved it but simply for old time's sake. It was not brilliant, but it was funny enough. It served as a reminder that, as recently as 15 years ago, the sketch show was of rude health. Blah blah blah Enfield blah Fast Show blah blah Little Britain despair Catherine Tate. Although there is another route, via Fist of Fun, Big Train and Jam, but that one seems to have hit a dead end. Hence the year zero that is Mitchell & Webb.

Steptoe & Son:
[kitchen-sink sit-com, repeated on B4]
March 2008
Thursday's episode was a fairly standard sit-com set-piece that could've been from anything, and on many occasions has been. But it was done very well. The other two eps were much more Steptoe-y, and all the grittier for it. The site of Harold breaking down at the end of the pilot, as he realises that he is trapped and will never leave, cannot fail to bring a lump to the throat, while the manipulative machinations of Albert in the second episode, culminating in the final shot of Harold staring out of the window in deep revery for all he has lost as a result of his succumbing to them, were profoundly reminiscent of Pinter. Brilliant stuff, really, helping us to the best week of television so far this year.
This weeks' Steptoe and Sons didn't quite live up to the grim desperation of last week's. The only movement that came close was with Harold's frustration at being unable to assemble a television, but this was promptly diffused by the comic device of Albert coming in and doing it for him. It would be nice to see some more Steptoes, but alas B4 have already got bored of it.

Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle:
[stand-up comedy with occasional sketches, B2]
March 2009
Once upon a time there were Lee & Herring, and they were a very good thing, not least because they were on in a bizarre Sunday lunchtime slot. Then they parted and went their separate ways: Herring to do more of the same but on Radio 2, and Lee to write a shit "opera" without any tunes, and rather short on jokes. For this experiment in tosser-bating, Lee has been rewarded with his very own stand-up show. I've seen Stewart Lee doing stand-up before. It was rubbish. It was like all the aggressive bits of Lee & Herring without the fat, stupid bits to tie it down and balance it out. Still, there we go...
[one episode later:]
Well that was a pleasant surprise: Stewart Lee was actually some cop.

The Story of India:
[Michael Wood history doc series; B2]
August 2007
The Story of India is just the latest in a good spree of documentaries on BBC2.

The Story of Maths:
[documentary, B4]
October 2008
I'm often caught bemoaning the death of the intelligent documentary; screaming about dumbing down and that sort of thing. Which makes my criticisms about The Story of Maths a little two faced (though not altogether so). As a history of maths, I hoped for something a little more plodding: an introduction to basic concepts, and detailed explanation of how these developed. To an extent this doc provided that, but it did so at a furious pace. Marcus du Sautoy is a decent presenter but he gets a bit carried away, and was using certain bits of jargon ("pi" for instance) before he'd got to anything approaching an explanation of such terms. Which is not a terrible sin; I know something of pi; but in such a format it seems a little clumsy. This is of lesser concern than that of the pacing of the programme. The fact is he has a lot to get through. But this gives me no time to think. It is good that I watched this on the iPlayer, because I had to rewind and rewatch the explanation of quadratics four times before I was with him and able to move on. This was partly my lack of mathematical skill but more his telling which was so skeletal and hurried as to be useless at conveying the information in one passing. He probably hoped that the whizzy computer effects (which placed him in a CGI hot air balloon, or riding atop a pyramid) would flesh out his narration, but they seemed attached to his words only by the finest gossamer strands. Much more educational would've been to have him stood in front of a magnetic whiteboard, with some stick-on equations and a kipper tie. They'd've been better off saving the graphics money and plugging it into making an extra episode or two to buy the viewer a little more thinking time. In this respect, the dumbing down is not in content so much as in presentation. If a demonstration does not fly through the air on the back of a computer, then it is unworthy. The fact that Adam Hart-Davis established himself as the face of BBC science with only a pink bicycle and some LEGO by way of visual aids is something to be safely parted from our pretty little heads. But perhaps the problem is me: perhaps what I really want is Johnny Ball's The Story of Maths. Yet if this is not supposed to be that; if it's not meant to be a layman's history of mathematics, then it is falling short rather than far. Anyway, after four views, quadratics suddenly became clear to me. It was like the time I saw the Open University programme on trigonometry and thought "If only they'd explained it to me like that at school". Indeed, if only we still had Open University.

The Story of 1:
[one-off documentary with Terry Jones; B1]
October 2005
The Story of 1 was by no means bad for a B1 doc. Genuinely informative, as well as amusing in the Johnny Ball tradition. The graphics were unnecessary but only used for gentle laughs on the whole, and were largely unobtrusive. Terry Jones often suffers from Discovery Channel syndrome; a certain indefinable sub-standard quality that I can never quite put my finger on. But I felt no such trembles here. It was a well made and informative bit of telly, and it was nice to see such things on BBC1. I wonder how many made the journey to the sister programme on BBC4 (Music of the Primes). Probably about two.

Strictly Come Dancing:
[light-ents celebrity dance contest, B1]
November 2008
Shock gripped the BBC again this week, tearing a hole in the economic crisis (and the Top Gear repeat on BBC2) to give news that John Major's less successful namesake [John Sergeant] had given up his dancing lessons. In many respects this was a resignation born of self-import: Sergeant would not've been the first joke entry to the Strictly Come Dancing final, and the more better dancers got knocked out, the more their voters would gang up against Sergeant to prevent him from winning. Clearly, though, the press were getting silly this time, and from the minute Mandelson got involved, Sergeant was on borrowed time one way or another. What has been most interesting about this whole farrago has been the way mention of Sergeant's name has altogether disappeared on It Takes Two since Wednesday's hour-long resignation special. And even that's not very interesting.
September 2009
Much has already been written about Strictly Come Dancing. All I shall tug upon is this: apart from Tuffers and Lynda Bellingham, there seems very little to care about. Yes, there's an assortment of sports persons (the most famous of which is already out of the contest, and even the obligatory news-reader is from the sports desk) but beyond that lies merely a sea of soap stars (oh, and Jo Wood, whose fame, I am led to believe, comes from having been married to a member of The Faces). It just seems a little under-whelming. I know it's never been exactly star-studded, even in the past, but there's a sense that they're scraping the barrel even more than before. That some of the more interesting professionals are no-longer on the floor doesn't help, and that's before we've even skirted anywhere near the judging problem. But things will bed in soon enough, and it'll be interesting to see what gets tinkered with as we go along. Nonetheless, there's a definite sense that this dog can't walk as far as it used to, and there's a funny smell coming from the back of the settee (insert Bruce joke here). Also, I'm very concerned that everyone seems to be doing the tango in the first week. What a waste.

