BUSHELL ON THE BOX
*This is an edited version of my TV column. The real thing, plus contests, goofs, lookalike pictures and more, can be found each Sunday only in the Daily Star Sunday.
MARCH 31. HIGH drama on ITV’s Victoria as an angry Chartist lobbed a brick through an upstairs Buckingham Palace window. The poor queen’s waters broke in shock. I’m not surprised. Did you clock how far he threw it? You could have stuck a five-a-side football pitch between the gates and the palace and still had room for spectators. We don’t know who the demonstrator was but if the BBC ever do Geoff Capes on Who Do You Think You Are I’m pretty sure we’ll find him...
Victoria works as a period soap. But claiming it accurately reflects real events is like insisting Carry On Dick was a genuine insight into the lives of 18th century highwaymen. Take the newbies. Princess Feodora, Victoria’s scheming half-sister, has fled to London to escape continental revolutionaries. Lord Palmerston is the brash, lusty Foreign Secretary. And a tall black man called Cuffay is leading the Chartists. Just a few problems here – Feodora never lived at Buck House, Palmerston was 64 in 1848... considerably older than Laurence Fox. And William Cuffay was 4ft 11, mixed race with a Medway accent.
The Chartists – who were fighting for votes for working men – did protest outside the Palace once that year but only smashed a couple of their own lamps before the Household Guard saw them off. We know Victoria wasn’t in real peril because she was on the throne for longer than Jim Royle on an all-cheese diet. ITV have been taking liberties with the facts from the off. The Queen was never a great beauty, she never lusted after Lord Melbourne, her family never tried to have her sectioned and she didn’t give a stuff about the starving poor. She certainly didn’t care about the Chartists. In 1839 she knighted Thomas Phillips, the bloke who crushed the Newport Rebellion. Po-faced Albert was more liberal, but did he really back universal suffrage? On the plus side, strapping new servant Joseph has already made an impression on Countess Sophie. Soon she’ll find out if he really is a foot-man...
MUCH like the England rugby team against Scotland, Baptiste started brilliantly and spluttered to a frustrating finale. The great detective didn’t find kidnapped Cristina or bang up the Brigada Serbula. A killer with a machete who broke into Genevieve’s pad vanished into thin air like a malignant red herring. The gang’s police mole turned out to be his own son Niels who accidentally shot his mum Martha dead in a stand-off... Niels was revealed via the unlikely route of seedy pervert Bram who’d installed hidden cameras in every public toilet in his locality. Yeah. Trans actor Talisa Garcia might have convinced as a woman but was never a believable ex-villain. Jessica Raine was under par as sullen Genevieve too. And at the death Edward Stratton – terrific Tom Hollander – seemed unperturbed about losing everyone he loved. The ending was the biggest wash-out since Bram’s last bath.
ON The Bay, DS Lisa found out that murder suspect Sean (Robin Hood) had slept with his best mate’s wife minutes after their drunken knee-trembler. “You’ve got stamina, I’ll give you that,” she told him, sounding distinctly miffed as her questioning wavered between interrogation and straight-forward nagging. She then warned that he could get into trouble for withholding evidence. She can talk! Lisa deleted CCTV footage to protect her dirty secret. She’s the grumpiest cop since Vera but much harder to like. Meanwhile her son is shoplifting and her daughter is being groomed as a drug mule. Their chances of winning Britain’s Brightest Family diminish by the week.
HOT on TV: Lily Travers, Victoria... Ellie Duckles, The Bay... Jimmy Carr: The Best of (Netflix)... Still Game finale... Rachel Shenton, White Gold.
ROT on TV: Catchpoint – no point... Mums Make Porn – as welcome as a Big Mo striptease... MotherFatherSon – BadSexWeekly.
HOT not on TV: Lupita Nyong’o in Us.
I LOST patience with Britain’s Favourite Crisps when Mini Cheddars made the Top 20. They’re not crisps, they’re biscuits! They might as well have included pork scratchings. And as for Hula Hoops beating Quavers... are they raving mad? Channel 5 dragged out this crackpot charade for two ruddy hours with various cynical renta-gobs, desperate for screen time, pretending to get excited about Nik Naks. Gertcha. Good to see the old Wotsit TV ad though.
*MORVEN Christie describes Lisa’s one-night-stand on The Bay as “just scratching an itch”. Blimey. Kat Moon must have eczema.
*SHARON Mitchell fancied another go with Keanu on ’Enders. She’s a big woman, always up her seconds.
