Saturday, April 19, 2008

Double Trouble

COUPLES! All Star Mr and Mrs, ITV1, 7.05pm

We know most of you are busy watching I'd Do Anything at this time on a Saturday, but in the interests of fair play, we thought we'd mention the offering on 'the other side'.

ITV's latest addition to the Saturday evening schedule is a revamped version of 70s and 80s favourite, Mr and Mrs. Now you may wonder why this merits a full series, rather than just being another part of retro-games-fest Gameshow Marathon and so are we, but let's not get too far down the line of ITV scheduling as wearestill smarting over the Pushing Daisies debacle.

Anyway, the premise of this show is to test how well couples know each other (we vaguely remember liking this in the 80s but our main recollection is the bit where one partner puts on the headphones whilst the other answers questions. We're sure there is more to it than that, though.

Being the 21st Century and all, couples no longer have to be married to go on this show, which makes the title something of a misnomer. They may even let some of those pesky gays on to show how ultra-contemporary they are (but then again it's ITV so they probably won't). Tonight's "star" couples include Joe Calzaghe and, er, Mrs Joe Calzaghe; Bill Roahce and Mrs Bill Roache, and Lembit Opik and Gabriella Imira.

We are fully aware of the pitfalls of recommending this programme. We know it might be terrible. But Fern and Phil are presenting, and we love them, so it can't all be bad. Can it?

Labels: All Star Mr and Mrs, ITV1

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Saturday, April 12, 2008

Anna Friel, like I just got home, Anna Friel...*

BRIGHT! Pushing Daisies, ITV1, 9.00pm

It's not what you think; I haven't found a way to post from the future. Not yet, anyway; it's just that I'm going to be away on Saturday, and I thought I could justify giving a little bit more airtime than usual to Pushing Daisies, given that it's one of ITV's most high-profile launches in ages.

Of course, Gossip Girl had a massive advertising push and it didn't really translate into bringing in the viewers in their millions, so it's very daring of ITV to push ahead with Pushing Daisies, which is arguably not even close to your typical ITV show, on a primetime slot on Saturday night no less. (I note with interest that it's directly after the series opener of Britain's Got Talent, so at least it stands to inherit a healthy audience, as long as it can hold onto it.) It's especially bold considering this is a show that's bound to be polarising: you'll either be charmed by its limitless sense of whimsy and innocence, or you'll be nauseated by all the pastel shades and the self-conscious tweeness.

Thankfully I'm in the former camp: I found the pilot episode enthralling. The show is utterly divorced from reality in every possible way, but it actually makes an asset of this - there's a sense that genuinely anything could happen on this show. For those of you unfamiliar with the extremely high concept: Piemaker Ned has an unusual gift, in that his touch can bring the dead back to life. But this gift has its limitations - if he touches that person again, they die permanently this time, and if he doesn't return the body to a dead state within a specified period of time, someone else dies in their place.

Ned's working in conjunction with a private eye, interrogating murder victims to collect the reward money, when he finds that one of the victims is his childhood sweetheart Chuck (short for Charlotte Charles, in case you were wondering). Having revived her, he finds he can't bring himself to let her die again - but this means any potential for romance with them is doomed, because one touch from Ned will kill Chuck forever.

That's what made the show work for me - that undercurrent of darkness that belies the kitsch visual style and the apple-pie sweetness. The show's cast is great too: Lee Pace is adorably awkward as Ned, Anna Friel captures Chuck's playfulness superbly and with a flawless American accent to boot, Kristen Chenoweth plays Olive Snook, the waitress with a doomed crush on Ned, Ellen Greene and Swoosie Kurtz play Chuck's oddball aunts (there's a fantastic visual gag involving Aunt Lily's missing eye, by the way) and my favourite character is Emerson Cod, the aforementioned shady PI, played by Chi McBride.

It's not going to be to everyone's taste, but I strongly recommend you give it a go. Just keep a pair of sunglasses next to the remote control, just in case a migraine kicks in.

*This joke is approximately eight years old, but I still couldn't resist using it. Sorry.

Labels: ITV1, Pushing Daisies, TV

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Sunday, March 16, 2008

After skates

BOLERO! Dancing on Ice: The Final Skate-Off, ITV1, 7.00pm

Perhaps it's just us, but it feels like this series has gone on for a few thousand years. Indeed, we're not entirely sure we can remember a time when Dancing on Ice wasn't on. It scarcely even feels like that scandalous early elimination of Sarah Greene was in the same series that we're still watching. Which is odd, because this hasn't been on any longer than, say, Strictly Come Dancing, and indeed it's been on significantly less time than your average series of The X Factor. Perhaps the issue is that on those shows, the contestants have to straddle different genres, be they of song or dance, whereas here it's just more ice dancing, every week, with a new move, or occasionally PROPS. Not that we don't enjoy it, but it gets a little samey after a while.

Nonetheless, we are excited for the final, especially since Gareth Gates fell at the final hurdle last week. We're not being unkind, and it's not that we don't like him as a person, but we always found his routines a little boring (although it was fun to watch Maria grimace every time he made a jovial comment about how well they got on together). We assumed there'd be some kind of national outrage over his unexpectedly early ouster, if only so the tabloids could nickname the whole affair "Garethgate", but if that happened, we missed it. We'd even put our necks on the line to say that we think the right three couples are in the final: plucky upstart Suzanne Shaw, hard-working but ultimately doomed Zaraah Abrahams, and presumably pre-ordained winner Chris "we're not worthy" Fountain.

Tonight there will be flying, there will be the Bolero, there will presumably be death-defiance if Suzanne has any say in the matter, and there will doubtless be floods of tears from judge Karen, who's been surprisingly restrained this series, at least in emotional outburst terms, so we can only assume she's planning to let it all out tonight. We can only hope poor Nicky Slater in the adjacent seat has remembered to bring his pac-a-mac and umbrella. And don't forget that the team over at Bitching on Ice will be covering the whole shebang in detail from start to finish.

Labels: Dancing on Ice, ITV1, reality TV, TV

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Friday, March 14, 2008

Gail force

PERIL! Coronation Street, ITV1, 7.30 & 8.30pm

We've come to the conclusion that staircases in soap operas are generally only there for symbolic purposes, since the vast majority of soap houses do not appear to have anything even remotely resembling a functional upstairs floor. Therefore it is deeply, deeply foolish for a soap character to make a point of doing anything on the stairs; it demonstrates utter genre blindness, because it inevitably means they're set to fall down them at any moment. If only they watched as many soaps as we do, they'd be aware of this.

Tonight it's the turn of Gail to take a tumble earthwards, having been rumbled by David for her part in Tina's termination of her demon spawn. Given that David has been a little bit on edge, to put it mildly, ever since discovering that he was almost terminated himself back when he was a foetus, this is exactly the worst thing for the ticking teenage time bomb to find out right now, so Gail gets an unwitting but violent shove for her trouble. This is why you should always have such confrontations on a nice level and soft-carpeted part of the living room.

The news of Gail's fall rather took us by surprise, not particularly because of the accident itself, but in terms of our reaction to it; we found ourselves feeling rather sad, since we're in the extremely odd position of having grown quite fond of Gail lately. David, sadly, does not share our feelings and chooses to panic and run off, leaving his mum for dead. Tsk. It's unlikely she actually is dead, of course, because that's the sort of thing we would all have known about months in advance, but we'll be tuning in tonight to see the dramatic fallout nonetheless.

If anyone's interested, we'll be having a lowculture whip-round later, in the hope of raising enough money to buy Gail a nice bungalow. Please give generously.

Labels: Coronation Street, ITV1, TV

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Saturday, March 08, 2008

Guilty Displeasures

CRIMINAL!Guilty Pleasures, ITV1, 9.30pm

Sometimes there are those concepts (usually ITV-devised concepts) that for a split second sound quite good, before you blink and then realise that, in fact, they are not good ideas at all. They are ideas conceived on a quiet day in hell.

One such idea is Guilty Pleasures. Based on the club night/website/radio brand of the same name, this show allegedly features songs you find 'guilty pleasures' sung by sort-of-cool-well-mainstream-actually-but-cooler-than-let's-say-Westlife artists (the likes of The Magic Numbers, bits of Supergrass, Sophie Ellis Bextor, KT Tunstall and, er, Craig David). There you go, that's the split second when you think it might be good.

Now the realisation. Firstly, the songs they cover are genereally either too-good-to-be-covered ('Beat It'), too bad-to-be-covered ('You're the Voice') or covered-too-many-times-already ('Islands in the Stream'). And, as, Lord Charles of Brooker points out, most of them aren't really guilty pleasures anyway - they are just not naff enough to qualify for that tag (John Farnham aside, possibly). Secondly, ITV-musical cover version extravanganzas are always, always dreadful. Especially The X Factor. Ba-dum-tish. Thirdly, it's presented by Fearne Cotton (although seeing as she is adept at massacring TV genres, maybe this will be the nail in the coffin for these shows).

There is already a thread on the forums asking 'Is this the worst ITV music extravaganza ever'? Of course, don't let us stop you tuning in - there is always some perverse value in car-crash telly, after all. But don't say we didn't warn you.

Labels: aural assaults, dreadful telly concepts, Fearne Cotton, Guilty Pleasures, ITV1

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Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Pop Idle

COMPETITION! Rock Rivals, ITV1, 9.00pm

ITV1's new drama hope opens with an impressively convincing take-off of The X Factor, with one glaring omission: in around three minutes of show-within-a-show airtime, none of the contestants mention a dead parent, even once. You'd think they'd get such basic detail right, wouldn't you? Thankfully, order is quickly restored when that week's rejected contestant turns out to be a blind man singing a mediocre version of 'You Raise Me Up', though the Louis Walsh-alike (whose main act is Irish, you'll note) doesn't get a chance to say "the poor boy's blind!"

And so begins the series that we hope will fill the gaping hole in our lives that was left by the axing of Footballers' Wives. It's ballsy of ITV to risk another TV-will-eat-itself drama so soon after Moving Wallpaper and Echo Beach debuted to indifferent viewing figures, but at least this series comes with the pedigree (well, that's what we're calling it) of being from the makers of our aforementioned WAG-focusing favourite, and sets its cap squarely in the high camp arena from the word go. Case in point: one of the characters is called Jinx Jones. Another is called Sunday Gorgeous. And another is called Angel Islington. So if you ever spent any time in the company of Tanya Turner and co, however brief, you'll know what to expect from this.

It gets off to a good start, although this opening perhaps isn't batshit enough for our tastes - the big set piece involves Karina (Michelle Collins, doing her best Sharon Osbourne impression but letting the side down by the fact that her face actually moves) driving husband Mal's (Sean Gallagher) prized Ferrari into his swimming pool, but it falls a little flat, to be honest, and really could have done with a crazy nurse having sex with a comatose patient in the background, or perhaps someone liberally applying fake tan to a newborn. Although there is one moment that suggests a sick brilliance to come, involving show-within-a-show contestant Bethany doing something rather drastic on live television. We won't spoil it for you, but it does suggest that the producers haven't lost their sense of watercooler moments.

Also bubbling away nicely in the background is a subplot involving a delusional gay fan of hottie contestant Luke (another reality failure: all of these people are too attractive to be on an X Factor equivalent), who sits and eats tinned spaghetti hoops while talking to a blow-up doll with Luke's face attached. Cree-pee. Oh, and for those who miss the formidable agent Hazel from Footballers' Wives, watch out for the admirable Alison Newham as Bethany's pushy stage mum.

It's early days, of course, but the initial signs here are promising. We warmed to Crazy Bethany and Fierce Sunday in the opening episode, and forgave Michelle Collins's woodenness on the grounds that at least 50% of the cast of Footballers' Wives was made of balsa at any given moment, and rather than hampering our enjoyment, it often increased it. And apparently we get to decide who wins the show-within-the-show at the end of the series, which would be cool if we weren't secretly fearful that the eventual winner might be as rubbish as Leon Jackson. Please God, never again.

Labels: ITV1, Rock Rivals, TV

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Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Dex appeal

SPLATTER! Dexter, ITV1, 10.35pm

We've got to hand it to ITV1 - when they set out to reposition themselves in the marketplace, they don't do things by halves. Admittedly, perhaps the first phase of the plan didn't go so brilliantly, since none of The Palace, Honest, Echo Beach or Moving Wallpaper are really doing the business, ratings-wise. Phase II, however, where they steal the crown that's been variously held by Five, Channel 4, Sky One and Living over the years as home of the best US imports, might just be more successful - and to prove they mean business, they've bought Dexter.

It's not an obvious choice for ITV1 - while it's not like they shy away from grim 'n' gory television, as anyone who watches Trial and Retribution, Cold Blood or any of their ilk will attest, but this show is another matter entirely. Even lowculture's normally cast-iron constitution was shaken up during the opening sequence in which the eponymous hero - oh, by the way, he just happens to be a serial killer - calmly murders a paedophile. Seriously folks: we know that it's not uncommon for US imports to end up in graveyard slots like this, but on this occasion there's a very good reason this show is on well after the watershed. It is not for the faint of heart.