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip:
[US comedy drama series; M4]
July 2007
Studio 60 opened well, but niffs a little of wish-fulfillment. We will have to wait and see if it holds together with any reasonable conviction.
August 2007
I can see that Studio 60 will soon become unstuck by the fatal flaw at the heart of its concept: they're supposed to be making this wonderful satirical comedy show and yet what comes out looks like the sort of thing TW3 would've rejected as tame. It makes The Daily Show look dangerously vicious.
[a week later...]
Studio 60 remains the most problematic of current programming. If Scrubs on E4 had been a slightly longer programme, I would've jumped ship to that in the second ad-break and that would've been an end to it, because half way through this week's episode, Studio 60 was about dead to me. There were two key strands to this episode that failed to grab me: firstly, we had to feel that an audience approval rating of 50% for "patriotism" had any bearing on anybody or anything. Indeed, to my eyes, a satirical programme that is viewed as patriotic by 50% of the audience is socring 50% too high in that regard (not too low, as Matthew Perry clearly felt). Which brings us to the second problem: the sketches are meant to be brilliant -- that's the whole point of the thing: they've hired these two wonderful writers and turned the show around overnight. But for me it is proving a suspension of belief too far. Because the sketches are little short of dreadful. They make a student revue look funny. However, the excellent characterisation stepped in just in time to save things from extinction. But Studio 60 is on borrowed time.

A Tale of Two Britains:
[one-off historical documentary, B4]
October 2009
A Tale of Two Britains had the whiff of the current BBC4 boss, Richard Klein, all over it: "look", it said, "the '30s wasn't all factories and back-to-backs: there were middle-class people in detached housing they'd been able to buy for themselves and it was all wonderfully British and everyone voted Tory and lived happily ever after". There is nothing controversial in the basic premise that not everyone in the inter-war period was on the bread-line and marching to Jarrow: the problem with the programme was not in its concept but in its delivery. I had to leave before the end, and it may well have redeemed itself in the twenty minutes I didn't see, but I doubt it. I found it a rather repugnant piece of 'documentary'. But then I'm an old lefty...

Tales of the Unexpected:
[turn of the '80s series of one-off dramas; I3]
June 2006
ITV3 remember what they're for, and pop out a double bill of Tales. Turn the coal-effect up to eight and get nude. Anything with Brian Blessed indulging in a massive joint has to be appealing.
August 2006
I noticed the other day that I3 seems to have ditched those NEXT banners that come up to annoy you at the most dramatic points of programmes [they later came back, if they'd gone at all]. Congratulations I3. I3 (or Granada Gold, as we might once have called it) continues to demonstrate the sort of programming that ITV feels it can no-longer afford: it recently slashed its drama budget in a last desperate scrimp for much-needed readies. Tales is not an expensive programme, and its inherent shitness is an integral part of the ride, but it was popular enough to run for a decade in a high-premium slot. Nowadays, this sort of thing is considered Cult, and would be lucky to reach C4 if made today. ITV cannot afford experimentation. In fact, increasingly, all it can afford is cheap late-night phone-in competitions. Let us hope it can generate enough cash from that to revive itself to former glories.
September 2006
A Clockwork Orange is on F4 tonight, but how many times have we seen that already? So sit back in your fireside armchair and enjoy another pair of Tales. Why not pour yourself a brandy? Unless you're a recovering alcoholic. After a couple of weeks below par, Tales recovered somewhat last week with a pretty good pair of stories. So that's good. In the second, a girl was abducted. In the first, there was rain-based chaos.
November 2006
I tried to stay with Tales of the Unexpected all the way through. But most of the post-Dahl episodes have been a bit crap. I've still got last Friday's on tape, and didn't bother with this Friday's. As for Tuesday's episode, it made me spit. It was really annoying. The usual WPC used as rape-bait bollocks, with a twist glued on then end that only served to damage my arteries as I turned off the TV in a bad-writing induced rage. Turns out the one she was baiting wasn't the one the detective was after at all... he knew all along that it was the park keeper, who just happened to decide that a locked park crawling with police would be the best time to attack a woman he knew was playing bait. Obviously. I hope all involved were beaten around the thighs with badly stapled scripts on sharp paper.

Ten Years Younger:
[make-over show, C4]
July 2008
C4's extreme makeover programme. It spent 45 mins doing lots of needless surgery and wardrobe tweaks before finally getting around to sorting out the only thing that was really needed: a decent do on that greasy lank she called hair. A waste of everyone's time and effort. What I call the Horizon effect (after those episodes of Horizon that promise some great revelation for 45 minutes without telling you anything, then cram in the stuff you're here for at the last moment).