*EVIL Evie is dying. Condition satisfactory.
*KNIGHT Fight will be put to the sword if it doesn’t raise its game. It needs different challenges, varied arenas, fights where we can see combatants’ faces, damsels to rescue, moats and a big finale on horseback.
SMALL joys of TV: Paxman getting the hump on Bake Off. Toff’s fondant “bazookas”. Adrian Schiller as Penge in Victoria. Jimmy Carr. Rob Beckett. Tracie Bennett, The Bay. Passport To Pimlico (Talking Pictures).
RANDOM irritations: The Baptiste finale. MasterChef believing we need Gregg Wallace to tell us honey is “really sweet”. The “impartial” BBC failing to commission a single comedy from a Leave point of view in three years.
SEPARATED at birth: Will Gompertz and Predator? One terrifies all-comers with his balding dome, deadly stare and disturbing grin... the other is a homicidal alien hunter.
TV Maths. Claire King + musketeer’s hat = Touché Turtle.
TV question: Does John Barrowman borrow his big-collared shirts from Harry Hill?
March 24. IF nothing else, The Bay is a cracking advert for Morecambe pubs. Minutes into ITV’s new crime drama, Lisa Armstrong enjoyed a rampant knee-trembler with a stranger she’d just met at a tanked-up karaoke night. Who needs Tinder with women like this? Even Eric Morecambe’s statue was blushing. It’s just pity they didn’t take turns murdering Come Outside, Stand & Deliver and It Only Takes A Minute Girl beforehand... One small problem: Lisa is a police family liaison officer and the stranger was Sean Meredith, the married stepdad of missing teenage twins Dylan and Holly. Within hours Dylan was dead, Sean was in custody, Holly was still missing and the only song in single mum Lisa’s head was Who’s Sorry Now?
She was nursing a Razor Ruddock size hangover when she got assigned to the Missing Persons case, and was distinctly off with new novice sidekick Med. But Lisa’s day went from bad to worse when she realised what, or rather who, she’d done. Sean, played by Robin Hood star Jonas Armstrong, had been out drinking with mates when the twins vanished. Lisa’s boss told her to investigate the hour-long hole in his alibi when his pals moved on from The Royal to another boozer and Lisa was taking down his particulars round the back of the pub. She can certainly account for his movements... Not that it took an hour. With mounting horror, she realised the bar’s CCTV showed the two of the laughing and leaving together. So to swerve public humiliation, this well-respected detective sergeant deleted the footage...
When Dylan’s body was found on the beach, the repercussions of her cover-up became all the more serious. The Bay is much like Broadchurch – a murdered kid in a seaside town, relatives compromised, a flawed cop... It’s part crime story, part family drama – Lisa’s teenage daughter is going off the rails. So can the police find Holly before the killer strikes again? Can Lisa keep her dirty secret? And can Sean keep it in his pants for another five weeks? I’d write more but I’m too busy Googling train fares to Morecambe. The Royal must have another karaoke night soon...
*SEX with Robin Hood? Well she wouldn’t have wanted Little John. “Is that Will Scarlet?” asked my mate. Not if he wore a condom.
TERRIFIC to see England’s football legends back in action on Harry’s Heroes: The Full English. Harry Redknapp assembled his team of pot-bellied veterans to take on German oldies. Ex-pros like Robbie Fowler, Paul Merson and Matt Le Tissier still had the magic touch. XXL-pro Razor Ruddock less so. At 23stone, party animal Neil was packing more timber than Lumberjacks R Us. His waistline had expanded like Carol Vorderman’s posterior. Harry looked in better shape at 72. Serious moments included Merson opening up about his gambling addiction, and Harry warning Razor to take care of his “ol’ jam tart”. We learned that John Barnes’ answer machine still plays World In Motion and, in a bit of unnecessary padding, that none of them could sing. The final score, England 4, Germany 2, couldn’t have been more perfect if it’d been scripted... And would you have cared too much if it had been? The real joys of this ITV two-parter were the nostalgia, the friendly banter, and the way these ageing sportsmen laughed at themselves. It made a refreshing change to see blokes on TV just being blokes.
*TOP Harry quote: “Today we’re going to play three at the back. That’ll be you Razor.”