And yet, even though there is quite the selection of scenes here that you may end up watching through your fingers, we still heartily recommend it after watching tonight's opening episode. Dexter makes for an astoundingly amiable sociopath - whenever he hasn't got his murderous game face on, he's nerdily spinning around in his office chair (he works, brilliantly, as a forensics expert specialising in blood splatter analysis) and bringing his colleagues donuts with a smile. And since he limits his serial killing to those who truly deserve it, it's not difficult to root for him. The moment that really set the scene for us was the point during one of his opening voiceovers where he explains that both of his parents are dead (though he has no apparent desire to apply for The X Factor, weirdly), before quickly adding irritably "no, I didn't kill them", as though thoroughly used to answering that question to the people who habitually sit in on his innermost thoughts.

We're big fans of the supporting cast in this show, too. Angel's Julie Benz is almost unrecognisable as Dexter's emotionally fragile girlfriend Rita, and our absolute favourite character thus far is Sergeant Doakes, who, as Dexter puts it, "in a building full of cops, all of whom supposedly have an insight into the human soul, is the only one who gets the creeps from me." And he's not especially reticent about showing it, either. Dude is awesome.

It's a great watch, but make sure you've got the stomach for it. And if this all sounds a little full-on for you, don't worry: Pushing Daisies was also on their shopping list. That's also awesome, and not quite so much with the gore. Just pies.

Labels: Dexter, ITV1, TV

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Wednesday, February 20, 2008

More meaningless industry back-patting

AWARDS! The Brit Awards 2008, ITV1, 8.00pm

We're not suggesting for a minute that you should ignore the arrival of the marvellous Martha Jones in tonight's episode of Torchwood, and with it, the best episode of the series so far, but the annual airing of the British music industry's favourite excuse to give itself a big ol' hug at least deserves a mention of some kind, however muted.

As usual, the shortlist was greeted with the usual amount of scoffing and raised eyebrows (including one memorable lambasting from the Daily Telegraph's rock critic, which, as jobs go, would appear to have all the cachet of being Realism Advisor on Hollyoaks), the scandal this year being the unexpected selection of pop-themed nominations. Which basically means Leona Lewis and Mika are up for everything, and Girls Aloud got a surprise nod. Just think if they won: the plummeting shares in the guitar industry! Well, we can dream...

The event will be hosted by Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne, and recent tabloid reports have suggested the latter is threatening to strip naked, because he's wild and unconventional like that, and also it's possibly still 2002. But there's bound to be the odd talking point or two, given the event's history. Unless of course the invasion of pop kills the rock 'n' roll atmosphere and the most exciting headline turns out to be "Leona Lewis spills apple juice on expensive handbag", which is clearly what all the "serious music" fans are afraid of. Rock on everybody!

Labels: ITV1, The Brit Awards, TV

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Saturday, February 16, 2008

Fake Bake

CHEESY! The One and Only, BBC One, 7.30pm and 9.40pm
CHEEKY! Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway, ITV1, 8.15pm

We don't know whether The One and Only has had its life cut short early, or whether it was always destined to be such a short run, but tonight, folks, is your grand final. And there are FIVE-count-em superstar impersonators competing for the chance to appear in Las Vegas. Er, in a tribute act show. Wooop!

So who will it be? Fake Robbie? Fake Lionel? Fake Diana? Fake Dusty? Fake Frank? To be honest, we don't care, because we wanted Fake Kylie, who looked and sounded exactly like Sam Fox, to go through and confuse the Vegas crowd. If that's your aim, Fake Robbie is probably now the best bet. If you want the most convincing, we're not sure. Possibly fake Lionel, but his ego is a bit ridiculous for someone on a glorified Stars in Their Eyes. Anyway, Fake Frank will win, so it's all a moot point.

This series has been utterly bizarre, and whilst it has been a pleasure to see Carrie and David Grant judging again, we don't need to bring it back for a second series. Surely there can be other ways of keeping them gainfully employed. We actually always liked Fame Academy you know...

Anyway, from one show that celebrates all that is fake, to another. Except we are sure Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway will have recovered from its minor slap on the wrist for phone fakery shenanigans last year (after all, everyone else was doing it, why couldn't they?). We expect a little self-knowing joke/apology early on and then business as usual.

We've never really been sure about this show. It's alright, we suppose, perfectly reasonable Saturday night fare. But it doesn't seem to do anything that The Late Late Breakfast Show and Noel's House Party didn't already do. Drawing on that comparison, expect to see Ant and Dec fall out with telly bosses soon, go into hiding with a poorly-themed Byker Grove theme park, where you too can learn about the dangers of paintballing blindness, only to emerge trimphant several years later babbling some nonsense about the cosmos and presenting one of those game shows that appeals to students and the elderly.

Labels: Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway, BBC One, BBC1, ITV1, The One and Only

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Monday, January 28, 2008

Taking the "fun" out of "funeral"

SENDOFF! Coronation Street, ITV1, 7.30/8.30pm

We know it's probably felt a bit like Vera overload on here over the week and a half, as a nation has cried and hugged and shared and learned and steadily tried to come to terms with its loss. And we make no apologies for this: we are, after all, dealing with a national treasure here. And if the Daily Express can still put Diana on the cover when she's been dead for over ten years, we think we're perfectly entitled to feature Vera for a few posthumous weeks.

There is, however, one final rite of passage for us all to get past, and that is, of course, the funeral. We can hear someone sniffling at the back already; there's a box of tissues here by the front, come and help yourself. Take some for later, if you like. It's time for the residents of Weatherfield, and in some cases Furtherafield, to gather together and give Our Vera the sendoff she deserves.

The death scene itself reduced countless fully-grown adults to tears, us amongst them, and while we may have got the bulk of our emotion out by now, we daresay there'll still be a few damp eyes as Jack and his close friends send Vera on to her final resting place (which we hope bears a striking resemblance to Blackpool - it feels only right somehow). And of course, this is the cue for prodigal son Terry to emerge from skulking in the shadows. Feel free to boo and hiss. We certainly won't be holding back.

Labels: Coronation Street, ITV1, soap death, TV

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Saturday, January 26, 2008

Ice to see you, to see you...

COLD! Dancing on Ice: Make Me a Star, ITV1, 8.30pm

We won't take too long over this since we're still full of merriment from lowculture's fifth birthday (look how we've grown! Our clothes don't even fit any more! Only another thirteen years and we'll be old enough to vote!), but that doesn't mean we can neglect our duties in terms of pointing out the various televisual masterpieces we think are worthy of your viewing hours today.

Perhaps "masterpiece" is stretching it in this case, but this is a fine idea nonetheless: since Saturday night is just all wrong without some kind of big competitive shiny floor show (you'll note here that we're completely ignoring the existence of The One and Only, which we think is best for everyone), ITV have decided that, in lieu of the actual Dancing on Ice show, which is now on Sundays, there will be a spinoff, which will be equal parts behind-the-scenes preview and competition for amateur skaters to take part in next year's show. (Note: the second Strictly Come Dancing does any kind of stunt like this, we are so there.)

How exciting! But how will it all work? And what will they actually do? Buggered if we know, but we daresay we'll be tuning in to find out...

Labels: Dancing on Ice, ITV1, TV

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Friday, January 18, 2008

Vera ache

WEATHERFIELD GAZETTE DEATH NOTICES

DUCKWORTH
On 18th January 2008, suddenly at home, Veronica (Vera) Duckworth, aged 69 years, of 9 Coronation St, Weatherfield. Beloved wife of Jack, mother of Terence. Also missed by grandchildren Paul, Tommy and Brad, second cousin once-removed HM The Queen and family, Tyrone and Molly. Also missed by friends and neighbours. Funeral Service to be announced later. No flowers.


WEATHERFIELD GAZETTE CLASSIFIEDS

FOR SALE
Massage chair. One previous owner. Good for aches, pains. Other benefits included. May require a little rewiring depending on what happens tonight. Tel: 0161 715 8436

David


My formative years coincided with Vera's classic tight perm and nylon tabard phase of the 1980s, so inevitably during that time she became something of a second mother to me. Whether deciding on a tasteful façade for the home, dealing with wayward menfolk and their video dating tomfoolery, or overseeing the sale of grandchildren, Vera has been a constant source of inspiration. She even made stitching denim in a borderline-sweatshop seem fun. So in tribute I'll be spending Friday wearing a headscarf, clockwatching and gossiping non-stop. Vera, peace be with you on your journey to the Baldwin's Casuals factory in the sky and enjoy an eternity of nattering with Ivy.

Kellie


Far be it from me to sully the good name of Veronica Duckworth by bringing petty crime into the equation, but my abiding memory of Vera will always be the time when, during a period of severe poverty, she attempted to steal some desperately-needed nappies from Bettabuys by hiding them in the bottom of little Tommy's pram. She was stopped before leaving the store by friend, neighbour and supermarket manager Curly Watts, who promptly found himself in trouble for not waiting until she had left the store and actually stolen the nappies, and instead accosting her at the checkout when all they could do was accuse her of intending to steal. An unpleasant story, perhaps, but I think it speaks volumes about the high esteem in which everyone held Vera, that people would be willing to jeopardise their jobs, their careers even, to protect her from coming to any harm. It's a shame no one could do anything to save her from whatever fate she is set to suffer tonight. May her soul rest in peace.

Steve


The Great Illumination sleeps
The best that Blackpool never had
In Weatherfield, the pigeons weep
For walls of blue and yellow clad

Her spirit lit up every scene
As denim-stitch or publican
As bastard cousin of the Queen
Or keeper of Roy's frying pan

O Vera! Hear the pigeons roar
The kettle hiss and barrel thunder
Ascending to God's factory floor
Of light and love and Northern wonder

These cobbled streets have lost a great 'un
But know this as your train departs:
Your kidney lives on in Paul Clayton
As you live on in all our hearts.

Nick

Labels: Coronation Street, ITV1, soap death, TV

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Sunday, January 13, 2008

Sunday: the new black

MULTIPLE CHOICE! Lots of Shows, Lots of Channels, Lots of Times

Oh, the life of a member of team lowculture. You wait days for something interesting to write about, and then suddenly a whole bunch of shows come along at once. Tonight sees a veritable feats of LC-tastic telly, so much so that we're doing a bumper preview, the like of which hasn't been since here since, ooh, Christmas and New Year.

First off the blocks today (and possibly the most highly anticipated on the forums, not least for traditional sweepstake shenanigans) is Dancing on Ice, on ITV1 at 5:50 and 8:50pm. Much has been made of this appearing on a Saturday night, apparently too scared of The One and Only, but maybe ITV just thought if they slung this on the same night as TV Burp and Primeval, there'd be nothing left for the rest of the week.

Anyway, even if you haven't watched this before, exciting reasons to pay attention: 1) The judges have been joined by Ruthie Henshall, which gives this more credibility than it has ever had thus far; 2) The contestants include Suzanne Shaw, Tim Vincent, Samantha Mumba, Steve Backley and SARAH GREENE (who we wish could have done Strictly Come Dancing, but seeing as this teams her back up with Pip Schofield, we don't mind too much); 3) Some of the LC community have set up Bitching on Ice, a commentary blog, which will make it worth it even if the show itself proves to be less than ace.

After this (or rather, during the last ten minutes of filler), you should turn your attention to BBC1 at 7:40pm, where Lark Rise to Candleford continues the channel's current period drama obession. This is made all the more watchable because it features LC faves Liz Smith, Julia Sawhalha (fresh out of Cranford), Mark Heap, Dawn French, and, in a starring role, Olivia Hallinan. Frocks, hairdos and maybe even the odd bonnet - what more could you want on a Sunday night?

Well, you may be torn, because opposite this at 8pm on Channel 4 is the terrestrial premiere of The Phantom of the Opera. Addmittedly it's not all that great, and it shows up the flimsiness of the musical's plot in a way the stage version can almost camoflauge. But the songs! And after recent episodes of The X Factor and When Joseph Met Maria we will always now be replayng this in our heads with a starring cast of Lee Mead, Connie Fisher and Rhydian Roberts, something Andrew Lloyd Webber is no doubt working very hard to make happen as we speak.

And the TV goods keep on coming. On BBC2 at 9pm, we see the latest in Louis Theroux' occasional series of documentaries, Louis Theroux: Behind Bars. We have much enjoyed his recent documantaries on cults, gambling and liposuction, and his time in San Quentin prison promises to be just as entertaining, illuminating, challenging and heatbreaking. If you fancy something a little more cosy, then 9:20pm on ITV1 brings you the new series of Kingdom. We have never watched this, but it stars Stephen Fry, so it's probably a fairly safe bet. And if all you want is a bit of fairly average but occasionally amusing comedy, BBC3 brings you yet another series of Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps at 9pm. We have never seen a full series of this, only ever the occasional episode on BBC3 when there was nothing else on, so our understanding of the show's timeline is completely skew-whiff. We expect to watch the new series in much the same manner.