That Mitchell & Webb Look:
[comedy sketch series, B2]
September 2006
It was already clear beforehand that the majority of sketches in Mitchell & Webb were going to be recycled from the wireless. But that's not really a terrible thing in the grand scheme of International Crime. What is more, most of the gags were up to scratch, and some ("...blacking up, again", for instance) were beyond scratch. Sketch comedy has had a bit of mixed history in recent years, and seems to have diverged along three paths: catchphrase, arthouse and conventional (four paths if we consider political satire, but we're not). Catchphrase sketchery includes such acts as Dick Emery, the Fast Show, Catherine Tate and Little Britain, but probably reached the peak of its powers with This Morning With Richard Not Judy. That said, the latter also had more than a smidgen of the arthouse class, in which I include the likes of Jam, Noble & Silver, and the first series of Big Train. I also include Monty Python in this set, but again there is overlap to be had, this time with the conventional set: This category is that inwhich most sketch shows fall, from the Two Ronnies, through to Smack the Pony and all its substandard rip-offs that have dominated the late night schedules of several minor channels in recent years. Mitchell & Webb seem to sit pretty squarely in this latter category, and in so doing they are the best conventional sketch show since Smack the Pony. Whether that's something they'd want to put on a poster, I'm not sure. I am sure that they are the best comedy double act since Noble & Silver were abducted by aliens, but again, I'm not sure that's really saying anything. Noble & Silver were really very good. Mitchell & Webb are not on that level; they're not even in the same box.

The Thick of It:
[political sit-com, B4/2]
May 2005
New series starring Chris Langham as an MP. Langham's career path has been interesting. Gone now are the wilderness years of advertising Crispy Pancakes. He's been offered a second chance and is doing rather well with it. The first episode is meant to not be as good as the second will be, so bear that in mind.
October 2005
The new series of The Thick of It was more stressful and unpleasant than the last, which is a good thing.
January 2006
The political comedy series finally makes it to real telly. Originally shown in two blocks of three episodes on B4, of which the second run was the better. Here it is being shown as a single series of six episodes. This is the first. It improves.
[Chris Langham's career has since taken another nose-dive, and he was absent from an entertainingly adequate New Year special in 2007.]
October 2009
Television is back, hurrah! We start with Iannucci's toy which has transferred well and truly to BBC2 for the Rebecca Fronted new series.
The Thick of It returned with the added dynamic twist-of-lemon of a minister less afraid of Malcolm Tucker than her predecessor. I hope it keeps it up.
November 2009
Really very good indeed. Imagine some tossy crap about characterization and depth tempered with a comment about it also being very funny.

This is Civilisation:
[arts doc series, C4]
November 2007
Television suddenly feels a friendlier happier place with the return of Matthew Collings. ...Civilisation wasn't quite as luscious as Kenneth Clark's grand tour; it was not the sweeping and spectacular cultural feast because that is not Collings' style. His is a conversation (with occasional bad live-sound recording), and we would want it no other way. The first episode crammed into one hour (minus ads) what Andrew Graham-Dixon's The Art of Eternity had the luxury of three hours (minus trailers) to do. The two covered almost exactly the same ground, only Graham-Dixon had time to delve deeper and immerse himself more into the works. He even had more time to make flippant Collingsesque remarks than Collings did. So in that regard, Civ2 is on the back foot: Collings has only been given three and a half hours to play with wheras Clark's original had over ten. Type something here about the demise of television programming, and move on.
December 2007
Civilisation was a bit better this week, with Matt back on form and some half-decent subject matter to get into. But it still doesn't quite match my expectations. It is a performance reminiscent of Jonathan Meades' Abroad Again in Britain last year.

3-D Week:
[strand of anaglyphic viewing on C4]
November 2009
I thought I had some red/cyan glasses in the drawers somewhere, but all that came out were red/green. Still, they give a passable impression once your eyes make the necessary adaptation. Unfortunately, Channel 4 failed to make any programming that made any worthwhile use of my 3-D glasses. Derren Brown introduced a compendium of clips, the most exciting 3-D effects of which were to be found in sweeping tracks around the audience. The actual tricks on display were all rather dull and familiar and I turned off half-way through, but I gave it a point for novelty. I did not give a point to The Greatest Ever 3-D Moments which was like stepping ten years back in time to the days when they did those chart shows with inane talking heads of the Barry Shitpeas variety (copyright Charlie Brooker). The 3-D clips they gave were very very brief (seldom in double-figures of seconds) and dotted sparsely through a lot of 2-D arseholes (gawping, talking bollocks and deserving of a full artillery barrage), which meant that by the time your eyes had adjusted to the 3-D again the clip was long over. It was an utter waste of time and money. So very much like 3-D, then (ho-ho, satire).

Time Team:
[omnipresent archaeology light-ents documentary series, C4]
February 2007
I see that Time Team is still going. No sign of Carenza, or the man doing the wobbly drawings of people eating. And the dig was of more interest than is normal, being of a Napoleonic fort. Everyone is looking much older, and no-one was tasting figs. It was a nice enough way to kill an hour, but only because it's been a while since my last visit there.

Time Trumpet:
[nostalgia doc parody sketch series, B2]
Best Comedy Sketch Show 2006, Best New Comedy Series 2006
August 2006
This week's Time Trumpet should've gone out last week, but for John Reid's coup attempt. The series continues the format established in Ianucci's B3 new year show, toying with clips to give us amusing snapshots of a future history. It's an acceptable gimmick, but it is already wearing thin. The last couple of episodes were both pretty baggy, and the series as a whole hasn't been helped by that 10 minute teaser we got the other month, which seems to have been made up of all the best bits. Still, it's not like the programme faces any competition... it's the best satirical comedy series we've had for a while, but only because it's the only satirical comedy series we've had for a while.