MUMS Make Porn – or five women, no cups – was wrong on more levels than a flasher in an express lift. Yes hardcore filth makes 70s “top-shelf” material look like harmless titillation and Debbie Does Dallas seem Bafta-worthy. It dangerously distorts teen and pre-teen ideas of what sex is like. But how did Channel 4 help by cynically slipping shock images on screen? They sat five mothers down and filmed their reactions to degrading dross (one threw up). The mums then met “adult” stars and shot their own less brutal alternative – just like a challenge on The Apprentice. Is it unkind to say that if they wanted to discourage kids from watching porn they should have just appeared in it themselves?
*FANCY having to go to school after your mum had been on a show like this. You’d be sweating like Paul Hollywood biting into Big Narstie’s red-hot Rasta Pie.
*REAL mum-porn would reflect married life with erotic lines like: “Oral? Why should I? It ain’t your birthday... ”
HOT on TV: Harry’s Heroes: The Full English... Morven Christie, The Bay... Baptiste... Sian Clifford, Fleabag.
ROT on TV: the Corrie roof disaster – credibility collapsed like a bad soufflé... Say Yes To The Dress – say no to the show... Warren... Mums Make Porn – an anti-climax.
THE funniest Bake Off moment was Big Narstie scoffing his own biscuit animals before they were even judged. But Prue praising Katarina Johnson-Thompson’s “knicker section” cracked Noel Fielding up. Apparently it’s sweet and “tastes amazing”.
*MP Jess Phillips baked a “Feminist Smash the Patriarchy” cake, served without nuts, obviously.
*WHAT was Coronation Street’s greatest disaster? The live tram crash, the factory roof collapsing or the day ITV decided to start churning out five episodes a week while cutting the writing budget?
*CAN I Improve My Memory? wasn’t unlike Bob Monkhouse’s Memory Masters... except everyone’s forgotten that...
*WE need TV satire to reflect the Brexit impasse. Not so much The Thick Of It as We’re All Ruddy Sick Of It.
*IF MotherFatherSon script really tempted Richard Gere away from Hollywood, how lousy were the scripts he was offered there?
SMALL joys of TV: Big Narstie greeting Prue Leith with “Whagwan Prue dawg?” Evil Constantin’s demise on Baptise – bye bye bad guy. Diana Dors in full battleaxe mode in The Sweeney’s Messenger Of The Gods episode. Cartoon thugs The Bruvs on Dave v-o-d.
RANDOM irritations: Lorraine Kelly being defined as an “entertainer”. Let’s see her act then! An entertainer is someone who can put on an hour long show. Bradley Walsh could do it at the drop of a hat – so can many great talents we don’t see on TV any more.
TV Maths. Virgil Tracy + Parker = White Gold’s Vincent Swan.
March 18. THERE’S nothing funny about Muggy Mike’s suicide. But is our obsession with reality TV partially to blame? Fame used to be a by-product of talent. Now it’s an end in itself, an end which TV encourages and exploits. Working class kids become overnight celebrities without the training or support to keep them grounded.
March 17. CHEAT expected us to care whether or not an oddball university student had fiddled her sociology essay. Every sociology course in the country could be closed down by plagues of locusts tomorrow and few viewers would give a monkey’s. So to spice it up, ITV tossed in murder and tacky sex. In the opening minutes lecturer Leah had a joyless romp with husband Adam and then pleasured herself in the college loos while fantasising about bedding her boss... which naturally left her flushed. She wasn’t feeling herself after that though.
Weird Rose set out for revenge after Leah humiliated her in class. The plot was unlikely, absurd, and totally unpredictable... and yet stripped over a week like a Geordie Shore slapper, the psycho-thriller gripped like Mary Berry on the back of a Vespa.
The story advanced via flash-forwards so we knew Adam was going to end up brown bread, although viewers were more upset about Rose killing Leah’s cat (a clear case of Tom-icide... sorry). The time-jumps showed that one of the two women ended up in prison – but which one and would it be the right one?
Here’s how it went: so-so sociology student Rose handed in a strikingly good essay. Leah didn’t like her attitude and failed her. So Rose made herself busier than an umbrella seller at Cheltenham. She bumped off Betsy the cat, nicked Leah’s engagement ring and conned Adam into sexting her. No points for guessing who she forwarded the image to... (In fairness the best “dick pic” he could have sent was of his own face).