Still not enough for you? Well, More4 repeats the surprisingly touching Half Ton Mum at 10pm, BBC1 screens episode 2 of Damages at 10:30pm, BBC2 features the opening weekend of Liverpool 08 at 10:45pm and Channel 4 has a profile of Robyn at 12:35am.

Never let it be said that you're not spoiled for choice, people.

Labels: BBC1, BBC2, BBC3, Channel 4, Damages, Dancing on Ice, Half Ton Mum, ITV1, Kingdom, Lark Rise, Liverpool 08, Louis Theroux, Phantom of the Opera, Robyn, Two Pints

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Saturday, January 12, 2008

Prime(val) suspect

META! Harry Hill's TV Burp, ITV1, 6.30pm

Christmas can be a traumatic time in many ways, but by far the worst experience we had to endure over the festive season was getting back to London only to find our TiFaux had steadfastly refused to record almost everything we'd asked it to - including the seasonal special of Harry Hill's TV Burp. To be looking forward to something for so long, and then to be denied, it's...well, it's not very nice, let's put it that way.

In light of which, we're extremely grateful to the sympathetic types at ITV who've seen fit to start the new series today, so at least we have new episodes to watch. Hooray! As well as all of the regular features we've come to know and love, including the pre-ad break "FIGHT!", the TV Highlight of the Week, and the random TV personality coming on at the end to sing a song, we gather we can expect a look over TV not just from the past week, but since the end of last series. Quite how they're planning to squeeze that into 30 minutes without having some kind of early-90s type moment where it's all played at lightning speed for us to rewatch later using a freeze-frame function, we're not sure. Either way, we can't wait to see what he made of The X Factor. Welcome back, Harry. Please never leave us again.

DINOSAURS! Primeval, ITV1, 7.00pm

People may be cock-a-hoop wherever you look on the internet right now over the return of Torchwood later this week, but we're just as excited about the return of slightly wonky but entirely loveable ITV sci-fi effort Primeval, which was most notable in its first series for endless gratuitous sequences of Hannah Spearritt dancing around in her underwear, and the general sense you got as a viewer that perhaps the show's "anomalies" (rips in the fabric of time) were meant to represent the gigantic plot holes that cropped up at least once per episode.

We started off sneering at it, admittedly, but we grew quite fond of it as the series went on. Sure, it had its flaws (and let's be honest, here: show us a genre series that doesn't), but it had a properly good yarn at the centre of it, which counts for more than you might think. We were left on a cliffhanger where dashing team leader Nick Cutter emerged from one of the anomalies only to discover that the world he was returning to had changed, perhaps forever. Presumably we'll be picking that thread up where it dropped off, and revisiting the time-honoured themes of dinosaurs rampaging in heavily urbanised areas, and sexy scientists toting large amounts of weaponry. Ahh, good times.

Labels: Harry Hill's TV Burp, ITV1, Primeval, TV

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Thursday, January 10, 2008

Stir of Echoes

SOAP! Moving Wallpaper/Echo Beach, ITV1, 9.00/9.30pm

It is no exaggeration when we say we have been excited about these shows FOREVER. Okay, maybe it's a little bit of an exaggeration, but we've been excited about them since they were first announced, which feels like a lifetime. It had better have been worth the wait. Echo Beach is supposed to be ITV's new soap, although the fact that the initial run is only 12 episodes somewhat belies that. Soapy drama, possibly, but there's no fun in having a soap with a set end point, if you ask us.

Anyway, it's so high-concept it almost hurts: Moving Wallpaper is set behind-the-scenes of a show called Echo Beach, following the exploits of a fictional production team lead by Ben Miller, who are all busting their figurative balls to create the best soap in town (geek fact: it's all based on Tony Jordan's real life experience of working on EastEnders). We then get to see the result in Echo Beach, presented in a programme in its own right, immediately afterwards. From what we gather, you can watch the latter without the former and things will still make sense, but to get any joy out of the former you really need to watch the latter. A bold move, and demanding a certain amount of viewer loyalty, but we admire their bravery.

When we first heard about it, Moving Wallpaper was planned as an ITV2 companion-type show, so the fact that it's now on the main channel and serving as a lead-in suggests ITV have got a lot of faith in this concept, which pleases us. We also love high-concept soap operas, and have never quite recovered from the loss of Night and Day, so we should be squarely in the target audience for this, and we really, really want it to work. Even if Martine McCutcheon is in it. But then again, Susie Amy is in both shows, playing herself as a casting-couch straddling strumpet (as "Suzie Amy", apparently) in Moving Wallpaper, which sounds a lot of fun. Please, gods of television. Let this be as amazing as we dreamed it would be.

Labels: Echo Beach, ITV1, Moving Wallpaper, Soap, TV

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Wednesday, January 09, 2008

We've had our Phil

HOUSING! Relocation, Relocation, Channel 4, 8.00pm

As painful as this is to admit, the appeal of all of these property formats is starting to wear thin, since we've calculated that the price of the average house these days means we're unlikely to set foot on the property ladder until approximately 2034, and that's assuming the prices don't go up in the meantime. So forgive us if we're not all that excited by the prospect of watching a bunch of gratingly wealthy bastards look for a four bedroom detached house with a small forest out back for the children to play in and at least fifty miles away from any traffic noise. We'd almost rather watch ITV2 rerun the most allegedly lolworthy auditions from The X Factor for the ninety billionth time since Christmas. Almost.

Anyway, no matter how angry we may be at the housing market, we will always hold a soft spot for the eternally put-upon Phil and Kirstie, who have to spend a lot more time watching these people scratch their chins over precisely where to spend their £500k than we'll ever have to. True to form, tonight's show involves a couple who are looking to relocate to Devon, having both got new jobs and sold their previous home for a tidy profit. We will probably spend the majority of the show screaming "fuck off!" and throwing cream buns at the television, unless these people turn out to be particularly likeable. Which might actually make things worse.

CROOKS! Honest, ITV1, 9.00pm

This is not, we are almost certain, a TV adaptation of the 2000 film starring three-quarters of All Saints, directed by Dave Stewart, although it reminded us of it sufficiently to make us add it to our list on lovefilm to see if it really was as bad as everyone said it was (and before anyone asks, no we're not getting paid to link to that site. Honest). Instead it stars ITV's go-to matriarch Amanda Redman as the head of a family of crooks attempting to go straight. Hilarity ensues, we assume.

It'll be interesting to see how this one pans out, actually. Somewhat predictably, our heads have gone straight to At Home With The Braithwaites, and if it's as cheerfully deranged as that was, we'll probably love it. If it's all earnest and gritty, we might not. But we'll see how the first episode goes, and take it from there. Come back and ask us again in a couple of weeks, at which point it'll either be our new favourite programme, or we'll have forgotten it ever existed.

Labels: Channel 4, Honest, ITV1, Relocation Relocation, TV

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Sunday, December 30, 2007

Big Fat Last Sunday of the Year

WIZARDRY! JK Rowling: A Year in the Life, ITV1, 7pm

QUIZARDRY! The Big Fat Quiz of the Year, Channel 4, 9pm
We have to say, in terms of books, 2007 was a disappointment. We didn't much rate the latest by Nick Horby, Alice Sebold or Armistead Maupin and we are still on the waiting list at the library for this year's Booker winner. Perhaps everyone else was too scared of the competition of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which at the time, felt like an event akin to the second coming. Or at least Kylie Who. Although now the moment has passed it's easy to forget all the fuss, as it feels so long ago (much like Christmas, really). The book itself created one of the biggest ever sweepy wins on the forums (because there were so many deaths, although not Neville, which we feel a bit cheated by as we were sure he was a dead cert) and a fairly mixed response, although we loved it.

Anyway, in a crowd pleasing move, ITV is giving us a fly on the wall documentary of JK Rowling's life as she finishes book seven, gets it published, is asked a billion times what she will do next, and outs Dumbledore. We don't imagine we'll get to see her reaction to not being made a Dame in the New Year's Honours, when Jacqueline Wilson was, though. Shame.

Whilst we are mentioning kids' books (or sort of), a quick nod to The Shadow in the North at 8:55pm on BBC1. Starring Billie Piper, it's the second adaptation of Philip Pullman's Sally Lockhart books. But we haven't read any of them, nor did we watch the first part last year, and a quick trawl of the forums shows no-one else seems to have, either. Still, it's there if you want it, and we know a few of you love some costume drama action.

The main event of the evening, and the one which will no doubt lead to the last mass drinking session in the chat room of 2007, is the annual Big Fat Quiz of the Year, where the token non-comedian, non-man this year is Lily Allen (we said it at Comic Relief, we'll say it again, there are plenty of female comedians out there, you know. Give some of them some work!), joining David Mitchell, Jonathan Ross, Rob Brydon, Noel Fielding and Russell Brand (wot no Myleene Klass, John Barrowman or Adrian Chiles?). We loved Noel and Russell on this last year, although they hadn't been on our screens as non-stop as they have been this year, so it remains to be seen if they are endearing again this time round, or if they've become annoying.

Nonetheless, this show always produces loads of laughs and is also a bit easier than the nasty quizzes you get in the newspapers at this time of year, of which we can only answer about 5%, so it helps us feel a bit superior.

This is followed at 11:05 by a repeat of the last episode of series 4 of Shameless in preparation for the new series, which starts on the 1st. Join us tomorrow as we preview it in our Old Year/New Year double bumper edition...

Labels: Big fat quiz of the year, Channel 4, Harry Potter, ITV1, jk rowling, shadow in the north, Shameless

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Saturday, December 15, 2007

Your vote can make a Difference

FINALLY OVER! The X Factor, ITV1, 7.15pm

Oh, X Factor. Where did it all go wrong? This year you were the show that was talked about for all the wrong reasons, what with the vast majority of the acts that made it to the top 12 being utterly, irredeemably shit, the complete over-reliance on sob stories about people's fathers WHO ARE DEAD instead of contestants who can sing, knife-wielding zombie teenagers wearing blazers and berets, Sharon Osbourne throwing a strop at the end of the first live show because two of her acts were in the bottom two, Dermot O'Leary being utterly appalling at filling for time during the live shows, Sharon and Louis ganging up on Dannii Minogue like the nasty bitchy little children that they are...somewhere in the middle of all this ridiculously contrived "drama" you lost sight of the goal: to produce an entertaining show that actually finds a decent new pop act. Is it really any wonder people got bored and devoted their viewing loyalties to Strictly Come Dancing instead?

We've lost a lot of acts along the way, most of them barely memorable: brassy barmaid Kimberley was the victim of ITV's schedulers in the first episode after they moved the start time fifteen minutes earlier, meaning that most people switched on after her performance; then DILF Daniel got booted after a disastrous rendition of 'Build Me Up Buttercup'. Then the planned double-elimination got cancelled after Zombie Emily was discovered to be some kind of YouTube terrorist (and this from a girl WHO WAS BRIEFLY DEAD and therefore ought to know only too well the value of human existence) and withdrew from the show, then Futureproof lost the battle of the hastily-assembled-at-boot-camp bands against Hope. At this stage new girl Dannii, who according to Louis and Sharon knows absolutely nothing about the music industry and has never ever never had a hit record and has only just learned how to walk upright and has yet to be weaned onto solid foods, was the only judge with all of her acts left, so weepy Asbestos Andy was the next one to get booted after leaving it far too late to flash his washboard stomach at us. After that it was the turn of longterm bottom-two dweller Alisha to go home, the victim of one of nitwit Brian Friedman's many misfires of "creative" "direction". Following her was the booting off of Bellowing Beverley, much to the chagrin of mentor Louis Walsh, who clearly didn't receive the memo that the obligatory fat black woman never wins, or indeed the memo that she was rubbish and no loss whatsoever to the music industry.

Amidst rumours of backstage squabbles, and possibly because of the fact that only one of them could sing, girl group Hope were the next to go, and then in the sweetest of all possible eliminations right before the final, Niki (WHOSE DAD IS DEAD) got the boot after the public finally realised that Louis Walsh saying she was a brilliant and talented singer =/= her actually being a brilliant and talented singer. Farewell, you humourless old boot. Please take some time out to study the limitations of your voice; it'll be better for everyone that way.

This leaves us with three acts remaining to fight it out for the title, the first of which is Leon, this year's obligatory Jazz Twat, who is unspeakably dreadful, has absolutely no charisma, is of negligable talent and yet has never once been in the bottom two. Voting public, we do not understand you. It was bad enough that Ray came second last year, for the love of all that is holy. Alongside Leon in Dannii's category is Rhydian, the cavernous-lunged classically-trained singer with Max Headroom hair, who turned out to be quite a sweet bloke despite first impressions, but has been somewhat sandbagged by some uninspired song choices. He's the favourite to win, but we must ask ourselves: does the world need any more "popera" artists? Indeed, did we ever need any in the first place? We suspect not. Which leaves us with lowculture favourites Same Difference, a brother-and-sister duo from Portsmouth who are constantly cheerful, always watchable, and most importantly despised by Louis Walsh. Therefore a vote for Same Difference is a metaphorical kick in the teeth for that clueless grey git at the end of the table who couldn't win a battle of wits with an armchair.

