A version of this article was originally published in The Courier on 7th March 2020.
NEXT WEEK’S TV
MIRIAM’S BIG FAT
ADVENTURE
Monday
and Tuesday, BBC Two, 9pm
The
redoubtable Miriam Margolyes is, by her own admission, morbidly obese. She’s
four foot eleven and weighs just over fourteen stone. In this frank report she
attempts to come to terms with her weight while confronting the UK’s obesity
problem. “I’m disgusted by my body,” she declares, “I loathe it.” Her first stop
is a strict military-inspired health farm, where she meets people who’ve
succeeded in changing their unhealthy lifestyles. But it’s not been easy for
them. She also chats to a plus-size body confidence activist and a behavioural
psychologist in charge of research into how being overweight can affect a
person’s mental health. It’s a non-judgemental, ruminative essay delivered in
Margolyes’ characteristically twinkly and erudite style.
JOANNA LUMLEY’S HIDDEN
CARIBBEAN: HAVANA TO HAITI
Tuesday,
STV, 9pm
La
Lumley’s travelogues are usually a cut above most Famous Person Takes a
Subsidised Holiday confections, and this series is no exception. Lumley is impeccably
charming, genuinely inquisitive and entirely comfortable around people she’s
only just met, hence why she’s a natural fit for this overpopulated subgenre.
Her 15,000 mile Caribbean adventure begins, as per the title, in the Cuban
capital of Havana. While admiring the architecture and vintage automobiles, she
checks in with a traditional rhumba group, a tobacco farmer, a luxury hotel
magnate, and an old lady who lives in a beautifully faded house frozen in time.
It’s a picturesque programme driven by Lumley’s fundamentally sincere interest
in finding out about the troubling complexities underpinning a society that's lived through six decades of Communist rule. Granted, it could hardly be mistaken for a probing political tract, but at least it actually bothers to engage with the issue.
FIVE GUYS A WEEK
Tuesday,
Channel 4, 9:15pm
It’s
a dating show, folks, but with a difference! Here’s the concept: a single
woman invites five competing men into her home. Every day, one of them is asked
to leave and never darken her towels again. In the end – voila – a couple finds everlasting happiness. Yes, it’s
just another piece of voyeuristic Channel 4 nonsense, something to occupy your
time while staring into the abyss: Big
Brother meets First Dates. A
bunch of men moving into a single woman’s house sounds dodgy in theory, but the
results are harmless. It’s a fairly entertaining 'social experiment', vaguely
embarrassing and sporadically funny. Channel 4 have got a minor cult hit on
their hands here, i.e. it will trend on Twitter for an hour every week.
Lightweight job done.
CHILD OF OUR TIME:
TURNING 20
Wednesday,
BBC Two, 9pm
In
1999 the BBC’s Horizon strand began
an ambitious project: filming 25 children from birth to adulthood. The chosen
ones came from all walks of life, the idea being to chart how their upbringings
and social environments shaped them. Now young adults, they’ve invited the Child of Our Time team back into their
lives to reveal what it’s like to be part of Britain’s first generation of the
21st Century. They also reflect on the project itself while
discussing the challenges they’ve faced throughout their lives so far. It is,
in effect, a variation on Michael Apted’s seminal 7 Up endeavour, but undeniably interesting in its own right. A candid
group of guinea pigs, they provide some valuable insight.
LAST WEEK’S TV
DOCTOR WHO
Sunday 1st March, BBC One
As
expected, Chris Chibnall failed to adequately resolve his Timeless Child arc in
this mechanically eventful finale, which was basically a 70-minute info dump. It contained
some nice, nutty ideas – the Master creating a breed of Time Lord/Cybermen
hybrids; the Doctor being revealed as the original Time Lord with an entire
hidden lifecycle before the one she’s aware of – but it never scaled the
dramatic heights you’d expect from such a continuity-warping episode.
However,
it was superficially entertaining in the way that most wham-bam Chibnall episodes
are, and I’ve come to terms with what this era of my favourite programme is: a deeply
flawed, two-dimensional sideshow. Sigh.
On the plus side, at least Jodie Whittaker has been allowed to
show off her acting chops this year – it’s as if Chibnall suddenly remembered
that the Doctor is supposed to get angry sometimes - and Sacha Dhawan makes for
an entertainingly berserk Master. It’s testament to his abilities that he managed
to pull off the utterly thankless task of standing around and explaining the
plot for half an episode.
McDONALD & DODDS
Sunday 1st March, STV
Who
devised this, Alan Partridge? An odd-couple detective drama starring Jason
Watkins and Tala Gouveia – good actors both, they deserve better – McDonald & Dodds is an absurdly generic stockpile of nothing; Sunday night clue-sniffing futility incarnate. It’s
whimsical, arch and soporific. TV Horlicks, the drug of a nation.
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