On Wednesday we learned that Leah’s father Michael was Rose’s dad too, the result of a six year affair with his researcher. Rose seduced Adam – roughly as hard as coaxing Jo Brand into a patisserie. And then someone killed him. But who? Rose? Her love-sick porter Ben? Leah? Rose framed Leah then admitted murder to Michael (who was conveniently wearing a wire), lying that it was self-defence. Ben killed her step-father’s dog, and probably her step-father, and finally Leah’s family were reunited. We never did find out if she’d copied her essay. I feel cheated.
PS. Someone really should pitch Adam’s miraculous cat-tracking app on Dragons’ Den.
WHILE Katherine Kelly was strumming away like a caffeinated busker on Cheat, another Weatherfield graduate was serving up Coronation treats of a different kind on Stand Up To Cancer’s Bake Off special. Michelle Keegan easily out-baked Rylan, Russell Tovey and James Acaster, whose Bakewell flapjack was “like soup”. Her 3D meringue ski slope was faultless but not quite as breathtaking as the erotic way she gently massaged her baking cone. “That’s probably something I won’t see again for a while,” gasped Noel Fielding. The air was thick with innuendo. Rylan’s salacious “I’m coating the instrument with lubricating butter” was obviously intentional. Others involved bad cracks, “elegantly greasing the unicorn horn”, Michelle’s contention that “You can’t go wrong with a gooey flapjack” and Rylan’s “I’ve never greased a horn before and I’m pleasantly enjoying it.”
BAD sex is spreading across TV like an STD on Love Island. I’d pay good money to have all memory of the “racy” scenes on MotherFatherSon permanently erased. The deeply dull BBC drama has served up two cringe-worthy encounters, the worst being unlikely newspaper editor Caden’s toe-curling encounter with a call-girl. They had mother-son incest too. Talk about rolling your own. This series with Richard Gere at his fish-faced worse is so bad it’s funnier than Warren. Not hard.
WHO’D live in Midsomer? The murder rate in these tranquil English villages is like a bad week on Game Of Thrones. They make the mean streets of Walford seem safe. The latest caper involved the strange death of a local ghost-writer who was boiled alive in a brewery mash kettle – mimicking the execution of a rogue monk five centuries before. TV drama is full of potboilers but monk-boiling was a first. Spiky new pathologist Fleur Perkins told DCI Barnaby “I’ll need to consult a specialist... and possibly a cookbook.” The monastery was now the site of a microbrewery flogging Cursed IPA, run by two sisters – one a drunk who was the next victim, stabbed to death with a double pronged mattock. Red herrings stirred into the vat included a reformed East End gangster, a bolshy Real Ale society chairman and Elaine Paige as a washed-up but waspish stage actress. And the killer was of course a famous face who seemed utterly blameless, a care home nurse played by Corrie’s Angela Griffin. Barnaby bumbled through, turning a blind eye to lesser crimes – including the unforgivable sin of selling cheap supermarket bitter bottled as craft ale.
HOT on TV: Annette Badland, Midsomer Murders... Sonia Gerhardt, Deutschland ’86... Helen McGrory in anything.
ROT on TV: This Time with Alan Partridge – make it the last time... Turn Up Charlie (Netflix) – turn off immediately.. MotherFatherSon – wetter than Storm Gareth.
ROISIN Conarty plays a prostitute on After Life, which is apt as she rather resembles a blow-up doll that’s been blown up too much. Like many men of a certain age, I find her strangely alluring even if she does have the acting rang of a blancmange. I wasn’t so struck on the show until I watched every episode back to back. It’s more tragedy than comedy with Ricky Gervais as grieving widower Tony. It has poignant scenes, tender moments and not as many laughs as you’d expect from Britain’s boldest taboo-busting comedian. The best jokes feel borrowed or recycled. Jimmy Jones has been doing the small hands gag since the 70s, while the “paedo” response had a distinct whiff of Chubby Brown.
LUTON cops collared a scumbag rapist on 24 Hours In Police Custody. Good job. But while they had plenty of time and manpower, in the Met it’s likely that only two officers would handle a stranger rape case, which is frankly worrying.
*THE toughest question all week on The Chase: Celebrity Special: who the hell are they?
*THIS Time with Alan Partridge is washed-up and ruined – a huge disappointment. After the highs of Knowing Me, Knowing You (A-ha), this is more: (Nice) Knowing You. Ta-ta.
SMALL joys of TV: Ronnie Sullivan’s 1000th snooker century on ITV4. Will Smith’s Bucket List (Facebook Watch). Maria Schrader, Deutschland ’86. Linzey Coker, White Gold. The Legend Of Leadbelly (Smithsonian). Cheers re-runs. Australia’s Magical Kingdom.