Here, just to prove why they must win, is Same Difference performing the Scissor Sisters' 'I Don't Feel Like Dancing' in the fourth week of the competition:


Tonight, each act will sing a Christmas song, their favourite song from previous weeks in the competition, and a duet with a special guest star. Not that any of this matters, because whatever happens you should vote for Same Difference. Same Difference, Same Difference, Same Difference. We really cannot stress this enough. And if they don't win tonight, we'll probably be co-ordinating some kind of sabotage campaign on Monday to get everyone to download Mariah Carey's 'All I Want For Christmas Is You' to stop the winner getting the Christmas No.1.

Remember: every time you vote for Same Difference, Louis Walsh dies a little inside. We can think of no better incentive. (And if we can drop a shameless plug in, the team over at The Bitch Factor will be doing a live blog during both shows tonight, and imbibing dangerous amounts of vodka just to get through the evening.)

Labels: ITV1, reality TV, The X Factor, TV

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Thursday, December 06, 2007

They're Bringing Sex(y)Back

FILTH! How to Get More Sex, ITV1, 10pm

Now, we're not suggesting anyone at LC would need the advice of this show at all, but you might have a 'friend' who does, eh? Nudge, nudge, wink, wink... OK, so that was a little lowbrow, even for us. But this IS an ITV1 show we are talking about, remember?

Anyway, this latest offering promises to delve into the mysteries of what makes people sexually attractive, and answering all the important (ie cliched) questions, such as 'does size matter'? But this show is not about cheap titillation! Oh no! It has proper sciencey bits and everything. It even has a few renta-experts to prove it: Professor Richard Wiseman, a renowned, er, professor and, umm magician. You know him from such shows as BodyShock and Horizon (although we're fairly sure he's been on some less intellectual stuff than that. After all, we recognise him, so he must have been), Dr Jack Lewis (who looks exactly like the one of Dick and Dom with the brown spiky hair, so we don't believe he is an actual doctor) and 'relationships expert' Tracey Cox (who is dragged out on any programme with a vague lifestyle/health/sex/people fighting emphasis).

Tonight's episode features a serious. scientific. experiment. involving some celebrities sniffing T-shirts with the pheremones of men, women and pigs on to see which they find most attractive (errr). And guess who one of the celebs is? Only Myleene Klass! We expect John Barrowman to also turn up later in the series seeing as the two of them obviously have some bet going as to whether they can each appear on every TV show broadcast in the year 2007 (and a few adverts too for good measure).

Let's just hope we don't also see Owen from Torchwood or Sam from Hollyoaks turning up. We know what their way of getting more sex is...

Labels: How to Get More Sex, ITV1, Tracey Cox

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Friday, November 30, 2007

Jungle Boogie

Labels: Christopher Biggins, I'm a Celebrity, ITV1, Janice Dickinson

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Saturday, November 24, 2007

Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting

Labels: BBC1, ITV1, Strictly Come Dancing, The X Factor

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Tuesday, November 13, 2007

What the well-dressed man is wearing

MASCULINE! Trinny and Susannah Undress the Nation, ITV1, 8.00pm

What the fark is this? It's political correctness gone mad, we tell you. Trinny and Susannah have, in their quest to get the entire nation looking immaculately groomed, given over an entire show to making sure that men know what they should be wearing. Men! Do they even know what they're getting themselves into? Do they not realise there'll be no naked boobs to grab? (Well, there might be, depending on the men in question.) What kind of fuckery is this?

Actually, it's not really that great a change, since they've been dealing with both genders on Trinny and Susannah Undress..., but it's interesting to see a show solely dedicated to showing men how to dress themselves, since they don't seem to get made as much. Not since Queer Eye for the Straight Guy went out of vogue, anyway. We've just been left to fend for ourselves, picking up our style tips from Ugly Betty and anything hosted by Ryan Seacrest.

But no more! Those of us who are still such fashion disasters that we pronounce "Versace" the way that Elizabeth Berkeley's character did in Showgirls have got help at hand in the form of everybody's favourite torso-touching ladies, who are introducing a dress code for men, so we'll all know the difference between a "brava!" and a faux pas. Of course, we watched Mean Girls again this weekend, so we know the rules: on Wednesdays we wear pink, we only wear jeans or track pants on a Friday, and we only put our hair in a ponytail once a week. We are so fetch.

Labels: ITV1, Trinny and Susannah Undress, TV

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Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Hallowedding

TRICK? Coronation Street, ITV1, 7.30pm
TREAT! Drop Dead Gorgeous, BBC3, 9.00pm

Pumpkins! Satanic overtones! Stupid costumes! Going begging from door to door! Something about All Hallow's Eve brings out the romantic in Weatherfield residents, and who can blame them? It's two years to the day since Jason ditched Lovely Violet at Les and Cilla's shambolic wedding reception and threw it up Sarah, and the fairly happy, quite stupid couple are having a second crack at tying the knot. This being Halloween (and Coronation Street), there's at least one obstacle to the couple's long-term happiness in the shape of David, Sarah's demonic half-brother. Having been banished to the shadows after two years of increasingly sociopathic behaviour, culminating in the accidental poisoning of his wind-up niece with ecstasy tablets, resentful David's attempts to sabotage the occasion have left Jason on crutches and the feuding Platts and Grimshaws on better terms than they have been for years. With his father apparently uninterested (when IS Martin going to get dragged back into a David storyline?), his mother and sister refusing to let him near the wedding, and his serial killing dead stepdad doing the voiceover on the trailer for tonight's episode (nice touch!), David looks set to do something rash.

So, Monday saw Sarah destroy David's suicide note, firmly convinced of his ability for world class manipulation and certain that it was just another trick to ruin her big day. But, look! There's two people in fluorescent jackets at the church, and they're not the ushers (we assume), so something must be up. Possibly involving witchcraft or, at the very least, David's car and one of Salford's beautiful canal basins. Whatever the outcome of tonight's hour-long special, we can only hope that all involved will learn from their mistakes/trauma, take stock and grow into better people. Will Sarah learn to be sympathetic to her brother's problems? Will David learn to stop terrorising his family and being endearingly surly and offhand with the rest of the Street? Will they fuck. You've turned out two diamond kids there, Gail. Well, they can't all be Rickitts.

Further matrimonial delights are to be had over on BBC3 where, true to the spirit of the channel, a repeat run of the brilliant second series of Drop Dead Gorgeous starts barely a week after it finished. Murray's glittering civil partnership ceremony kicks off six turbulent weeks of sex, jealousy, knicker theft, death, deception, dognapping, relocation and, yes, more sibling rivalry for teenage model Ashley Webb, her supremely dysfunctional family and their friends. While blessed with a fantastic cast in the central roles (including Corrie alumni Lee Boardman and Kathryn Hunt as bitchy agent Murray and desperately capable matriarch Pauline), the second series' crowning glory is the subtle, touching relationship that develops between school canteen manager Val and sensitive headmaster Howard. Worth sticking with for six weeks just for their heartrending (yes, our heart really was rended/rent) scenes in the finale. And Murray's 'special relationship' with Ashley's nan, obviously. Bless!

Labels: BBC3, Coronation Street, Drop Dead Gorgeous, Halloween, horny orange teenage sociopaths, ITV1, soap weddings, TV

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Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Allow us to be frank

MONSTER! Frankenstein, ITV1, 9.00pm

We're not normally the sort to sit around making allusions of the approximate level of a someone taking a GCSE English paper, but a change is as good as a rest, we say: in the original novel of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Victor pieces together a creature from offcuts of human flesh only to discover that it is not quite the sum of its parts and is in fact rather misshapen, ugly and volatile. Which is sort of what happens here, in this updating of the classic novel for a modern setting: some interesting ideas are thrown in, but the result is lumpy and unsatisfying.

There's an impressive cast list, to be sure (Helen McCrory, Lindsay Duncan, Neil Pearson, James Purefoy...and that's without even mentioning that it was written and directed by Jed Mercurio of Cardiac Arrest and Bodies fame) and the update works hard to be topical: Dr Victoria Frankenstein is working on stem-cell research in an attempt to grow a working human heart, because she has a desperately ill child who's a long way down the transplant list. While her attempts to save her son are unsuccessful, she does manage to grow a heart, and then figures why not try harvesting an entire human body's worth of organs, and hilarity ensues, obviously.

But for all the attempts to be relevant, it's a shame that it can't resist all the played-out horror clichés: woman is stalked by unseen, possibly malevolent, person while alone in house, random small child is killed by overcuriosity, lots of dimly-lit shots of sewers with the monster snapping necks, and so on. Perhaps with a bit more moderation of these it would've worked better, but in this form it just ends up detracting from any useful points that might've been made. It's still not a bad way to spend 90 minutes of your life, however - like we said, there are some interesting observations buried in there if you care enough to look, and Helen McCrory is great in the lead role - and even if you don't watch any of the rest of it, we strongly advise you to tune in during the final ten minutes for a clearly Bafta-worthy performance from a seagull. We'll say no more.

Labels: Frankenstein, ITV1, TV

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Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Rough trade

SWITCH! Don't Call Me Stupid, ITV1, 10.00pm

The latest in the line of life swapping series, this celebrity version is really managing to scrape the barrel. Still, Germaine Greer is always fun, which is quite a blessing since the woman has never in her life been able to turn down a request to be on television. Tonight she will match wits with Shane Lynch out of Boyzone and panto fame. You might be expecting Germaine to be teaching Shane some of the finer points of feminist theory and in return him giving a lesson on how to deflect blow job offers from pop svengalis. But you would be wrong!

Instead, Shane will have to pass as an expert on the "wild flowers of Essex" and Germaine will be taught Shane's passion for fixing cars. At the end, each will be quizzed on what they have learned and someone is sure to be declared 'less stupider'. We're not betting people, but we did see Germaine on television earlier this summer drafting up plans for Dubai-style skyscrapers on the Cambridge campus. Still, we'll probably end up blubbing over Gavin & Stacey's wedding on BBC3 instead. But good effort, ITV!

Labels: Germaine Greer, ITV1, Shane Lynch, TV

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Monday, September 17, 2007

"What have you been cooking in here? Food?"

COOKING! Hell's Kitchen Final, ITV1, 9.00pm

It's the moment that literally dozens of people have been waiting for - the final of Hell's Kitchen, where we get to see which lucky D-lister gets crowned Least Likely To Crumble In The Face Of Kitchen-Based Adversity, or whatever. They can join the elite ranks of...whoever won the first series. It was a long time ago, wasn't it? Hang on a second...oh, of course! Jennifer Ellison, bless her. How could we have forgotten?

Sadly we've not really been able to keep up with this series (we worked a lot of overtime last week which really cut into our quality TV time), but the always accurate Wikipedia informs us that Adela Silva and Barry McGuigan are the two finalists, so well done to both of them. And of course, no reality show is complete these days without someone being asked to leave for an "oh sorry I didn't realise you weren't allowed to say things like that" comment; on this occasion it was, perhaps unsurprisingly, Jim Davidson, after making various homophobic comments to Brian Dowling. No one could've predicted that, could they? Never mind, we're sure he's learned a valuable lesson from the whole experience and will discover a new appreciation of tolerance for minorities of every sort.

It's not exactly been unmissable telly this time around, but perhaps we've all got cookery fatigue between this and The Restaurant and Nigella with her taxis to Waitrose. But it got Anneka Rice back onto our screens, albeit briefly, and it should be applauded for that if nothing else.

Labels: Hell's Kitchen, ITV1, TV

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Friday, September 14, 2007

So it's come to this: another selection box post

We find ourselves in one of those unfortunate situations where it's 11:57pm on Thursday night and we still haven't really found anything in Friday's TV schedule that compels us to write about it at length. This may be related to our having gotten all giddy earlier today upon learning that Gethin Jones will be taking part in the new series of Strictly Come Dancing and will therefore probably be wearing extremely tight trousers at least once. It was hard to focus on much else after that.

So, with apologies for the lack of focus in this update, let's have a quick flick through the things that you might be tempted by. Living's got a new episode of The L Word at midnight, marking Cybill Shepherd's first appearance as secretly bisexual (whoops! Spoiler!) new character Phyllis. Those of you with a keen interest in sport may be interested in the Rugby World Cup Live coverage on ITV1 from 7.30; those with no particular interest in sport may still just want to stare at the thighs. That's perfectly acceptable.

There's The IT Crowd on Channel 4 at 10.00pm, which rather amused us last week, and new character Ava in Supernatural on ITV1 at 11.00pm is treated to a vision of the future that enables her to see the inside of Sam's guts. We regret to report that his innards are not nearly as pretty as his, um, outers. And it's not tonight, but don't forget that BBC2 is running a catch-up of Heroes from the beginning tomorrow night and Sunday, if anyone's slipped behind.