Tim Marlow on...:
[arts lecture, C5]
Best Factual  TV Programme 2007
June 2006
[Tim Marlow on Kandinsky:] Whenever I find myself fearing the death of the documentary, Tim Marlow's unedited lectures to camera come along and cheer me up. If you like your art to look like a migraine in a jazz club, then spend 45 minutes with Tim at the Tate.
March 2007
[Tim Marlow on Gilbert & George:] Tim Marlow is entertaining at the best of times. Put him together with Gilbert & George and get them to discuss the machinations required in the procuring of excrement as a subject, and things move up another level.
July 2007
Maintaining the cereberal, Tim Marlow took us on a tour of some National Gallery prints scattered across the walls of London. It was great stuff, not least because there was no attempt to clean the canvases of any spilt take-away food. Marlow's one-take attitude takes on a new level of wonderfulness on a street full of people, too. Best thing on telly since Meades and Marr left the building. Must be an M thing.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy:
[classic '80s spy drama series, repeated on B4]
September 2006
Let's begin this week by considering the repeat run of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. It's good, but its main strength is its acting. The story is adequate, but there are problems with the series itself. The glaring problem is that there is only ever really one contender for the mole, as there's only really one suspect with any meaningful dialogue or screentime. As a whodunnit it is profoundly substandard, and can be bettered by any cheap Christie output. But as a thing with Alec Guinness going around looking solemn, it's perfectly acceptable. And the supporting cast is pretty wonderful too. An adequate story badly told but well told at the same time. Or something.

Top Gear:
[motoring magazine, B2]
Best Factual TV Programme 2003
[Ivan was a fan of Top Gear back in the Jeremy Clarkson / Tony Mason / Quentin & Tiff days of the '90s. James May proved a half-decent replacement when Clarkson left, but it wasn't the same, and Ivan stopped watching. The revised, post-"Driven", Clarkson-helmed Top Gear was a definite improvement, made even better when the fat bloke doing the re-sales advice was replaced by James May and some exploding caravans.]
November 2007
Is there anywhere left for Top Gear to go? It over-reached itself with its Canadian ice-pack stunt, but clawed something back with the dust bowl antics this week. However, things are beginning to get a little repetetive and perhaps even slightly annoying. If TG does feel the restraints of the new BBC budget, perhaps it will be for the better in the grand scheme of things.
June 2008
Given the rising price of fuel, it will not be long before this series is costing more than a full-works BBC1 costume drama. And given the cuts in the Documentary budget, that means that this is the only "documentary" series we will be getting this year. Make the most of it.
July 2008
Perhaps I should lay into Top Gear for spiraling into self-parody but it's not worth it.
December 2008
Top Gear was particularly up itself this week.
November 2009
Increasingly lost up its own arse, and should've given up two series ago.

Torchwood is on the Doctor Who page.

Traffic Cops:
[police footage show, B1]
July 2009
Traffic Cops was bearable, if only for the thinly veiled policy-criticism from talking heads lending a faintly edgy edge. Apparently, police aren't allowed to go chasing after joy riders anymore on account of them inevitably driving into people and killing them. So rather than a lot of high-speed chase-action, we get a lot of shots of police officers sat in slow-moving cars, grumbling; a novelty which is tantamount to a saving grace.

Transmission:
[late-night music magazine, C4]
June 2006
When our music correspondent, Evan, described this programme to me last week I nearly wet myself. Lauren Laverne given a late-night music show; she tours the nation, seeking out new talent, with Joy Division providing the title. And yet I have this vivid fear that such things will not come together in the right way. Her co-presenter, Steve Jones, will turn out to be the ITV voice-over bloke rather than the Pistols guitarist. The bands will be more established and/or more mainstream than may be healthy. Simon Amstel will not be there. Still, my negativity has not infected Ev, who like me is afflicted with a love for Lauren, and a passing interest in music, but unlike me is bountifully optimistic, and sees only the good in things. We shall see who is the wiser...
Oh, Lauren... You are so lovely. Shame that most of what is around you is a bit limp. Actually, a couple of the acts on Transmission were fine. And good to see they're coming to Sheffield. I suppose we have the Arctic Mancys to thank for that.

The Trap:
[Adam Curtis documentary series, B2]
March 2007
Masterpiece of the year so far was The Trap, Adam Curtis's long awaited follow-up to the great The Power of Nightmares, which stated its case beautifully. The politics may not be as grand, but the telling of it is impressively done. It's the sort of thing that makes Hollywood's documentary fettish look as pathetic as the posings of an industry that doesn't have enough documentaries on telly. We're in danger of slipping into the same hole, but every now and then something exciting like this or Jonathan Meades comes along and claws us back out over the rim again. Not that this is to the standard of vintage Meades, but I've given it my first 3pts in a while.

Travels with Pevsner:
['90s architecture travelogues, repeated on B4]
September 2005
Travels with Pevsner took us back to the glory days of (fat) Jonathan Meades this week, opening with him flying over Worcestershire, and continuing in full-on Abroad style. Certainly the best of the Pevsner films for that alone (though Northumberland had the better architectural content).

Travels with Vasari:
[arts travelogue, B4]
November 2008
Andrew Graham Dixon gets another paid junket to Italy to go and look at some more art. Nice work if you can get it.

Treasure Hunt:
[M4 repeat of the classic '80s C4 helicopter game-show]
October 2007
We were treated to an episode of Treasure Hunt that was so old it didn't even have Wincy or a toy helicopter. Poor old Kenneth had to stick the arrows on the map himself, and the pink clues were yet to become the standard staging post. Furthermore, this was big budget stuff, with Aneka off in Bali. Again, the early date meant no Keith or Graham to flirt with, but she did get to put in some rather exciting motorcycling action complete with sweeping helicopter pursuit. Exciting stuff. She didn't find the treasure, perhaps deliberately, having had to put up with the constant berating from the stock upper-middleclass contestants and their frequent "Pay attention, Annie!"s. Never bite the hand that shakes the natives.

The Tribe:
[anthropology series, B2]
[Tribe was a pleasing, novel little doc series, launched in 2005, in which tough little Tim Roth lookalike Bruce Parry lives with a different primitive tribe each week, and gets stoned. This is its third series:]
August 2007
Tribe is thankfully on its last series because as interesting as comparative anthropology is, there's only so many times you can watch a semi-naked man being sick before it starts to feel familiar.