RANDOM irritations: American Gods going off the boil. Trailers that give away endings. Fashion shows pushing skeletal chic. People who think of awards in terms of diversity rather than quality – the only measuring stick that matters. BBC One’s all soap and cooking Thursday.
SEPARATED at birth: Harry Kane and Adam on Cheat, but only from the side... and Adam did love a bit on the side.
TV Maths. Ben Gorman, Cheat + brown hair dye = Lee Evans.
MARCH 10. CELEBRITY Apprentice made last month’s Man City v Chelsea clash seem evenly balanced. The teams had to stage a fundraising cabaret night. The girls booked Robbie Williams, the boys had... naked balloon dancers. To add insult to injury one dancer’s balloon burst three feet away from the face of their biggest auction bidder exposing his embarrassment. He was just lucky it didn’t go under the hammer.
Talk about lop-sided! The contest I mean – mercifully we didn’t see what Lord Sugar called the poor bloke’s “three-piece suite”.
The men had such big dreams too. Team leader Rylan wanted Taylor Swift. Omid Djalili repeatedly promised to deliver superstar Cher. (Not to mention Fleur East, Clean Bandit & the Rolling Stones... ) Cher was “trying to get out of a personal engagement” he assured his teammates who pinned all their hopes on her. “If we could turn back time... ” Richard Arnold noted ruefully in the boardroom. Of course it didn’t help that Ayda Field is married to Robbie – Sugar called her his “carer” – giving the girls a massive advantage. This charity spin-off is more about who you know than business skills.
The Comic Relief two-parter was the format’s first run since 2009, when they had better bookings. 2007 was the vintage year, memorably serving up the clash of the monster egos – Piers Morgan v Alastair Campbell who got on like India and Pakistan. The nearest we came to fireworks this year was football veteran Sam Alladyce accusing Rylan of panicking and being self-serving (surely not?). Omid messed up twice – first with Cher, then the disastrous balloon dancers. Russell Kane rescued the auction, holding the night together. But Big Sam barely broke sweat. He turned up late, swerved the team leader role and was reluctant to call on minted footie mates to donate. Maybe he was dazzled by Rylan’s choppers. In contrast Amanda Holden pulled in £25K from Simon Cowell, and the women romped home raising over a quarter of a million for charity. Joy-vacuum Kelly Hoppen unintentionally got the biggest laugh of the show by calling Argentina’s most famous footballer “Mara-Donor”. What could possibly connect Diego with a kebab? One is too fatty, has seen better days and is infamously associated with over-handling... the other’s a meat dish.
RUSSELL Brand was the unexpected star of Bake Off’s celebrity spin-off, despite his unhygienic Ayatollah whiskers. He urged Paul Hollywood to “take a bite” out of Sandi Toksvig, adding “you’ve been dying to do it since the big move”. And when Prue Leith criticised the off-claret colouring of his West Ham inspired Footballing Idols brownies, Brand snapped “I’m focusing on helping people with cancer, not icing sugar love. “How are we going to find a cure at this rate?” Thesaurus-sprouting Brand can be irritating, juvenile and pretentious, often all at the same time, but at his best he’s almost like the hippy love child Derek & Clive never had. Few other contestants would have attempted to bake a biscuit-based “cosmic vagina” based on his wife giving birth to their youngest daughter. “The portal to all life,” he said. Crumbs. As soon as Prue called it “a celebration of womanhood”, the jammy dodger’s Star Baker apron was nailed on. Likeable John Lithgow came unstuck in the technical. He’d never heard of a Swiss Roll. His result, he said, was more like “a Swiss guard’s discarded underwear”.
THE first series of Fleabag was filthy, funny and fearless. Phoebe Waller-Bridge has raised the stakes for the second. The show is more tragicomedy than sitcom now, and getting darker by the minute. It started with Fleabag’s nose gushing blood – the result, we learned later, of a right-hander from her creepy, alcoholic brother-in-law Martin. In fairness, she’d punched him first. The setting was a hellish family meal to “celebrate” her loaded dad’s impending wedding to her detestable Godmother – a sadistic, controlling nightmare played by Olivia Colman. Their priest swears like Schofield. Fleabag’s sister Claire had a miscarriage in the bogs. And passive aggression soon gave way to the real thing. Fleabag may be greedy, perverted, selfish, cynical, depraved and morally bankrupt but she’s a beacon of honesty compared to her family. Let’s hope she careens off the rails soon.