To conclude, here's a terrifying deleted scene (or part thereof) from High School Musical 2 that we just can't stop watching on YouTube. We think it might be amazing, but we might never reach a definitive conclusion on this one.

Labels: BBC2, Channel 4, Gethin Jones, Heroes, high school musical 2, ITV1, Living, Rugby World Cup, Supernatural, The IT Crowd, The L Word, TV

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Wednesday, September 12, 2007

A date with density

MATCH! Holly and Fearne Go Dating, ITV1, 10.00pm

We meant to write about this last week, but amid all the excitement of BBC4 turning all gay and then our slight technological meltdown, it never quite happened. But still: better late than never, eh? Now, in a slightly embarrassing situation for us, we wrote the preview for this under the impression that this was the new version of our old Channel 4 favourite Streetmate, and the early birds amongst you will have seen a preview to that effect. Apparently, however, this is an entirely different show and the reworking of Streetmate starts in a couple of weeks on ITV2, just with Holly, not with Fearne. Sort of mistake that could have happened to anyone, really. Especially the sort of person who writes these updates a bit blind most of the time, due to not spending as much time in front of the telly these days as we clearly should.

So, moving swiftly on, Fearne Cotton - about whom we will not hear a bad word, despite what you might think of her, so there - and Holly Willoughby have the fate of the UK's singletons in their hands. We can see several of you getting a bit clammy at the very idea, so we shall move on without dwelling on that bit. The format, essentially, involves finding a willing single victim, who then gets a choice of two possible dates, one picked by Holly and one by Fearne, to take to Hell's Kitchen, in a particularly savvy piece of cross-promotion by ITV. Seriously: nice work.

Seems like an affable enough way of passing half an hour. Plus there's the potential for watching two people completely fail to get along on their date and then bitch each other out to the cameras afterwards, which is usually an enticing prospect, isn't it? Now watch as we seamlessly reuse all the stuff we wrote for the original draft of this when the new Streetmate turns up in a few weeks. Waste not, want not, that's always been our motto. That, and "Heather Locklear is our queen", obviously.

Labels: Holly and Fearne Go Dating, ITV1, TV

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Monday, September 03, 2007

The whole kitchen caboodle

FOOD! Nigella Express, BBC2, 8.30pm/Hell's Kitchen, ITV1, 9.00pm

It's a bumper night for foodies tonight and no mistake, with not one but two (count them! Seriously, get a copy of the listings and count them; we'll wait) new shows launching tonight. This is the televisual equivalent of going out for dinner and ordering everything on the menu and even though you know you'll end up feeling all sick and bloated afterwards, you eat it all anyway because you can, dammit. (Our binging habits are almost as attractive as Hannah's on Hollyoaks.)

First up is Nigella's return to cookery, after her ill-received chat show, with Nigella Express. This is essentially that show that's going to make you feel really bad about picking up a ready meal from the supermarket on the way home from work, even though you know that it accounts for 54% of your daily saturated fat intake, because you'd justified it to yourself by claiming you didn't have the time to cook something properly. Not so, says Nigella, whose new series is dedicated to fast food that you can make by yourself in a ridiculously tiny amount of time, assuming of course that your larder is as well-stocked as hers is. As lovely as mustard pork chops with gnocchi sounds, we just don't imagine we have the raw ingredients for that lying around in amongst the congealing bowls of fruit and the various dented tins here at lowculture towers. Not that it matters, of course; we're not meant to attempt to copy this at home. In fact, we're surprised this show doesn't start with a disclaimer of that nature. Just sit back and enjoy watching someone else being utterly brilliant in the kitchen and try not to think about your own failings.

And when Nigella's lulled you into a nice sense of calm, flick over to ITV1 for the return of Hell's Kitchen, which has decided to erase all of the changes made to the second series from your mind in exactly the same way that we all know that Shannen Doherty was never really on Charmed, and that Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia. So we're back to celebrity (insert your own inverted commas there if you feel the need) contestants, and since Gordon Ramsey has a golden handcuffs deal with Channel 4, Marco Pierre White will be taking over. We thought he was doing The Restaurant, but apparently that's Raymond Blanc. They all look the same after a while, don't they? Anyway, you all know the format - people try to cope in a kitchen, and get yelled at and probably burn themselves a bit. The list of contestants is a tad uninspiring, but here's hoping Anneka Rice lasts the distance, eh?

Labels: BBC2, Hell's Kitchen, ITV1, Nigella Express, TV

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Monday, August 13, 2007

Do not adjust your internet

CHAT! That Antony Cotton Show, ITV1, 5.00pm

Well, possibly just a little bit. This isn't going to be a traditional lowculture puff piece where we babble on, ostensibly knowing all about a programme that we haven't actually seen yet and exhorting you all to watch it. This is one of our lesser-known, brows furrowed, Marge Simpson-esque "hmmmmmmmm" moments where we babble on about the fact that we don't quite know what to make of something, but have our suspicions that it's going to be quite shit.

Last week a friend of ours sent us a brilliant e-mail meme originating from the ITV audience duty logs, from a person claiming to having been in the audience at the filming of the pilot for this series. We'd dearly love to repost the entire thing here, but our keen desire to not get our firm bottoms sued from here to San Francisco prevents that, so we shall instead point out that it was long, waspish and contained the sort of language that would make Quentin Tarantino squeal and cover his ears. Suffice to say, said member of said audience was unimpressed.

That's really all we have to go on at this stage, beyond the predictably camp trailers and the twee "That" at the start of the title, presumably carrying on the fine tradition of That 70s Show, That Gay Show, That Mitchell and Webb Look and "that bitch with the cheap hairdo is giving me evils". Previous attempts by ITV to recuperate the loss of Paul O'Grady to Channel 4 have included the lamentable Sharon Osbourne Show, and this will have to work hard to be worse than that. We wouldn't rule it out, mind. Early feedback from the boards has not been favourable either; particularly noteworthy was David Hunter's observation that the member of the Coronation Street cast most deserving of their own chatshow is clearly Blanche. The campaign starts here.

Labels: ITV1, That Antony Cotton Show, TV

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Monday, August 06, 2007

"Turmeric and Cinnamon" didn't have the same ring to it

HORTICULTURAL! Rosemary and Thyme, ITV1, 9.00pm

We just can't take this show seriously any more after seeing the delightfully deranged French and Saunders spoof of it a few years back:


Actually, that's not strictly fair, since it's not like we ever took this show seriously in the first place. It is, after all, about a pair of gardeners who dabble in amateur crime-solving, who just happen to have "Rosemary" and "Thyme" as part of their puntastic names. It's a good job that Felicity Kendal and Pam Ferris had the sense to play the whole thing with their tongues superglued to their cheeks, otherwise the whole precarious pack of cards would've toppled right over.

We weren't expecting to see any new episodes of this fabulously silly show since ITV announced its cancellation over a year ago, but for reasons best known to the independent television suits, two episodes from the third series were left unaired and have found their way into the schedule - this, as far as we can tell, being the last one ever. And to make things even better, it's a plotline that we remember being done very similarly in Midsomer Murders, where a fake death in a stage play turns out to be surprisingly real. Is there foul play afoot? You bet your priceless orchids. We're going to miss this, in a weird sort of way.

Labels: ITV1, Rosemary and Thyme, TV

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Friday, August 03, 2007

Oops...we did it again

We really have to apologise for our disgracefully unprofessional behaviour this week, since this is the second time that we've ended up gallivanting down the pub in the evening instead of writing our previews. If it helps at all, we had a lovely time and are now slightly inebriated, and to top it all off, we're still here writing this in the wee small hours before we go to bed, such is our devotion to you. We love you guys. Awwww. But that might be the drink talking.

So, given that we're a bit on-the-hoof again due to our lack of preparation, but also because there's frankly bollock-all worth discussing at length on tonight's telly, we're going to do a Bambi-esque gambol through various programmes at speed again, just like we did on Tuesday. It's kind of more fun this way, actually, but we'll try not to get too reliant on this as a fallback all the same. First of all, on behalf of our lovely flatmate, we're going to recommend The Shield on Five at 11pm, because it's one of her favourite shows. This may or may not be related to the broadness of Vic Mackey's shoulders and arms, but we don't know for sure; you'll have to ask her yourselves. For those of you who like your cop shows gritty, look no further, because everyone in this reeks of Eau de Corruption, and it's all the more fantastic for it. This week, the Strike Team find their position compromised by the death of a city official's daughter. We assume that the kicking of asses and the taking of names will follow shortly.

Elsewhere, there's a new Star Stories on C4 at 9.30pm, delivering a spoof on the irrepressible Tom Cruise (and on that subject, what the hell is up with Katie Holmes this days? Why does she dress like a fifty-year-old? If you know, please explain that to us), which should be good for a laugh. BBC2's got a new series of Grumpy Old Women at 10pm, and just because we can, we're going to invite you to watch our guilty pleasure: Supernatural on ITV1 at 11.00pm, where the unspeakably beautiful Sam and Dean Winchester deal with a necromancer, while angsting prettily about their unresolved daddy issues in their spare time.

That's it, then. Apologies for the brevity, and we'll see you back here on Monday, with freshly-ironed clothes and newly-polished shoes, as is our custom. Have a lovely weekend!

Labels: BBC2, Channel 4, Five, Grumpy Old Women, ITV1, Star Stories, Supernatural, The Shield, TV

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Thursday, June 21, 2007

Resort to violence

FIGHT! Holiday Showdown Extreme, ITV1, 9.00pm

Now this is a bit more like it. Forget all those reality shows where they claim to have some kind of grander purpose which belies the fact that the ultimate point of the show is for the contestants to have the biggest scrap possible; this one is clearly out for blood and doesn't really care who knows it. Such honesty in "factual entertainment" programming is refreshing, it really is.

We're not entirely sure whether the "extreme" in the title refers to the type of holiday or the resulting fight, but we've got our fingers crossed for the latter. There's certainly an extreme element to one of the holidays, which apparently is a CHRISTMAS extreme sports holiday (we shit you not), involving rising at the crack of dawn and bobsledding across mountains or something, and having an alternative Christmas dinner of gruel and wild berries. We may have exaggerated the details slightly, but you get the general idea. Oh, and the swap family loves Disneyland and hates exercise, so this is obviously going to work out brilliantly.

There's not really a lot else we need to say at this point, is there? They swap holidays, there are tears and tantrums, and then at the final night dinner there's bound to be an unholy argument. Job's a good'un.

Labels: Holiday Showdown Extreme, ITV1, TV

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Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Like no business we know

BUSINESS! Tycoon, ITV1, 9.00pm

Hmm, how convenient. Just when everyone's looking for something to fill that Apprentice-shaped hole in their lives (and if you're us, rallying against the injustice that was Kristina's rejection), along comes ITV's very own piece of entreprenuerial-type programming - fronted by Dragons' Den's Peter Jones, taking the surely foolhardy step of offering to bankroll seven would-be tycoons while they hone a product that they believe will revolutionise the market. Y'know, if he's throwing cash around, there's some old Melrose Place merchandise on ebay that we'd really...not the right time? Okay, fine.

The inventions range from a range of upmarket urban gardening products to a free newspaper for teenagers. And because this is reality TV, all of the hopefuls have to live together and work together, presumably in claustrophobically close quarters in the hope that their short tempers will fray and there'll be some kind of beatdown. Because, to be honest, as much as we might want to believe we're watching it out of a genuine interest in business, really most of us just want to see a scrap.

And just to complete the business-viewing experience, former would-be Apprentice Syed Ahmed gets his own show on Sky One afterwards at 10pm, following his attempts to flog a revolutionary "warm-air dryer" which will make towels a thing of the past, drastically reduce the need for dry cleaning at gyms and stuff, and thereby save the world from a chemically-induced death or something. At least, it will if he can make a success of it, and we all saw last year that his business skills can be a little rough around the edges at times, and that's putting it politely. Sounds like a good evening, anyway.

Labels: ITV1, Sky One, Syed Ahmed - Hot Air, TV, Tycoon

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Monday, June 18, 2007

Coma chameleon

COMA! The Time Of Your Life, ITV1, 9.00pm

Neiiiiiigh! Why, is that the High-Concept Pony cantering past to pay us another visit? Yes, we do believe it is. Fortunately we love a good bit of rather implausible drama, so we always look forward to the pony trotting past. See if you can swallow this: Kate has been in a coma, in rather mysterious circumstances, for the past 18 years - since her 18th birthday, in fact. Most people have given up the idea of her regaining consciousness, but it just so happens that she defies the odds and wakes up at the age of 36, baffled by the modern world, thrown by the fact that her friends have all grown up and lived their lives without her, and trying to piece together what happened to put her in the coma in the first place.

