This article was originally published in The Courier on 13th February 2021.
NEXT WEEK’S TV
It’s a Sin – Friday, Channel 4, 9pm
Over the last five weeks, I’ve taken the unprecedented and quite frankly maverick step of choosing the same show as my highlight of the week. That’s because nothing has come close to It’s a Sin, the Russell T. Davies-penned drama about a group of friends dealing with the AIDS crisis.
And now it comes to an end.
Ritchie (Olly Alexander) is seriously ill at home on the Isle of Wight. His formidable mother (a strikingly nuanced turn from Keeley Hawes) struggles to cope with her pain, anger and confusion. A near-continuous shot through the corridors and wards of a hospital where patients are dying of AIDS is breath-taking. It’s a Sin will linger for a very long time.
Jay and Dom’s Home Fix – Monday, BBC One, 3:45pm
During the pandemic, I’ve become mildly obsessed with the increasingly obvious ways in which TV has been forced to operate. This new series is a case in point.
It stars the genial Jay Blades and Dom Chinea from The Repair Shop, as they beaver away in their socially distanced workshop. Their M.O: provide some practical money-saving DIY advice, which is apparently easy to follow for viewers who aren’t, like me, incompetent Frank Spencer types.
But their segments are padded out with a compendium of emergency archive clips from gently hands-on lifestyle shows such as Flog It!, Gardener’s World and Monty Don’s Big Dreams, Small Spaces. Yet despite its blatantly cobbled-together nature, it’s a perfectly pleasant distraction.
Joanna Lumley’s Home Sweet Home: Travels in My Own Land – Tuesday, STV, 8pm
This week’s travel-heavy schedules feel like a sadistic joke orchestrated by a phalanx of ostensibly inoffensive celebrities hell-bent on reminding us of the wonderful world outside our hermetic lockdown bubbles.
During the final leg of her entirely random sojourn around Britain, Lumley and her spectacular array of scarves, snoods and sou’westers visit a Victorian slate-mining settlement in the misty mountains of Snowdonia. She also meets the GoCompare opera singer.
While travelling through Devon and Cornwall (more of which below), she observes some Dartmoor druids performing an incantation, before ending where she began with another member of the Windrush Generation. A 95-year-old former musician, he’s glad to have lived to see numerous positive changes in this country.
Grand Tours of Scotland’s Lochs – Wednesday, BBC One, 7:30pm
In which the permanently be-hatted, neckerchief-swaddled, backpack-laden and always engaging Paul Murton returns for another informative Loch-side ramble.
He begins his latest series on the beauteous Isle of Skye, with ancient myths and legends coursing through his mind. He sows a neatly sprawling tapestry of plundering Vikings, ancient Highland bagpipe traditions, gruesome feuds and battles, and a beatific visitation from Donovan, who once owned three of the surrounding islands during his high Arcadian ‘60s heyday.
Murton also touches upon the horrific story of the Hebridean slaves, that most extreme example of 18th century Scots being forced to leave their homes while under the governance of despicable land barons. I’m looking at you, Norman MacLeod.
Cornwall and Devon Walks with Julia Bradbury – Wednesday, STV, 8pm
And those feet just keep on walking. This week, Bradbury’s never-ending hike takes her to a vineyard in Totness and a massive house in Dartmouth that once belonged to Agatha Christie.
Yomping travelogues such as this have been parodied so often over the years - by Alan Partridge in particular – you would think they’d be dead in the water. But no, they march on undaunted, impervious to satire.
What with this, Lumley’s programme and John Nettles’ preposterously narrated Channel 4 series, there can’t be a single square inch of Devon and Cornwall that hasn’t been explored on television by now. Enough already.
The logical next step: Gregg Wallace floating alone in the infinite depths of space.
Extraordinary Escapes with Sandi Toksvig – Wednesday, Channel 4, 9pm
I wish I was making this up for hilariously satirical effect, but here’s yet another cosy jaunt around the British Isles.
If you happened to read last week’s column, then you may dimly recall the drill: each week, Toksvig and a famous female pal visit remote British locations and stay in unusual lodgings. Toksvig provides a few pertinent historical titbits. Sometimes they drink cocktails. There is literally nothing more to it than that.
Her minibreak companion this time around is Jessica Hynes. An affable duo, they luxuriate in a lovingly restored 19th century windmill, an 18th century farmhouse located in the middle of a nature reserve, and a stylish glass-fronted beach house. So that’s nice, isn’t it?
LAST WEEK’S TV
Forensics: The Real
CSI – Tuesday 9th February, BBC Two
“Hello. I’ve just murdered my wife.”
So began the latest series of this sombre study of crime scene investigators. It followed forensic specialists from Birmingham as they carefully pieced together an accurate report on a brutal domestic murder. The husband may have confessed during his initial call to emergency services, but they couldn’t guarantee that he would stick to his story. There were no witnesses. Inevitably, they got him in the end.
I’m always in two minds about shows of this nature. They’re technically well-made and relatively sensitive. They provide compelling insight into how the police and forensic investigators operate. But they also feed off terrible tragedies, and I feel guilty for getting drawn in.
Amazing Hotels: Life Beyond the Lobby – Thursday February 11, BBC Two
We really don’t need another series of this jet-setting trash in which MasterChef judge Monica Galetti and the vile journalist Giles Coren – a man in his fifties who still hasn’t learned how to eat with his trap shut – visit various five-star hotels.
There’s no wry commentary a la Alan Whicker or Louis Theroux, no suggestion that this luxury is repugnant and deranged: it’s an uncritical celebration of how the 1% live.
Oh, it pays lip service to issues such as the environment and the local economy, and the hosts briefly muck in behind-the-scenes, but their efforts are perfunctory and patronising: these factotums work jolly hard, don’t they? Now, let’s have a glass of morning champagne!
Horrible, horrible television.
No comments:
Post a Comment