HOT on TV: Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Fleabag... Deutschland 86... Martha Canga Antonio, Baptiste... Endeavour finale... Elena Lietti, The Miracle (SkyAt).
ROT on TV: Chelsee Healey, Celebs Go Dating – the worst date since 9/1... Rig 45 (AmPrime) – there’s more tension in crown bowls... After Life (Netflix) – as cheery as an open grave.
COCKNEY comedian Jimmy Fagg pitched up on an old Minder last week, telling a packed pub: “I had to go and see the doctor the other day. He said ‘I haven’t seen you for two years’. I said, I know, I’ve been ill. ‘He said, ‘Your nose is swollen up’. I said, I know I’ve got seenus trouble. “He said ‘Do you mean sinus?’ No I said, I was out with a boxer’s wife and he’s seen us... ” A lost world.
MICHAEL Jackson: superb songwriter, brilliant performer, expert child molester? The men who said the late star had groomed them as small children on Finding Neverland seemed utterly credible. One question was not explored enough, though: why on earth did the parents allow Jacko unsupervised access?
*BBC Two’s MotherFatherSon? WatchedYawnedDeleted.
*SOAP lesbian Tina said of EastEnders new girl Iqra: “If she wants a war, we’re gonna give her one.” Not before the watershed, surely?
*ALL of Jane McDonald’s Channel 5 shows are made by a company called Elephant House. How unnecessary. She’s not that chunky.
SMALL joys of TV: Derry Girls. The Secret Spike Milligan (BBC4). Still Game. Masterful misdirection on Baptiste. Nigel Lindsay as Tony Walsh, White Gold. Free Solo (NatGeo). The Equaliser, Callan & Space 1999 all repeating from scratch.
RANDOM irritations: Celebrity travelogues where celebs show little or no interest in the countries they visit. Alan Partridge going off the boil after just one so-so episode. Virtual-signalling adverts. The dismal soundtrack on Leaving Neverland.
TV Maths: David Potts + white wig = Ursula the Sea Witch
SEPARATED at birth: Emma Appleton in Traitors and Momo? One a fictional character associated with something truly awful, the other is Momo.
MARCH 3. WHAT the hell has happened to our sense of humour? New BBC sitcom Warren stinks like Rick Stein’s fish bins. It’s poorly written, under-developed and totally witless. Yet they’re spinning its lead character Warren Thompson as the new Victor Meldrew. That’s like comparing a botched tattoo to the Mona Lisa or a mouldy meringue to a Bake Off show-stopper.
Meldrew, in David Renwick’s sublime One Foot In The Grave, was a decent man caught in life’s great downpour without a brolly.
He’d lost his job, his existence felt empty and he was plagued by endless indignities, misunderstandings and jobsworths. No wonder he was ratty.
In contrast driving instructor Warren (Martin Clunes) is just a charmless waste of DNA. The first episode saw him fly-tipping asbestos, thieving from his next door neighbours and treating his stepsons like serfs. Cantankerous characters can be the bedrock of great comedy of course – think of raging fools like Basil Fawlty or Alf Garnett. Deluded nitwit David Brent and envious inadequate Rigsby in Rising Damp had us in stitches too. But grumpiness and bad attitude aren’t enough. They have to have redeeming qualities – even aggro-magnet Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm is well-meaning at heart. And crucially the script has to be funny. One Foot had inspired sight gags, surreal twists and lashings of black humour. Warren served up a lame, half-baked clairvoyant and not a single credible character. Meldrew’s catchphrase was an exasperated “I don’t be-lieve it”, Warren gives us “bollocks”, “you prat”, “tit”, “tosser” and “tight bastard”.
I can believe someone as self-centred and joyless as Warren Thompson can exist but how would he get through life without getting chinned? He’d have to borrow a Knight Fight suit just to survive a day unscathed. Why would anyone book a second driving lesson with this charmless berk? And why would his dippy wife stay with him? John Cleese and Connie Booth polished their Fawlty Towers scripts until they were faultless. Not a word was wasted word. Warren feels like a first draft which not one of the over-paid berks attached to the production either at the Beeb or at Hat Trick felt the need to send back for a re-write.