Sounds awesome, doesn't it? Frankly if it's even half as bonkers as the premise sounds, we're sold. In fact, we particularly like the fact that in the publicity for the show the writer basically admitted that he researched the medical effects of people who wake up after comas of this length, discovered that they generally have a fair few medical problems to overcome, often including relearning fundamental human skills like how to speak, and decided that this would make quite boring telly, and so decided to completely ignore the reality and just focus on the interesting bits, like being an 18 year old trapped in the body of someone twice your age who still wants to go bumming round India for a year at an age when you're meant to be acting responsibly. Quite right too.

Lots of very lovely and starry names in the cast, not limited to Geraldine James, Genevieve O'Reilly, Victoria Hamilton (we LOVE her) and the never-less-than-watchable Olivia Colman. It's a six-parter, and with dramas of this nature there's always the risk that it might go completely down the shitter about halfway through, but frankly it's a risk we're willing to take.

Labels: ITV1, The Time Of Your Life, TV

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Friday, June 15, 2007

Too-loo rye-aye

NEWCOMER! Coronation Street, ITV1, 7.30 & 8.30pm

Well, this should be a lesson to us: we shouldn't leave the updates to write until the last minute, and we definitely shouldn't go out drinking before we do them, because now we're finding it hard to concentrate, and we seem to keep -- oooh, shiny! -- getting distracted. But we will soldier on in the name of half-arsed professionalism and hope that you'll forgive us this minor transgression.

And since we've just come back from checking Amazon to see how cheaply we can get a copy of From Justin to Kelly on DVD (answer: very, although somebody's extremely optimistic in charging £43.54 for a used copy), which rather illustrates our point about a lack of focus, we shall get on with business: chiefly, that of Corrie's Eileen getting a new romantic interest. Hooray! We love Eileen, and not just for that classic berobed catfight with Gail on the cobbles. It's probably a combination of her generous nature, her love of crisps, and the fact that she's usually got a sarcastic put-down for anyone less sharp than she is. We want to be more like her.

Anyway, her love life hasn't exactly been the stuff of a racy airport pulp fiction novel lately; indeed, it's barely been the stuff of a Peter and Jane book. But she's encountered a flirty chap by the name of Pat over the phone while working at Streetcars, and will surely be pleasantly surprised when she meets him in person today and discovers that he's played by Sean Hughes. This does, however, come as a bit of a bummer (not in that sense) to Sinbad, who has romantic designs on Eileen himself. So essentially she's gone from no love life whatsoever to having two men competing for her attention. That's far more like it. Bravo, Eileen.

Labels: Coronation Street, ITV1, Soap, TV

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Thursday, June 14, 2007

Selection box

Frankly we're still in a state of shock over the result of The Apprentice last night, and we're considering boycotting all reality shows that don't involve an entirely democratic public vote that only elects the most deserving people to victory, like, um, Steve Brookstein and Michelle McManus. Anyway, we can't quite get up the enthusiasm to rant at length about one programme, so we're going to talk about a few in slightly shorter form, just for a change.

SOAP! Hollyoaks, Channel 4, 6.30pm
The rape alert is currently at maroon, which means Katy Fox is back in town. We were hoping that she might have been hit by a big red bus while in Television's London and unable to return to Chester to irritate the living shit out of us all with her horrid whiny voice and total inability to act (we've said it before and we'll say it again: when the quality of your acting is so poor that you stick out as a weak link on Hollyoaks, you've really got problems), but no such luck. The good news is that her oh-so-tragic-and-star-crossed love affair with Justin is about to be dealt a blow, because Clare's going to tell Warren all about it and he's going to interrupt their flabby lovemaking to deliver a smackdown. Hooray! We love Clare and her pantomime evil ways. Speaking of star-crossed love, Amy and Josh continue to fight for their tru luv 4 eva, in spite of the crucial facts that (a) he hit her dad on the head with a brick, (b) she's got a child he doesn't know about, and (c) they're both incredibly tedious and no one really gives a shit.

POLICE! The Bill, ITV1, 8.00pm
Simon? Really? Okay, fine, we're going to let it go now. Special mention to The Bill today as former This Life-er Amita Dhiri joins the cast as DC Grace Dasari, a part which was apparently written specially for her, which must be nice. She's thrown in at the deep end nice and quickly to help Mickey on the case of a woman trying to find her son, who's been missing for 11 years. We're assuming they've already checked outside the sweet shop where she left him.

COMEDY! My Name Is Earl, Channel 4, 10.00pm
It's been kicked around the schedules like a redheaded stepchild, but series two finally has a home on Channel 4, albeit not in the usual comedy slot. It's pioneering, though, and we're all in favour of that. Earl's taking the opportunity to revisit his list of things he needs to make right in his life, for reasons that we're not entirely sure of. Possibly just because it's season two, and that's the sort of thing you do at the the beginning of a new season, isn't it? Also of note: this is immediately followed by the film Inside Deep Throat, which sounds like a jolly romp. Have fun!

Labels: Channel 4, Hollyoaks, ITV1, My Name Is Earl, Soap, The Bill

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Monday, June 11, 2007

But it's also got Terri Dwyer, which balances things out nicely

VARIETY! Britain's Got Talent, ITV1, 9.00pm

Yes, we know, this actually started two days ago, but we can't be doing with making updates at the weekends. It's far too much like hard work. So, slightly belatedly, we turn our attention to nouveau variety show Britain's Got Talent, in which Simon Cowell, Piers Morgan and Amanda Holden play the judges to everyone in Britain who thinks they have a talent which presumably falls outside of the casting requirements for series four of The X Factor. It's actually weird to be considering a TV talent show that doesn't necessarily require you to sing or dance, or already be a celebrity of some kind.

The show follows the successful (as far as we understand) run of America's Got Talent on NBC last year, with Piers Morgan, pre-car-crash-drama Brandy and pre-floor-eating-insanity David Hasslehoff as the judges (with Sharon Osbourne replacing Brandy in the second season for obvious reasons), which was won by Bianca Ryan, an 11-year-old girl with a scarily big singing voice. Since most of the people who entered an actual dedicated singing competition in the UK last year were astonishingly underwhelming as it was, we're rooting for the knife swallowers and baton twirlers already.

We're slightly intrigued that the whole thing's airing on consecutive nights over the course of a week, which has a whiff of let's-just-get-this-over-with about it; we were expecting it to be a big Saturday night primetime thing. This way it feels a bit more Soapstar Superstar than it does The X Factor. So far on the messageboard only David Hunter and Smudge have admitted watching it, with David Hunter pointing out that "anything with a Michael Jackson theme got through" and Smudge noting that it was "a shame that old man didn't stab his daughter". On the strength of these recommendations, we're planning to tune in tonight.

Labels: Britain's Got Talent, ITV1, reality TV, TV

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Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Cut from a different cloth

DRESSING! Trinny & Susannah Undress, ITV1, 8.00pm

Oh yes, they're back - and they're still planning to delve into your psyche as well as your wardrobe. It's probably something of a relief to Trinny and Susannah that they're no longer up against Holby City as they were during the last series (although whether being up against Holby Blue is any less stressful we have no idea, since we've not checked the ratings in a while), although perhaps surprisingly our viewing loyalties tended to lie with these two anyway, despite our better judgement.

For those of you who missed the last series, the essential difference between this and What Not To Wear is that Trin and Suse not only go through people's wardrobes to vanquish their fugliest ensembles, but they also play armchair psychiatrists-slash-life coaches in order to establish exactly what horrifying mental trauma might cause a person to wear an ill-fitting bra with a hot pink camisole and lime green capri pants.

That side of the show is always a little bit dodgy, and a lot of the advice given out is the sort of stuff that equally unqualified people across the country are probably yelling at their tellies at the exact same time, but we can't deny that they know what they're talking about when it comes to sartorial matters. Plus, the sight of them barging in on hapless women in changing rooms and brazenly cupping their breasts still hasn't got old as far as we're concerned, so we're happy to see them back.

Labels: ITV1, Trinny and Susannah Undress, TV

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Monday, June 04, 2007

The long con(nor)

EXIT! Coronation Street, ITV1, 7.30 & 8.30pm

Well, let this be a lesson to all of us, frankly. Being a prostitute may look like a fun and glamorous job that supplies you with endless amounts of cash for an apparently minimal amount of work, but it has its inevitable downsides. Sooner or later, people will see through your cunning ruse of posing as a property developer (although this has got us seeing Sarah Beeny in a new light - kidding! We love you Sarah! Please don't hate us!) when you end up boinking someone who later recognises you in the pub, and thereby outs you to your nearest and dearest. Still, Leanne's had quite the lucky escape - if she watched EastEnders a couple of years back and saw what happened to Janine, she would've seen how much worse she could've had it. Sleeping with Ian Beale. *shudder*

Of course, Leanne's secret hasn't been revealed to everyone just yet, but she's on shaky ground now that Lynda Block Carla has rumbled her, and got rightly miffed at Paul's involvement in the whole thing. Said ground gets notably wobblier when Paul decides to blame Leanne for the apparent dissolution of his marriage, the whole you-were-the-one-who-solicited-callgirls-in-the-first-place-you-pranny aspect of it apparently passing him by.

So he does what any sensible man in his position would do - and we don't really consider this a spoiler since it's been splashed over the pages of most TV periodicals by now - he bundles her into the boot of his car and drives off. Gives a whole new meaning to cash and carry, eh? Eh? Whew, tough crowd. Anyway, since soaps would be quite dull if people frequently bundled other people into the backs of their cars against that person's will only to release them around the corner entirely unharmed, so Paul's car is involved in a nasty crash. But who will survive? Again, it's no massive secret, but we're not going to spell it out. We're meant to be encouraging you to watch the telly, not to switch it off and do something less boring instead. You're confusing us with the Why Don't You? gang.

Labels: Coronation Street, ITV1, Soap, TV

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Friday, May 04, 2007

Backstreet (hairdresser)'s back

DENISE! Coronation Street, ITV1, 7.30pm

We do love getting an opportunity to welcome back an old favourite soap character when they occasionally decide to return from soap limbo (usually Leicester or Scotland, although there are variants), so we're very excited indeed about the return of Denise Osbourne, former paramour of Ken Barlow (we were never quite sure why she chose to do this), mother to yet another Barlow offspring (seriously, Ken, it's called contraception - look into it), resident hairdresser before those reins were passed to the likes of Fiona and Audrey, and all-round brassy lassie.

The reason for her reappearance appears to be something to do with Ken wanting to take a more active role in son Daniel's life, presumably in the hope that he won't grow up to be a convicted murderer like adoptive sister Tracy (whose adolescence Ken did take an active role in in the first place, so we think his logic is a little flawed here), or a bigamist like his half-brother Peter. Or, for that matter, a corpse like his half-sister Susan. If Denise had any sense here, she'd take Daniel to Toronto and seek out the most powerful restraining order known to man.

But no, Denise decides to consider Ken's request and perhaps take a trip back to Weatherfield, just in time to cause a few more tremors in the earthquake that is Ken's marriage to Deirdre. Again. I mean, seriously, why bother getting remarried if your marriage is going to be on the rocks again so quickly? Admittedly they didn't know at the time that Tracy was going to bludgeon Charlie Stubbs to death in an act of misguided vengeance, but it can't have come as that much of a shock, can it? Anyway, welcome back Denise. You are just one of a long line of soap women with deeply questionable taste in men, but we love you all the same.

Labels: Coronation Street, ITV1, Soap, TV

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Wednesday, April 18, 2007

TV Regurgitated

REPEAT! Harry Hill's TV Burp, ITV1, 11.00pm

We realise that this is a repeat, but frankly we couldn't let the current series of TV Burp come to an end without marking it in some way, and since we're generally far too lazy to write anything on Saturdays, we're doing it today. Questions? No? Good.

It's quite nice to wave this show off into the distance without having to worry too much about whether it'll be back. For ages it was that show that we loved that didn't get the ratings it deserved and seemed to be permanently at risk of an undignified offscreen burial. And then during this sixth series (and fair play to ITV for keeping it going for so long, given their reputation for canning shows that underperform), something rather magical happened - lots of people started watching! Like, figures in the region of six million. Our cockles were well and truly warmed - and we imagine that Harry and the production team were quite chuffed as well.

There's no big end-of-series song and dance, sadly, but there is everything you'd expect: more ridicule directed in Paul Burrell's general direction as a result of Australian Princess (a show we're beginning to think only exists so that this show can remind us how awful it is), more well-chosen odd moments from the soaps, a singing appearance from someone who got mocked on the show earlier (and this week's is a cracker), and the obligatory pre-ad break fight. We'll miss this show lots. Now hurry up and recommission it, ITV plskthx.

Labels: Harry Hill's TV Burp, ITV1, TV

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Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Su-percalifragilistic-
expialidocious

SU! This Morning, ITV1, 10.30am

It may come as a surprise to some people that the lowculture messageboard is occasionally used to discuss things besides Hollyoaks and precisely where we've seen that eminently bummable chap from the most recent episode of Doctor Who before. We've even got a section devoted to pop music - and it may come as an even bigger surprise that this is where you'd find the Su Pollard thread.

