It’s Saturday night and I’m one of the 19 million watching the Britain’s Got Talent final. Having previously missed every second of this year’s BGT, I find the whole 150 minute spectacular an unpleasantly entertainment-free experience akin to cleansing one’s urethra with an icepick. The ‘talent’ seems never-ending. Pudding-bowl boy soprano Liam McNally sings a note perfect Danny Boy. Ant & Dec ask him how he slept [...]
June 7, 2010 | Posted in
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This week, Flora sent me an email about a new show on Five, Family Food Fight. This is the kind of cosmic thunderbolt that can send you into a spin for a week. Not, of course, because of the actual programme. At a guess, the producers didn’t decide to find a family with unresolved issues, [...]
June 5, 2010 | Posted in
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So. Let me get this straight. Gene Hunt is the patron saint of the police force. Literally. He is The Guv’nor of a purgatory in which any copper can right the wrongs of their compromised lives and/or deaths before passing on to the next plain, which is Heaven if you’re a good boy, or Hell if you’re [...]
May 23, 2010 | Posted in
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It goes without saying that the general series of glamorous extended ads for Lord Andrew Fat Wobbler’s latest ventures are the campest thing on TV, except for the presenter, Camper of the Year, Graham ‘Camp is my middle name’ Norton. However, they’ve upped it a notch this year with ‘Over the Rainbow’, the search for [...]
May 7, 2010 | Posted in
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I was going to reserve judgement on the new Doctor till the end of this series, but last week’s episode was so weak I now feel the need to speak out just to break the jinx. I suppose it didn’t help that the series opened on such a high. The critical buzzword on‘ The Eleventh Hour’ was ‘assured’, but [...]
April 24, 2010 | Posted in
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Remember the good old days? When there were only five channels? The two Beebs, ITV for stupid people, C4 for clever people and five for Hitler fans? Ah, simple times, good times. Well, Channel 4 remembers them too, and has decided to get back to their roots. Only, being a channel for clever people didn’t [...]
April 23, 2010 | Posted in
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Well, it’s Easter and that means the TV schedulers go on some kind of drug-fuelled retreat until September, leaving us with repeats of The Fantastic Four, Tomb Raider, and Roger Moore-flavoured Bond films to see us through the summer. For some reason it’s apparently believed that the viewing public only watch TV in January and [...]
April 14, 2010 | Posted in
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It has more rounds than ‘Masterchef’, but the presenter would die rather than misuse the word ‘unctuous’. The participants would have a hard time pulling on even the most WKD-fuelled episode of ‘Ibiza Uncovered’, but could tell you the process by which the Balearic Islands appeared in the Mediterranean. Sometimes it’s more unintelligible than an [...]
April 2, 2010 | Posted in
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Here’s how the TV viewing week goes. Monday night: get to the gym, because then at least you’ll have that under your belt when the health kick goes tits up on Thursday. Tuesday night: guiltily skulk at work pretending you have to work late to avoid going to the ‘Business Chinese’ or ‘Spanish for Holidaymakers’ [...]
March 24, 2010 | Posted in
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There are some wonderful moments in David Tennant’s final Timelord adventure. Bernard Cribbins is brilliant, and all his exchanges with The Doctor shine in oddly tender & poignant ways. The Doctor’s reason for locking away his own people forever is tragically plausable. John Simm’s Master is fantastic value and Tennant himself has to do more than has ever been done [...]
January 3, 2010 | Posted in
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