University Challenge:
[team quiz-show, B2]
Best Quiz / Game Show 2004, Best Quiz / Game Show 2006, Best Quiz / Game Show 2007
May 2005
It's the final, and I can't see any way in which Corpus Christi will fail to win, given that clever sod they've got in seat 2. I'd've rather them up against Manchester, who had a similarly knowledgable captain, but events conspired against me in the last round. They may do so again, but I doubt it.
[indeed they didn't.]
August 2006
It's always nice to see a new university give Oxbridge a good battering, and this is pretty much what we got in University Challenge this week, when '60s concrete utopia York took on the rather confusingly named Harris Manchester College, Oxford. York achieved a sound but not too embarrassing victory.
July 2007
University Challenge is back, and Magdalene got knocked out at the last minute (hurrah!). Don't celebrate too much though. They might still get through on the highest runners up rule. [They did. At the point of writing, they're currently in the quarter finals.]
July 2008
Today the BBC is showing 8 programmes with an obvious Chinese connection (as HSBC have been telling us for the last two years, 8 is a lucky number in China). This is not one of them.
November 2008
York, got knocked out of a not-as-billed University Challenge this week against the year's champions-elect: the frighteningly precogniscient Manchester. The scoreline was 200+ to 80. 80 was quite honourable in the circumstances.
February 2009
University Challenge remains the best thing on telly at the moment. My money is on Manchester to win, not least for their home advantage. As good as Corpus Christi are, there's only really their team captain answering any questions. It shouldn't be too difficult to nobble her if needs be, but I suspect the breadth of Manchester as a team should be sufficient advantage without recourse to such dirty tricks.
[A week later and something strange has happened:]
Meanwhile, back in the real world, the newspapers got terribly excited about University Challenge contestant and general-knowledge tourettic Gail Trimble (Daisy Christodoulou, you are yesterday's news). Certainly, there is no doubting that Trimble's answering abilities verged on the precognitive, that she was essential for her team's victory, and that presumably she's undergone some sort of science-fiction memory-implantation. But the same can be said of Stefano Mariani who was on the winning team for the very same college (Corpus Christi, Oxford) in 2005. Except that Mariani wasn't a woman, he was more a sort of super-intelligent Gok Wan, which isn't quite the same thing. What is more, Trimble and Mariani were both on the same inter-college quiz-team at Oxford in 2004 where it seems Trimble had the better stats. It's probably accurate then to describe Trimble as the best contestant in recent history if not in the entire history of the world ever. The pharmacologists at Manchester, well aware of her talent, clearly tool me up on my advice last week and drugged her, as she was strangely quiet for most of the final. But evidently the Mancunians had spent too much time genning up for UC and not enough time in their lectures learning about molar values, for their dosage was too low, and five minutes before the end of the quiz Trimble suddenly woke up and Corpus Christi nicked the lead. The natural reaction to seeing this was, of course, to rush out and try to contact Trimble with the tantalizing prospect of a tasteful semi-naked photo-shoot. Unfortunately for me, she declined, and so I've had to make do with photo-shopping her head onto pornography, as usual. This Trimblemania is certainly curious and the fact that four years ago Mariani got comparatively no attention at all from the press despite doing pretty much the exact same thing is somewhat telling. Also worthy of note is the fact that opinion on Ms Trimble is divided on a wide range of lines from article to article. To some she is an intellectual hero and beauty; the anti-Goody in some non-existent role-model combat to the death (in which the odds are rather unfairly stacked in her favour); she's an upper-middle-class icon hiding her light under her long straight metaphorical bushel. To others she's a snooty, arrogant know-it-all of whom rumours of her pulchritude have been greatly exaggerated. Whatever their take on her manner and mind, things always seem to come down to how sexy she is or isn't; a detail which has not gone un-noticed by Trimble herself. The truth of the matter is that she's a bright student from a background of moderate privilege who happens to have an exceptional flair for and love of general knowledge (that she doesn't look like Andy Hamilton is of course a bonus, but clearly it should be of no relevance to a story about an impressive UC contestant, except that the story is obviously not so much about an impressive UC contestant as about an impressive UC contestant who is a woman and also quite attractive, shock horror). It's quite pleasing that most of our press take such an interest in University Challenge even if it's driven largely by the desire to get that posh clever bird to pose for page three. It's a reminder that lust has its small part to play in the pursuit of human intellect. I picked up a voluble talent for plumbing from 1970s Scandinavian pornography.
[Subsequent to the amazing victory, some bored newspaper or other discovered that one of the Corpus Christi team, a bloke called Kay, was no longer a student at the time of the final. Corpus Christi were disqualified as a consequence of what was essentially a stupid rule that has since been overcome by a rescheduling of the filming period (Kay had begun the series as a student, but the contest schedule continued beyond his time at university). Manchester refused to accept their de facto victory.]
March 2009
I began the week expecting this column to be all about the University Challenge scandal; I was going to point out that what none of the articles on the story had mentioned was that the Corpus Christi team had already lost its original captain after he was thrown out of college (that's how Trimble rose to greatness in the first place), so there was presumably no reserve left to take Kay's place had he stood down. I was all set to do that, and maybe review some telly programmes, but then the ITV made another shudder towards death.
September 2009
Durham-Ox.