Coincidentally, not that long ago the thread was being used to lament the apparent passing of Su's official website, thus rendering those interested parties unable to find out on the latest Su-related goings on. But, in one of those fortunate moments of synchronicity that pops along every so often, Su will be appearing on This Morning this morning (when else?) to discuss her role in Menopause: the Musical.

We'd not heard of this particular opus, so we did a bit of googling and here's what we found (with thanks to the London Theatre Guide: "A celebration of life after 40, 50 and beyond. It all begins with four women, 'Power Woman' (Miquel Brown), 'Soap Star' (Samantha Hughes), 'Rutland Housewife' (Su Pollard) and 'Earth Mother' (Amanda Symonds), at a lingerie sale with nothing in common but a black lace bra - and hot flushes, night sweats, memory loss, chocolate binges, not enough sex, too much sex and day-to-day challenges with aging parents, aging children and aging partners! A joyful parody of 25 re-lyricized classic baby boomer hits, the 90-minute show features chart-toppers including 'I Heard It Thru the Grapevine You No Longer See 39' and the Motown favourite 'My Thighs'." Sounds unmissable, we're sure you'll agree. Can't wait to hear what Su's got to say about it.

Labels: ITV1, musical theatre, Su Pollard, This Morning, TV

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Monday, April 02, 2007

Without a Trace

VERDICT! Coronation Street, ITV1, 7.30 & 8.30pm

"Oh noes!" the more internet savvy of you are probably crying at this point. (The rest of you are probably just shaking your head in concern about the sliding standards of grammar in today's Britain, and wondering if it's really acceptable to be grammatically suspect in this fashion, even if you're only doing it ironically.) "Haven't you wittered on enough about Tracy bloody Barlow's bloody trail already?" And to be honest, we might say yes: the lovely, admirable and talented Nick covered it in great detail here and in all fairness we don't have a great deal to add, but the verdict of arguably the most important soap trial of the century will be returned today, and what kind of soap-revering blog-cum-website would we be if we let that pass without any kind of comment? A frankly substandard and irresponsible one, is the answer.

It makes for quite a nice change to have sat through a soap trial, knowing for once that The Accused was (a) guilty as sin, (b) acting in a deliberate, calculated and premeditated fashion and (c) not trying to frame someone else. Well, not technically. Can you really frame someone who's deceased? Is it still framing if you're falsely claiming that they drove you to kill them in self-defence? Is it a sign of our rapidly-diminishing mental dexterity that we initially wrote "soap defence" there? We'd have to hire a lawyer to be certain of the answers to any of these questions (even that last one), and we can't afford one at today's prices, unless we phone one of those ambulance chasers who advertise on ITV2 in every daytime ad break, and there's always something hidden in the small print with those, isn't there?

But we digress. While we might have prayed for justice to prevail and for Mandy and Beth Jordache when they stood trial for the slaughter of abusive father and husband Trevor, or for Little Mo Mitchell standing trial for the attempted murder of abusive husband Trevor (we're beginning to see a pattern here), there are probably quite a few people who secretly want to see That Bitch Tracy Barlow finally get hers. We wouldn't be surprised if some of those people turn out to be members of Tracy's own family. But what will the verdict be? Tracy's announced that she's not sticking around the cobbles whatever the outcome of her trial, so Kate Ford's impending exit can't be used as any kind of clue (or can it? Buggered if we know), but either way twelve of Weatherfield's finest will be slapping some more mayonnaise on the club sandwich of justice tonight and deciding whether Tracy Barlow's future revolves around freedom and an inevitable trip somewhere to the south, or jostling for top bitch in an offscreen tribute to Bad Girls. We're on the edge of our seats.

Labels: Coronation Street, ITV1, Soap, TV

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Monday, March 26, 2007

Trial stand by you

TESTIFY! Coronation Street, ITV1, 7.30 & 8.30pm

Soap trials: they've been relatively scarce since Brookside finished, and they're either always boring (rape ones) or not necessarily always boring (murder/attempted murder ones). The nice thing about murder trials is that the victim isn't present to get all self-righteous or sit in the courthouse toilets crying, although a member of their family is usually on hand to make a big, angry, tedious fuss on their behalf. So Tracy Barlow deserves a big round of applause right from the start for choosing to murder Charlie Stubbs, a man who (so far) hasn't appeared to have any family whatsoever, leaving the stage open for the merry folk of Coronation Street to parade through the witness box, attacking reality and fact from all angles and generally lowering local property prices as they pursue various personal agendas or simply portray Tracy as a big old lying cow.

Slick Tracy's initial plan of making the entire community believe Charlie was battering her / ironing her arm has fallen by the wayside somewhat, with both Maria and Jason solemnly swearing that, occasional careless handling of Shelley's earrings aside, Charlie never laid a finger on women in That Way. Wednesday sees Claire take to the stand in support of her pretend friend after weeks of being brainwashed by the sound of Trick Tracy flinging plates at the party wall, but her mid-2006 post-natal mental dip (didn't that get sorted out efficiently!) leaves her evidence open to question. And Friday sees the testimony of everyone's favourite horny, evil and curiously-orange teenager, David Platt, but will his dick swing in Wick(ed) Tracy's favour after she failed to give him her fuck before the trial?

And then there's Deirdre. Poor, confused, devastated Deirdre, who only last night had her suspicions confirmed when Tracy owned up to the whole scheme and asked her mother to commit perjury for her. Of course, Deirdre's a woman who knows what it's like to be on the inside of a prison cell, and naturally she wants Tracy to avoid a similar fate, but can she lie in court, especially with a seething Ken glowering at the proceedings like a man who's just discovered that the stepdaughter he raised as his own and recently remortgaged his house for in order to fund the very expensive defense counsel she requested after committing an act of manslaughter which he's just discovered from his panic-stricken wife was actually (extremely) pre-meditated murder is a murdering bitch? Well, that's up to Deirdre, but whatever she decides to do she'll tackle it like a turkey staring down the blade of a carving knife. Much like the carving knife Charlie wasn't actually going to stab Tracy with, in fact.

Perhaps the greatest joy is the fact that this is the murder trial of a character who, lengthy absences and regenerations aside, has been part of Coronation Street since birth, and who gradually developed into one of the all-time great, completely horrific, self-absorbed soap monsters. Whichever way the trial goes she'll be leaving afterwards, but it's testament to the wonderful people behind the typewriters that after four years of Tracy Barlow (version Kate 4ord.0) tearing holes in the lives of her family and neighbours, they've come up with an exit storyline that outdoes all her previous exploits and dragged in half the cast to enjoy the fun.

Good luck, Tracy! We're rooting for you.

Labels: Coronation Street, ITV1, murder, Soap, TV

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Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Up next: Soapstar Supervisor

WTF? Soapstar Superchef, ITV1, 5.00pm

This is a little bit scary, if we're honest. Presumably on the back of the success of primetime singing extravaganza Soapstar Superstar, ITV has decided to see what other hidden talents our favourite soap actors have (presumably in some vague attempt at public service, since many of them probably can't expect long, varied and fulfilling acting careers once the suds dry up). For those who can't sing, or indeed won't sing, the choice was surely obvious, yes? Soapstar Superchef it is, then.

In this hour-long (!) show, two soap stars take each other on in a cook-off and attempt to out-cuisine the other one. The conception and execution of this show presumably has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that Masterchef has been pulling in fantastic ratings for BBC2, by the way. We're not sure entirely what the point of the show is (having unfortunately missed all the episodes prior to this, heaven knows what we could have possibly been doing that was more important), but apparently there's some kind of points system involved that involves the winner coming back to battle another winner later for Supreme Cooking Overlord status, or something.

Today is Hollyoaks versus Emmerdale, apparently, although we have no idea which particular representatives of those soaps will be participating - but surely all the fun is in the element of surprise? Unless you prefer to get your fun by watching Weakest Link or Richard & Judy instead. Never let it be said that there's absolutely nothing on in daytime. But can we have someone win who isn't from Coronation Street please? They can't have the monopoly on being best at everything...

Labels: ITV1, Soapstar Superchef, TV

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Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Absolute zero

THIN! The Truth About Size Zero, ITV1, 9.00pm

There's no shortage of programmes lining up to tell us that losing a lot of weight in a short space of time might be a very bad idea (gee, you think?) right now, but we felt compelled to single out this one in particular because the person bravely volunteering to put it to the test is none other than '90s pop star turned footballer's wife Louise Redknapp. We were huge Eternal fans back in our youth, so we couldn't let this one pass.

Louise will be attempting to slim down to a size zero (American size, obviously - we don't even want to think what a British size zero must look like) from her current size eight (hardly chubby by anyone's standards) in 30 days, using the latest in faddy crash diets to help her achieve her goal. All we've seen of the show so far is the brief snippets on the trailer, but we're going to guess that her journey will probably involve sickness, tiredness, irritability and a general craving for nutrients before very long. We wouldn't be entirely surprised if Gillian "Not Doctor Any More, Bah" McKeith comes in to poke at her poo at some point, either. In an effort to be responsible, we'd like to remind any impressionable readers that trying to slim down to a size zero is really not a good idea, and that if you wish to diet you should pick a sensible one and consult a qualified professional beforehand, and remember to stop slimming when you reach an appropriate weight for your height. Just so we're clear on that.

Speaking of footballers' wives, as we were a minute ago, how could we let today pass without mentioning that lowculture's flagship show, Footballers' Wives is beginning a repeat run tonight on Five Life at 9.00pm. Enjoy a journey back to the days where Chardonnay hadn't set fire to her breasts yet, when nobody had quite realised how utterly, utterly awesome Tanya Turner was destined to become, and when people still knew or cared who Ian and Donna Walmsley were.

Labels: Five Life, Footballers' Wives, ITV1, The Truth About Size Zero, TV

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Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Political knife-edge

FUCKERY! Confessions of a Diary Secretary, ITV1, 9.00pm
COOKERY! Kitchen, Five, 9.00pm

Exciting times for UK television drama at 9pm tonight, with both ITV1 and Five pulling something unexpected out of the bag and charitably offering a desperate viewing public some kind of feasible alternative to New Street Law on BBC1. Both channels seem to be working on the assumption that we’d rather watch the ill-judged behaviour of quite horrible people in quite interesting professions than a bunch of irritating, holier-than-thou, oxymoronic worthy lawyers. And we would!

Over on ITV1, it's another one of those light-hearted dramas that play up the physical imperfections, amiable personality foibles and generally ridiculous antics of key cabinet members of the past decade, in a The Trial Of Tony Blair / A Very Social Secretary / The House Of Cards vein. Following on from recent More4 programmes about the blind authoritarian one and the stuttering warmongering one, this time we delve into the private life of the big fat one with two cars as he throws caution to the wind and embarks on an affair with secretary Tracey Temple. John Henshaw seems perfectly cast as bumbling, buffoonish old John ‘Two “Johnny Prescott” ‘Prezza’ “Texan Croquet” Jags’ Prescott opposite the fantastic Maxine Peake, who ages ten years and adopts a southern accent (traitor!) to play Temple, a woman with an obvious appreciation of double garages and political heavyweights (sorry) and with an appetite for having her rump slapped. Elsewhere, there’s the usual pleasure to be gained from watching people-we-recognise playing people-we-recognise, with a Damian Lewis/Tony Slattery Blair/Brown partnership to look forward to. To think ITV used to pay rubber puppets to do this sort of thing!

On Five, meanwhile, Eddie Izzard stars as a flambéed/pickled (take your pick) head chef in Kitchen, a lengthy kitchen-set drama about a young probationer’s misadventures in a restaurant kitchen, a hotbed of kitchen drug-taking, kitchen sex, kitchen gambling and kitchen blackmail. Previews (written by people other than us, hence the quotation marks) have described it as “edgy”, “dark”, “depressing”, “slick”, “strong”, “satisfying”, “deep” and “mouthwatering”, which might sound like a lot to fit in to a single programme, but at OVER FOUR HOURS (!!!) over two nights they can probably run the gamut of human emotional experience with time to spare. Though if you're on a tight schedule you might want to stick to the political/personal satire unless you really, really like Izzard, drug-taking, sex, gambling and blackmail. Or kitchens.

Labels: Confessions Of A Diary Secretary, Five, food, ITV1, Kitchen, scandal, sex

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Friday, February 23, 2007

Soap gaiety update

GAYS! Coronation Street, ITV1, 7.30pm

In accordance with the terms of our trading licence, we are obliged to bring you regular reports of matters of soap gaiety that we deem to be important. And while we may not be quite as excited by this as we were by the Craig/John Paul = OTP storyline in Hollyoaks (which has now become the yardstick against which all future acts of soap gaiety shall be measured), it is important that we keep abreast of developments in Corrie's first bisexual love triangle.

