INSIDE NO. 9 + ERIC BURDON: ROCK 'N' ROLL ANIMAL

This article was originally published in The Courier on 22nd February 2019.

NEXT WEEK’S TV

INSIDE NO. 9

Monday, BBC Two, 10pm

Reece Shearsmith indulges his passion for magic in this enjoyable episode about an arrogant and highly secretive illusionist whose murky past comes back to haunt him. Every instalment of Inside No. 9 involves a certain amount of ingenious sleight-of-hand – the episode title is Misdirection - so no wonder this milieu provides them with ample opportunity to wrong-foot the audience. Going into any more detail would, of course, spoil the macabre fun, but Misdirection is Shearsmith and Pemberton (who plays an older magician with a mind-melting trick up his sleeve) at their most Tales of the Unexpected-like. It’s a claustrophobic journey into the Magic Circle of Hell.

BACK IN TIME FOR THE CORNER SHOP

Tuesday, BBC Two, 8pm

A breezy piece of social history wedded to a simple, sure-fire formula, Back In Time… will doubtless still be running long after we’ve all become history ourselves. The latest series tasks a British family with running a traditional corner shop over several replicated decades (mother Jo’s great-grandparents ran one for real). It begins in the Victorian era, when this pillar of the community was born. Sara Cox and social historian Polly Russell guide the family through their never-ending daily chores; life for a Victorian shopkeeper involved churning butter, picking strawberries, slaving in the kitchen, making deliveries via horse and cart, and risking a hernia by carrying enormous bollards of cheese. As always, it’s a likeable, mildly diverting lesson.

HOSPITAL

Thursday, BBC Two, 9pm

With the NHS under increasing threat, this candid observational documentary carries a severely urgent weight. It was filmed a few months ago in seven Liverpool hospitals, where staff and patients struggle to cope within an overworked and cash-strapped system. Episode three unfolds in a unit devoted to cardiac disease. The waiting list presents an ethical and logistical nightmare; operations for patients at high risk are being constantly delayed. Everyone has to cope as best they can. There are, thank God, moments of hope amidst the overarching gloom, as we witness dedicated doctors, surgeons and nurses literally saving lives, but it’s hard to banish the dire feeling that Hospital is a document of a vital institution in terminal decline.

ERIC BURDON: ROCK ‘N’ ROLL ANIMAL

Friday, BBC Four, 9:30pm

He was the electrifying, lupine-lunged leader of The Animals, who fought hard and heavy during the British Invasion. He became a leading – if somewhat foolish – light in the flower power movement and scored hits with the multiracial funk band War. And yet Eric Burdon remains somewhat overlooked. This profile gives him his due. An engaging raconteur, Burdon rakes over his eventful life with support from admirers such as Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith and Sting. It’s the story of how a working-class Newcastle kid with a deep love of black American music made it, just about, in a poisonous industry. Burdon doesn’t hold back on his justifiable bitterness, and his once great voice is shot, but he’s no casualty. He survived.

LAST WEEK’S TV

DOCTOR WHO

Sunday 16th February, BBC One

This was, by some considerable margin, the best episode of Chris Chibnall’s Doctor Who to date (he didn’t write it). A witty and atmospheric Gothic horror yarn in which the Doctor and co visited Mary Shelley on the dark and stormy night of her fateful Frankenstein nightmare, it encompassed an authentically disturbing half-formed Cyberman, plus hints towards whatever Chibnall has in store for the season finale. It was trad, dad, and all the better for it.