Virgin 1:
[digital channel, V1; formerly FTN]
December 2006 Report
ftn's biggest success comes through broadcasting Living TV and Bravo repeats. The most obvious example of this is Most Haunted, which I have seen a few times. I have to say that it is a bit rubbish, but I expect it's better with a few friends and a cellar of wine. From Bravo it gets some mildly interesting gameshows that once upon a time would've gone to C5. But increasingly it's mediums, psychics and other such cranks.
September 2007
It is with moderate sorrow that we say goodbye this weekend to that great repository of ex-Bravo programming that was Ftn. As September gives way to October, Ftn gets a facelift and re-brands as Virgin 1 ( abc1 also gets swallowed up as Virgin 1 goes 24hours, but abc1 was always a disappointment anyway. That said, its freakish positioning of ad-breaks was a constant source of wonder). Virgin 1 will still have repeats of Bullseye, though they seem to be in the middle of the night now. As for all that ghost-channelling bullshit that used to be on, it looks like most of it has been culled for now. This will perhaps cause a modicum of upset. Ftn was shaping up to be one of the bigger little channels thanks to its mix of nostalgia and "dead" people. But now all that is to be swept aside for a few cheap US imports and Star Trek DS9. It will be interesting to see what difference if any will present itself in the ratings. I can't say I ever really watched Ftn, save a few lonely nights flicking around, but I think I will miss it. Not sure why. Still, it might give the two Five digital channels something to play with.
December 2007 Report
Ah... remember FTN? Around about this stage every year I would say something nice about FTN. Well now FTN has been eaten and relaunched as Virgin 1. And unfortunately, V1 would dearly love to be Sky 1. Not Sky 1 now, but Sky 1 in the 1990s. So it's all  Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Enterprise. And other less good US imports, often with English people in doing American accents. It's an odd world. V1 charted here, but only through its film selections. Worth remembering that DS9 at least was pretty good, but you shouldn't pin a station's reputation on a single ten-year-old programme. FTN was at its best when it repeated ITV game-shows. Alas those days are now gone. And on a budget of thirteen pence and a shoelace, V1 is hardly likely to rise to greatness over the course of 2008. File with Sky Three and the two Five digitals.
December 2008 Report
The archetypal digital channel, its blend of low-rent US imports, repeats, shock-docs and the odd good film keep it ticking over. Its films are even good enough to get it in our chart. But at the end of the day it's just another Channel 5. Remember when Branson wanted Channel 5? This is what would've happened. Not very different. And the nights are filled with phone-in competitions, which doesn't help.

Wagner's Ring: Götterdämmerung:
[opera, B2]
March 2007
If nothing else, it had some nice sets. The much-coveted ring didn't seem nearly as interesting as the minimalist tarnhelm though, and Wagner was a writer badly in need of an editor.

Wallace & Gromit:
[claymation shorts, B1]
April 2005
A Grand Day Out, The Wrong Trousers, and A Close Shave get let out for the weekend. Play the Wallace cheese-eating game and have some groovy dreams. Speaks more of penguin psyche than Morgan Freeman ever could. Cracking.

What Is Beauty?:
[one-off art documentary, B2]
November 2009
Dear Uncle Matthew [Collings] delivered a nice hour of cosy fireside arts TV this Saturday with his take on What Is Beauty. But it lacked some of the magic of his C4 efforts and felt a little hurried by comparison. [It also lacked his endeering leads into and out of ad breaks].

The White Diamond:
[documentary, B4]
September 2005
A Storyville doc by Werner Herzog. At first glance this seemed to be a glorified Science Shack, but then it twisted and turned down all manner of directions and proved to be a deeply involving piece of film. I worry though that Mark Anthony has spent the last year sifting through unsolicited marriage proposals.

Who Do You Think You Are?:
[genealogy doc series, B2/1]
[After two fairly interesting series on B2, the show made the jump to B1.]
September 2006
Rarely, if ever, a good sign: this has been promoted from B2 to B1. Neither the token Jew nor the token Black, Barbara "Babs" Windsor is the token annoying cockney. I have never been able to stand her, to be brutally honest, and for that I will probably have my pelvis screwed to a sideboard by a thoroughly nice gangster. If you want any semblance of entertainment from this first episode of the third series of celebrity genealogy, then don't - whatever you do - read the RT blurb, as it seems to give away the entire contents. If however, you intend to watch tonight's prom (Mahler 2), then Barbara's relatives are from Ireland and Suffolk, and she's related to John "Mills" Constable. Happy to oblige.
[It's probably fair to say that there wasn't enough material in this concept for a third series.]
September 2007
Who Do You Think You Are should've finished two series ago, but somehow keeps trotting on. Now, only the most salacious families need apply, so this week John Hurt climbed a tree of illegitimacy, incest and intrigue, but definitely not Irishness. Quite entertaining, but not so much for the shattered Hurt, who was found hanging from a tree after production.
July 2009
Who Do You Think You Are? is now on its seven-billionth series, and as Parky has discovered, only people with other celebrities in their past will do. In Davina McColl's case, the celebrity forebears are the King (possibly), his master-mason (definitely), and part of the defence team in the Dreyfus affair. The heavily structured "journey" element is still gratingly present, though the awful music has been toned down a bit. The thing that is most annoying about this programme is that it's still doing celebrities. I think celebrities can well afford to do this sort of thing themselves. Part of the original charm of the programme was that the ancestors were normal, humble proletariat types leading grim, hard lives; cue the tearful crumpling of the pampered luvvie in question. If we want to dig up celebrities passed then let's turn the whole thing on its head: find a homeless wretch and dig up his aristocratic ancestry (and who knows, perhaps even a wealthy cousin or three). Or better still, rather than working up the tree, let's work across and pin down the six degrees of familial separation between Richard Dawkins, Jordan, Alan Carr and the Archbishop of Canterbury. What are researcher's for if not for that?

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?:
[multiple choice quiz series, I1]
Best Quiz / Game Show 2005
[A cross between Bamboozle and Double Your Money, with the set of Raise the Roof. Already a classic.]
September 2005
So it's fifty years since the ITV started up. And the best programme on the channel is the same now as it was then: Double Your Money.

The Wind in the Willows:
[one-off family comedy-drama, B1]
January 2007
If there was any children's book that didn't need another dodgy re-telling, then it was this one. But they've gone and done it anyway. Like the Python attempt of about 10 years ago, this is anthropomorphised to the point of humanity. Like every version, it's the same story. What is the point? It'll be ok but ultimately disappointing. What else could you expect?
[It was a little better than the Python one. But still nothing profound. I'd rather've had the stage adaptation of Watership Down, naturally.]