So! We all know by this stage that Michelle's suave new boyfriend Sonny is not all that he seems, because he's actually one of those dirty bisexualists, and once upon a time he was having it bumwise with Sean, of course (there being so few gays in Manchester, this was bound to happen). And proving that one should never trust a bisexual (not that we speak from embittered experience or anything), Sonny bumps into a bunch of Weatherfieldians - including Sean - on a night out, one thing leads to another and he and Sean have a bit of a snog. Of course, such an event can not go unobserved, and it just so happens that Sonny's love rival Steve happens to witness this little turn of events, which probably bodes quite well for him.

Perhaps we're being a little uncharitable but we can't quite bring ourselves to care quite as much about this bit of homo action on the grounds that it appears to have more relevance to the placing of obstacles in the way of fairytale couple Michelle and Steve than it does to giving Weatherfield's gays something to actually do. We could be wrong, of course, and if this does in future prove to be a Very Important Act of Soap Gaiety with Serious Future Repercussions, then we'll gladly retract the above statement at a later date. But let's be honest here: we're not half as interested in this storyline as we are in the one whereby sick, twisted and therefore utterly brilliant David Platt is trying to blackmail Tracy Barlow into sleeping with him. It's very incredibly wrong, and yet they're both so vile that it goes right around the loop and goes back to being a thoroughly great idea. So we're caring about that a little bit more right now.

Labels: Coronation Street, ITV1, Soap, soap gaiety, TV

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Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Brits and pieces

BACK! The Brit Awards Live, ITV1, 8.00pm

Another year, another self-congratulatory award ceremony wherein the music industry hands out gongs to everyone who got a lot of airplay and sold a lot of records last year, because apparently the significant fiscal benefits that come with that just aren't enough without a tacky trophy to accompany them. So far, so blah. However! There is a crucial difference to the ceremony this year, because it will be broadcast live directly into your television set. Ooooo.

Since it hasn't been broadcast live since 1989 after the Sam Fox/Mick Fleetwood fiasco, this year should be every bit as important a TV event as it will be a music industry event. Presumably it had become so utterly boring and irrelevant (we still haven't shaken off the horror of the 2004 awards, presented by Cat "So You Think You Can Host" Deeley) that this was considered the best way to inject a bit of life back into its fitting corpse. Russell Brand's been booked to present it, you won't read who won everything in the paper the morning before, and there's a fair to medium chance that Lily Allen will get wasted and try to pick a fight with someone. Hooray!

It'd be nice if some of the changes being made to the ceremony had included a more thorough overhaul of the awards so that the shortlists might be a little less boring (we notice that James Blunt officially killed the Best Pop Act category last year, since it's no longer being included - stupid James Blunt ruins everything), and quite what Oasis's outstanding contribution to music is remains a mystery, other than writing one good song once and then rewriting it over and over again and just making it very slightly different each time in such a brazen way as to make even Stock, Aitken and Waterman go "you really might want to think about coming up with some new ideas, lads". That said, we'll leave the music criticism to the professionals and just sit back in the hope of a really good fight before 10pm.

Labels: ITV1, The Brit Awards, TV

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Friday, February 09, 2007

Dino-mite-ee-ee

MONSTERS! Primeval, ITV1, Saturday, 7.45pm

Once again we find ourselves in the unfortunate position of not really wanting to recommend anything for Friday. Not because there's nothing good on, because of course there's Ugly Betty and American Idol, both of which are excellent viewing, but we feel like we've talked about them rather a lot lately, so we don't want to keep going down the same road. (And yes, we do have a large Hollyoaks-shaped caveat to that rule right now. Shut up.)

So instead we're going to discuss Primeval, ITV1's much-anticipated attempt to resurrect a bit of family viewing into its Saturday evening schedules. Now, it's perhaps fair to say that the bright shining star that S Club reached for back in the day is looking a little grubby: nobody bought Rachel's second solo album, even though it was awesome; Bradley had that brief, doomed second attempt at stardom with Upper Street; Jo is now a nasty dog-breeding racist...need we go on? So, our hopes that our entire late-teens and early-twenties weren't misguided are now lying heavily with Hannah Spearitt, because she's got a leading role in an important new TV drama, and she mustn't disappoint. If she does, we'll cry. And you don't want to see us cry; it's messy and noisy and there are huge heavings of snot everywhere. Urgh.

The good news is that we got a sneaky preview of the first two episodes of this, and Hannah is great in it. Hooray! She plays zoologist Abby Maitland, whose job is under threat of redundancy when she hears of an unusual species of lizard and heads off to investigate. Long story short, it's because of some kind of rift (or "Anomaly", as the given term in this show is) in space and time that's allowing prehistoric creatures to roam the earth in the present day. The one that Abby finds is cute and friendly. Some of the others are less so. Dino rampage, anyone? Giant spiders of doom? Oh yes.

If we may give our honest opinion on this, we're still making our minds up. There were parts of the first two episodes that we liked a lot (involving La Spearitt, mainly, because she really is worth the price of admission alone), but there were also bits we weren't sure about: a few too many hokey cliches (potential love triangles, spouses disappearing in mysterious circumstances, geeks with greasy hair and Oxfam coats and no social skills), a handful of dodgy effects (some of them are very good, others less so), and some proper clunkers of dialogue. However! You could have levelled all of those accusations at Torchwood and we watched that all the way through to give it a chance to improve (whether it succeeded or not depends on who you ask, really), so we're entirely willing to give this one the same sporting chance. It's got a lot of potential, fo' sho: the acting's generally pretty good, the series arc is reasonably compelling, the characters are, by and large, likeable. It just needs to pull its socks up a little bit. If they can get Tina to do a guest appearance, we're definitely sold.

Labels: ITV1, Primeval, TV

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Thursday, February 01, 2007

Sex, sun and alliteration

INSANE! Bonkers, ITV1, 9.00pm
IN SPAIN! Benidorm, ITV1, 10.00pm

ITV1 surprise us all tonight with NOT ONE! (one would be quite enough, thank you) but TWO! brand new comedy-laced primetime entertainment offerings, both with strong enough casts that you have to wonder whether the people involved knew they were destined to be part of an "ITV comedy" before they'd committed to the project.

First up is Sally Wainwright's new series Bonkers. After the devastating examination of fractured family relationships that was At Home With The Braithwaites, her strikingly realistic portrayal of life behind-the-scenes at Downing Street in The Amazing Mrs Pritchard and Jane Hall's gritty look at the lives of a group of hedonistic young career bus drivers, it comes as something of a surprise that her latest drama has been trailed as a frothy, chaotic affair with lots of cheerfully flawed but capable women dealing with the messes that their hapless menfolk have created while also struggling with the complex issues of Being A Woman, Having Arguments But Always Being In The Right and Living In A House, Sometimes With Ungrateful Children.

Having already projected the same basic characters onto the topical big white screens of The Family, The Government and The Buses, here Ms W turns her attention to The Sex. This time, Liza Tarbuck's Mrs Everywoman and Mark Addy's Mr Her Useless Husband face marital meltdown while their extended family and neighbours just generally cock about and make things much more difficult for themselves than they need to be. On the plus side, some interesting nonsense involving a comatose film star appearing in Tarby's house sounds more than a little Life On Mars, so Wainwright clearly recognises original television even if she's in danger of forgetting how to write it herself. Also featuring Oliver "Green Wing" Chris and Lynda "No I fucking well don't just appear in ITV programmes, I was in Holby City last year, you know" Bellingham among a cast of quite literally about a dozen.

Bonkers is followed by Benidorm, written by Derren Litten from The Catherine Tate Show and featuring a recognisable ensemble cast of types, characters and people grappling with the perceived general unpleasantness of a continental package holiday and each other. Our gut instinct is to get the fuck away from this one as quickly as possible, but we're tempted by the prospect of Janine Duvitski as a middle-aged swinger, we like Nicholas Burns more and more every time we see him, and we've no doubt at all that Steve Pemberton is the best actor in The League Of Gentlemen (especially at playing himself). But it would be nice, just once, to see Johnny Vegas cast in a role that requires him to have a wash, wear a smart suit and stride about looking dynamic. (Sally Wainwright, here's your new PM!) While we sit on the fence (at least until we've actually seen the whole thing), take a package holiday (sorry) to the authentically tacky Solana Apartments website, slap on a bit of sunblock (we're sticking with this) and decide for yourself.

Labels: Benidorm, Bonkers, ITV1, reserving judgement, sex, TV

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Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Jackson | noun, informal: a lesbian

SURREAL! Harry Hill's TV Burp, ITV1, 12.35am

Arguably the best thing on telly at teatime on a Saturday is Harry Hill's TV Burp, but unfortunately that's also the time where we're most likely to completely forget to watch it. We prayed to the gods of television (we usually specifically target Heather Locklear, because she's generally quite benevolent where we're concerned, but she was unavailable on this occasion so we settled for Su Pollard) for a repeat, and while they give with one hand, they slap you round the chops with the other, because 12.35am isn't exactly an ideal time for us either. Still, it's better than an extra half hour of The Mint.

As well as spotting some of the slightly weirder things to happen in the soaps (we love the show's skill for finding the perfect moments to take out of context and thus change their meaning entirely - especially the ones involving Marlon from Emmerdale, lowculture substitute (we're not entirely happy about that as a concept, but if you're going to cheat on us we'd rather it were with a TV show than if you started seeing other websites) for tracking down some of the more craptacular programmes that get buried in the TV schedules and are best watched from behind the fingertips.

The only downside is that you may never be able to enjoy television in a straightforward non-thinking fashion ever again. You'll be too busy looking for that unfortunate bit of blocking that makes Naomi from EastEnders look like a Christmas tree or something.

Labels: Harry Hill's TV Burp, ITV1, TV

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Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Deirdres of our lives

HISTORY! You Don't Know You're Born, ITV1, 9.00pm

We're going to be charitable and not spend the whole preview pointing out that this is blatantly a cheap knock-off of Who Do You Think You Are, because that isn't going to do anybody any good. Besides, that show isn't likely to feature Anne Kirkbride, alias Dame Deirdre of Weatherfield, in the near future, so perhaps this version may be slightly more appealing to lowculturites.

Admittedly we'd probably be slightly more interested if the programme were actually about Deirdre herself, since perhaps some research into the Hunt family tree could tell us about the incomparable Blanche and just how she came to be so incredibly awesome, or indeed some traits that could have provided warning signs as to why Tracy turned out to be a date-raping builder-murderer with a penchant for going upstairs to play her tapes. Possibly a show like this already exists on ITV2, actually. But we digress. This show focuses more on experiencing what your ancestors lives' were like, so Anne gets sent off to Ireland to try her hand at ploughing a field.

We quite like that part of the proposal - especially if some later celebrities discover that their lineage was heavily involved in running cockfights or filtering sewerage. We're keeping our fingers crossed for Lisa Scott-Lee trying to shoe a horse.

Labels: ITV1, TV, You Don't Know You're Born

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Thursday, January 18, 2007

Horses' heads in pigses' sheds

SUSPECT! Emmerdale, ITV1, 7.00pm.

So! It’s Chas’s turn to be fingered for The Murder Of Tom King, and it’s not looking good. Earlier in the week the police dug the horse head statue that was stolen from Home Farm on the night of the murder out of the shit in the Dingles’ pigsty, and Eli was pulled in on a standard charge of Burglary By Dingle. But with the horse head-shaped bruises on Tom King’s corpse matching the statue, it looks like there’s more to the robbery than meets the eye – at least to dodgy police chief Vaughan, who’s been sniffing the hem of Venus Flytrap-faced Rosemary’s skirt since her brand new pocket-sized husband snuffed it on Christmas Day.

Chas’s fingerprints are all over the statue and, after Rosemary provoked a violent outburst (not unlike the violent outburst Chas directed at Tom King on his wedding day, in fact) from her in front of the lusty policeman on Tuesday, it looks like she’s well and truly in the pig shit. But don’t worry, Chas! There’s still a whole bunch of other suspects to go through yet, and maybe, just maybe, the statue will turn out to be one of a pair, and by then it’ll be someone else’s turn to get hauled in for interrogation. Hopefully someone quite pointless and dispensable. Like, say, Terry.

Rosemary is certainly the viewers’ choice of suspect over on ITV’s beautiful but fiddly and annoying Who Killed Tom King? interactive investigative internet experience, and our own suspicions about her were only reinforced by the sinister text message she sent us after we voted for her in the online murder poll. (Oh, Rosemary! You should know better than to put your name at the end of the message if you’re trying to intimidate us.) So far we’ve exchanged e-mails with Viv, argued with Shadrach, hacked into Jimmy’s computer, read Edna’s personal correspondence, rummaged through a whole bunch of offices and private residences and peeped through the keyhole in Jasmine’s bedroom door (hmmm). And apparently that was only four days’ work! Sod that. We’ll leave it for a few weeks until it’s Carl King’s turn to be Main Suspect and we might get the chance to look at him in the shower or something.

Labels: agriculture, Emmerdale, ITV1, murder, Soap, TV

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