ROB Beckett’s sarky running commentary makes Celebs Go Dating the funniest show on TV. It helps that he’s working with more dummies than Jeff Dunham. David Potts (obscure Ibiza rep) comes over like the love child Jeremy Spake and an oompa loompa version of Joey Essex never had. The bloke is thicker than a stalker’s photo album. Typical quotes included: “What’s linguine?” and “I like my men like I like tea – big and beefy” (Beef tea, anyone?) Potts went potty when someone said he looked 26. “26? Are you joking?” he fumed. “I’m 25!” Of course that might have been his neck measurement. Chelsea Heeley treated her dates appallingly. You’re from Hollyoaks, love, not Hollywood (as the classy burping and re-chewed gum proved). Love Island’s Georgia Steel asked date Max what a dumpling was! He somehow resisted the temptation of replying: “That lump of fried dough between your ears.” A nervous Kerry Katona was sweating like R Kelly in the dock. “If this was scratch and sniff TV you’d be able to smell me,” she said. “It’s like a river down there.” Even Beckett didn’t pursue that image for filth. Three-times-married Kerry “hasn’t had an easy ride in love”. No but you suspect she’s been one. While Megan McKenna revealed “I want that oomph and I want it in my mouth.” Was she talking about kissing? You have your dream and I’ll have mine. Megan cops stick but there’s nothing wrong with the woman that couldn’t be cured by a complete personality bypass.
ALAN Partridge is a classic sitcom monster and Steve Coogan is a cracking comedy actor – that isn’t just my opinion, it’s his. But This Time with Alan Partridge isn’t a patch on Knowing Me, Knowing You. The series puts Partridge in a spoof version of The One Show (already way beyond parody) with Susannah Fielding sparkling as co-host Jennie Gresham, conveying her mounting horror with her eyes. But some scenes, particularly the “no-handed ablution”, went on way too long. The jokes are either strained or recycled – the Fluck/Clunt gag was nicked. Diana Dors, real name Diana Fluck, was once introduced as Diana Clunt in her hometown of Swindon. Besides we know the BBC would never employ a Partridge today. The best line was Alan’s loyal long-suffering assistant Lynn saying of Jennie: “That’s twice she’s pinched your joke... She’s trying to rob you of your strength – like Delilah, the slag from the Bible.”
HOT on TV: Susannah Fielding, This Time... Miracle (SkyAt)... Olivia Chenery, Endeavour... JK Simmons, Counterpoint (AmPrime).
ROT on TV: Warren – War & Peace was funnier... David Potts, Celebs Go Dating – the absolute pits... Traitors – laters... The Junk Food Experiment – super sighs, me.
REASONS to be cheerful: Game Of Thrones is back April 14th, Line Of Duty returns late Spring, new Peaky Blinders is due soon and Killing Eve starts again on April 7th. Season two of American Gods hits AmPrime this month. A Sopranos prequel movie, The Many Saints Of Newark is in the pipeline. There’s a new run of Star Trek: TNG coming. Marvellous Morven Christie plays a family liaison cop with a compromised private life in The Bay (imminent). And Bergerac is being revived... which should at least do wonders for Jersey tourism.
RANDOM irritations: BritBox – a chance to pay to watch stuff we’ve already paid for... great. Dan Wootton on Lorraine – how can a grown man get so excited about trivia? The sheer unjustified length of Dancing On Ice, it’s pumped up like a supermarket chicken.
*TV bosses think the Oscars worked well without a host. Watch your back Joanna Lumley!
*DID you see Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper at the Oscars? That’s real Celebs Go Dating.
*WHAT a world. Jeff Bezos plans to colonise space and we can’t even leave the EU...
*SHAKESPEARE & Hathaway? Much ado about nothing.
*TV is educational. Luther taught us to avoid the top decks of London buses, Baptiste shows you should never open the door to a meter reader... Baptiste’s missus could be the killer’s next victim, but seriously when do meter readers turn up after dark?
*NEW research shows that watching too much TV in middle age rots your memory so I... no, it’s gone.
*CALLING telly lovers, Comic Relief is almost here but you’ve still got time to book a restaurant or tickets for a show or a movie...
*BRITBOX will charge viewers to watch old BBC and ITV shows. Isn’t that what ITV3, ITV4, Gold and Drama do already for free?
SMALL joys of TV: Rob Beckett’s mocking voice-over on Celebs Go Dating. The Umbrella Academy (Netflix). The Japanese version of Ninja Warrior. Isaac’s betrayal on The Orville (Fox). James Corden’s Spill Your Guts (clearly “inspired” by I’m A Celeb). The Circus (PBS).
Previously...