The Wire:
[US crime drama series, B2]
April 2009
This, we are constantly told, is the best thing to come out of America since rock music or syphilis. Which is why it's been given such a prime-time slot: the post-Newsnight death-plot. And daily too. Just to make sure that we miss an episode or three and lose interest. And yet moving wallpaper Mad Men gets such lavish treatment. Could they not have found a prime-time home for this on BBC4, instead of its Japanese toilet-reading colour supplements? It's Arrested Development all over again. Still, at least it's on, and at least it's on before midnight (well two thirds of it is). It will, of course, be rubbish.
I never saw Hill Street Blues. But this is better than Cagney & Lacey. To call it brilliant or amazing would be over-doing it. The Bill in the Tosh-era could've been to this standard if they'd allowed a bit more room for character development on both sides of the criminal fence. But they didn't. Otherwise there is not a massive amount of difference. Still, it is quite a crucial difference because it is the characterization that makes The Wire. That and little details like how the drugs gang seems to be far better organized and better run than the police. The technology available to the Baltimore PD, and their interview methods, make Life on Mars look futuristic, strewing a level of grit across the face of normally over-glossy US TV. There are also plenty of pleasingly inconsequential little details scattered along the way for added "realism" but also for added fun. So The Wire is a good thing. But because of some hideously incompetent scheduling its a programme only you will have watched. Which is just frustrating.
Tosh and Roach's drinking causes yet more problems for the Sun Hill squad as Burnside closes the net on the Jasmine Alley drugs ring. He is forced to draft in Viv Martella for the sting despite his better judgement. Meanwhile Stamp and Quinnan's attempts to help an old lady with her shopping prove more than they bargained for. Jeff Stewart stars.
That was The Wire. There's another series of that to come. It should take another 13 episodes just to reunite the cast.
May 2009
Still on in its ridiculous post-Newsnight slot (though only three consecutive days of this week), The Wire returns for its second series. I'll repeat that, cos hidden away down there in the middle of the night one might easily think this was a repeat. THE WIRE RETURNS FOR ITS SECOND SERIES. It's the SECOND SERIES. Mon-Wed. The first ep may start late, on account of all things baize.
I know I should talk about the new series of The Wire, but I'm not really sure I have a lot to say yet, other than that I think it's been good so far (better than the first one so far; though I'm worried the dockers might turn out to be a little 1D -- but surely not).
The BBC Box arrives in Baltimore.
Lifesize Tetris.
The Wire turned into a pretty dreadful comedy on Wednesday, which was about five steps too far in that direction. Save that sort of thing for Ashes to Ashes. I don't mind a bit of banter, but I draw the line at slapstick and comedy-accent in-jokes.
Al uses one of those computer handsets the dockers have to try to ask Ziggy what he knows about somebody called Frank Sobatka. In the meantime, Sam has only three more days to save McNulty from himself.
Series two ended with far more loose ends than series one, as one might expect from a recommissioned programme. The anti-penultimate episode rushed around trying to cram far too much story into itself; story which they could've developed earlier instead of trying to tell jokes. And the end of the series felt a bit limp and unfulfilling really. But then the same was true of the first series. And of State of Play, and any number of other vaguely similar programmes that have been made along the years. Anyway, only three weeks to wait before series three.
June 2009
Series three would, thankfully, seem to be returning our attentions to the drugs gangs.
More hot coaxial action.
August 2009
The celebrated drug-crime series tries its hand at State of Play.
The Wire is free-wheeling through its fourth series at the moment. Marlow is starting to develop a third dimension, which is useful, but Herc seems to be losing any depth of character he may once have had, which is a shame because he seems to be one of the more important characters of this series. That it is a story mainly about a mayoral election and a struggling school makes The Wire less like The Bill with swearing and more like the freakish love-child of The West Wing and Waterloo Road. The demise, yet again, of the Major Crimes unit, and its ensuing diaspora, is turning the thing into a soap rather than a cop show. This is not necessarily a bad thing so long as the characters are given something important to do and aren't simply left to marry each other, have affairs and take drugs which is what seems to happen in most soaps (though, this being American, maybe they'll worry about being too rich and start trying to kill each other instead, and then McNulty's evil twin will turn up, and Stringer Bell will turn out to still be alive, and the second series will be shown to have all been just a bad dream). Such a broad approach, allowing the characters to weave casually through the scenery, introducing us to new characters who take us a little further into the woods, could be nice if done with a bit more conviction. As it is, we're rarely away from the original characters for more than a few days (although even McNulty had a couple of episodes' grace this week, which was something of a relief), revisiting them often for little more than to watch them metaphorically pick their nose. And now that Major Crimes is reforming again any chance of us moving on seems lost. Instead we're just snowballing an ever-growing cast of regulars, and are in danger of ending up like Heroes, with a smörgåsbord of thinly developed super-people all doing their own thing and doing it very slowly because the drama becomes almost turn-based: here's a scene with him, here's a scene with her, and that other woman, and that bloke with the glasses, and so on and so on until half an hour later it gets back to him again. By which point you may have stopped caring. What I'd rather see is something closer to I, Claudius. That's not to say that I want it to move so fast that we get through several generations in a single series, but as a model for introducing new characters and moving on from old ones it was ruthlessly efficient (mainly because the old ones were murdered) and not in the least bit clunky. We may have missed Augustus or Caligula after they passed, much as we might miss Stringer, but the story is the important thing and the story moves on. In fairness to The Wire, the story is moving on, albeit with a lot of detritus carried along in its wake, and one of the bigger problem has to be with the story itself, which, and The West Wing was guilty of this too, is preaching somewhat to the converted. The Wire is at its best when it is simply immersed in the shit of the Baltimore streets, and I include the school and the city hall in this to an extent. But all too often it starts to feel like a lecture, and a somewhat heavy-handed one at that. "Hey, schools teach to the test and that might not be the best education for a child!" Yes, I know. I'm inclined to agree. "Look, though! Look! See how bored they are!" Yes. Yes they are, and I'm afraid to say that I'm beginning to empathize with their position more and more by the episode. I think that my biggest problem with it though is this increasing tendency to feel like it has the answer: like with Super-Teacher Prez, and any shit Colvin touches remarkably turning to gold. At least Hamsterdam was a bit of a dive and people still died there. The attempted school reforms seem a little too sugary by comparison, and the whole series is beginning to feel like a social worker's utopian tract. Still, it all might unravel soon enough by means other than back-stabbing and greed high up in the chain of command. We can but hope.
September 2009
The particularly silly final series comes to a grinding halt, presumably with all the police in prison, all the drugs gangs dead, and Omar as mayor.
The nightmarish Wire marathon is thankfully over, ending with an acceptable chain of resetting (everybody loves a circle). It began as The Bill, had a try at The Knock, gave that up and did The West Wing, flirted with Grange Hill and wrapped up with State of Play. One has to admire its breadth of scope: as social worker TV it is Ken Loach in macrocosm. But was it any good? Yeah, it was alright. I expect we'll look back on it with as much affection and recall as something like Heimat. The two are rather similar in a way, differing only in the direction of their broadest dimension. Both also owed a little something to the soap opera.

Wodehouse Playhouse: Portrait of a Disciplinarian:
[archive dramaisation, B4]
November 2009
A pleasing bit of light fluff that raised a posy full of titters.

Women's World Cup Football on BBC:
[football coverage, B2/3]
June 2006
Let's talk Womens Football now. It's not been bad. The first game was a bit ropey as far as playing standards go, but was worth it for the school kids in the crowd counting down to the 45th minute. Aw. Bless. It was also worth it for the scoreline. The second match was let down somewhat by the last ten minutes, which were truly worthy of an England Men's international. If you didn't see, we threw away a 2-0 lead and ended up drawing. So what was an automatic qualification is now very severely screwed. To qualify from the group stage, we now have to beat Sweden, who are the best team in the group. So that should be an interesting match. It would be a shame if the hosts failed to make it past the first round, not least because the TV coverage would be severely slashed [They failed].

World Cup Football on ITV:
[football coverage, I1]
Best Sporting Event 2006
June 2006
How come ITV has so much of the World Cup? Maybe I could rig up some sort of capacitor thing that will delay the radio signal by a few seconds so that they synch up. But I don't think I know how, so I'll not bother. I'll just put up with Clive Tyldesley talking bollocks. Graham Taylor on R5 is more amusing with his tedious blather. Alan Green is unbeatable. So it's a shame, but there you have to go.

The Wrong Door:
[sketch show, B3]
August 2008
B3's latest attempt at a sketch show is a lot like Modern Toss only less successful. Like Modern Toss it relies on animated special effects of some kind: usually of a pretty pointless kind really. That's its gimmick, see: that every sketch contains a special effect. And more often than not it is a poor sketch inexpertly papered over with some cheap CGI. There were occasional flashes of humour but nothing close to the levels achieved (albeit intermittently) in Modern Toss. The sketch-show's death-throes continue. Will someone not take it to Denmark to have it put out of its misery?

Yesterday:
[TV channel, formerly UK History, UY]
December 2005 Report
UK History has had some good programmes on through the year. But they're mostly repeats of middling BBC progs, with adverts unexpertly jammed in. I lost my respect for the station when they took a Walden lecture and edited it to make room for ads. I consequently assume that this is a technique regularly employed, and I hiss. If UKH had anything of genuine note I doubt I'd notice now. There was a time I'd check, but those days are pretty much gone. The worst you're going to miss is a day of Local Heroes repeats. That's a good programme, but I don't know as you'd lose too much sleep missing it, nice as AHD is.
December 2006 Report
UK History is a graveyard for old BBC documentaries, often crudely edited to wedge in adverts. It's useful as an archive of programmes you may have missed or wish to be reminded of. But it's not really a channel in its own right. Not really.
December 2007 Report
This year, UK History lost a large chunk of its airtime. This doesn't actually matter too much because what it shows in the daytime is usually a repeat of what it showed last night. And what it showed last night is usually not terribly exciting anyway. That's perhaps a little harsh. UH does have a fairly decent collection of BBC repeats to play with. But they're not usually very old repeats. They're stuff from the last five years. And by and large it's stuff you saw when it was on. In that regard UH is a bit useless. But only a bit.
December 2008 Report
It never seems to show much of any interest these days. Which is perhaps as well cos it's only on during the daytime now anyway. It used to have some interesting repeats. Now less so. Still, it's by no means dreadful. It can fill a gap. But only if you're in at the right time.

You Have Been Watching:
[comedy panel-game, C4]
August 2009
I could talk about You Have Been Watching, but pick at that scab and there's a chance of bleeding to death.
David Mitchell and Ben Miller are invited along in an attempt to raise the tone and attract a higher class of audience: the sort that might throw dinner-parties.
A comedy version of Late Review might've worked better than the curious half-quiz stapled to it.
September 2009
I never did get round to properly appraising Charlie Brooker's You Have Been Watching, so I suppose I'll do it now. It felt a bit like the meticulously planned birthday party of a lonely only child: the carefully drawn itinerary and rules of engagement being ignored by his uncaring guests, many of whom have not turned up: immediately rendering much of the planning to the dustbin. Slowly our host crumbles inside, a little bit more with each game that descends into farce and each minute by which they over-run their alloted time-frame. And then Colin pulls down the shelf with all the big books on it and our host finally cracks, screaming "End of the Show! End of the show!" to whoever will listen. As a sort of comedy Late Review, the programme functions rather well. But it is no surprise that the stapled on quiz-format, there to appease some tosser (yes, you're a tosser; a stupid, dick-faced, arse-brained tosser who doesn't deserve to have sexual organs to toss) who thinks that the only way a discussion-based comedy programme should be allowed to exist is in the form of a quiz-show. It makes me sooooooooooo maaaaaaaaaaaad, and I begin to stretch my vowels out like that, which is good for no-one.

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