This article was originally published in The Courier on 26th February 2022.
NEXT WEEK’S TV
Rock Till We Drop – Tuesday, BBC Two, 9pm
Former pop star Martin Kemp joins forces with rapper Lady Leshurr in this rather beguiling search for talented musicians aged 64 and over.
They’re aiming to assemble a band capable of storming a 15-minute slot at the Isle of Wight Festival, but that’s not really the point. It’s all about giving older people the opportunity to prove something to themselves and others: an autumnal confidence boost.
Projects of this nature always run the risk of patronising the participants, but Rock Till We Drop is, thankfully, not that sort of show. No one is mocked or made to look foolish.
Kemp and Leshurr discover some genuine talents along the way. These nice, interesting people deserve their moment in the spotlight.
Marcus Wareing’s Tales
from the Kitchen Garden – Monday to Friday, BBC Two, 6:30pm
Here we go again, folks, another aspirational series in which a celebrity starts a new life in the countryside.
This one follows the Michelin-starred chef Marcus Wareing as he follows his dream of setting up a smallholding. That inherently amusing word is constantly invoked throughout the series, so much so that it almost starts to resemble a running gag. But at no point does Wareing observe that it sounds like the name of a Carry On character, one presumably played by Charles Hawtrey. Weird.
An entirely bland and inoffensive man, Wareing makes Titchmarsh look like Keith Floyd at his most bacchanalian. But he means no harm in the grand scheme of things. He’s a mere smallholder.
Rise of the Nazis: Dictators at War – Monday, BBC Two, 9pm
The final chapter of this grimly compelling and authoritative essay begins in 1943 with the German Army retreating across the Western Front in the wake of its crushing defeat at Stalingrad. Hitler becomes increasingly remote, paranoid and desperate as the German public start to lose faith in his supposed infallibility.
A prominent dissenter is the extraordinarily brave 21-year-old student Sophie Scholl, who risks her life by joining an underground resistance movement devoted to exposing Nazi lies about the war effort. The group’s ultimate goal is to encourage people to rise up and overthrow their despotic rulers before it’s too late.
Meanwhile, senior German army officer Claus von Stauffenberg hatches a plan to assassinate der Fuhrer.
Emergency – Monday to Thursday, Channel 4, 9pm
Stripped over four consecutive nights, this urgent frontline documentary gains access to London’s Major Trauma System, which was set up in the wake of the 2005 terrorist attacks. An interconnected NHS network of hospitals, air ambulances and paramedics, it provides a vital lifeline for major trauma patients.
Yes, we’ve all seen programmes like this before, but they provide a valuable public service. It doesn’t matter that Emergency cleaves to all the familiar trappings of this genre (e.g. the bombastic narrator who sounds like he’s standing, legs wide apart, on a windswept hospital helipad), because its fundamentally sensitive message rings out loud and clear.
Nothing can undermine the affecting human drama of these stories. A noble endeavour.
The Mystery of Anthrax Island – Tuesday, BBC Scotland, 10pm
Gruinard Island is a tiny uninhabited mass situated just a few miles off the coast of Wester Ross. During WWII it was used by British scientists as a testing ground for the deadly effects of anthrax. The unfortunate guinea pigs were sheep. It was henceforth classed as a contaminated danger zone.
However, as this documentary reveals, it became a political cause celebre in the early 1980s when a mysterious group of protesters claimed to have visited the island and unearthed mounds of lethal soil. They deposited this soil outside the perimeter fence at the secretive MoD base Porton Down and near the Blackpool location of the Conservative Party Conference.
Preview copies weren’t available, but this sounds absolutely fascinating.
Storyville: Writing with Fire – Wednesday, BBC Four, 10pm
According to India’s oppressive caste system, Dalit people are considered to be so impure they don’t even qualify as members of that hierarchy. Dalit women are constantly subjected to horrific acts of violence, while the male-dominated authorities turn a blind eye.
This deeply angering yet cautiously hopeful film – which has been nominated for the 2022 Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary – follows a brave and brilliant group of female Dalit journalists as they take their pioneering newspaper into the digital age.
Writing with Fire is both an unflinching indictment of human rights violations and an inspiring celebration of our vital universal need for journalistic integrity. Truth must always speak to power. It’s an important piece of work.
Would I Lie to You? – Friday, BBC iPlayer
The latest edition of this genial panel show welcomes comedian Jo Brand, Inbetweeners star Joe Thomas, Olympic gold-winning hockey player and Question of Sport captain Sam Quek, and the endearingly eccentric maths teacher and broadcaster Bobby Seagull.
Things we’re asked to believe this week include: Quek waking up the morning after her Olympic triumph with a cheeseburger down her bra; Seagull taking a book with him whenever he visits a nightclub; and team captain Lee Mack looking after a beehive with predictably disastrous results.
Seagull and Thomas are very good at sounding like they might be lying, even if they aren’t. A useful weapon in this arena. Viewers in Scotland can access the episode on iPlayer from around 9:30pm on Friday night.
LAST WEEK’S TV
Paul Sinha’s TV Showdown – Saturday 19th February, STV
Sinha is a very sharp and likeable man, he’s the perfect host for a nerdy TV quiz show, but alas this format is flawed. There’s too much meandering banter and not enough quizzing. Say what you like about Noel Edmonds by all means, but at least Telly Addicts got down to business.
And that’s the other major drawback: the contestants are celebrities. ‘Ordinary people’ will always be more au fait with television than the busy pros who appear on it. So what you end up with is an irreverent yet committed quizmaster posing occasionally quite tricky questions to a baffled panel who dance around the answers in the hope of getting laughs. It’s all rather pointless.
Louis Theroux’s Forbidden America – Sunday 20th February, BBC Two
I’m a big fan of Louis Theroux, he’s facilitated some of the most memorable television documentaries of the last 25 years, but he slipped into repetitive self-parody with his latest report from The Troubled Fringes of American Society.
A belated sequel of sorts to his 2000 documentary about gangsta rap, it found him looking concerned as he met various rappers from disadvantaged backgrounds who were engaged in futile and often violent feuds: victims of a culture based on macho posturing.
While I appreciate the point he was (presumably) making –
nothing has changed for the marginalised youth of America – the programme
itself was Theroux on autopilot. A well-meaning yet insubstantial exercise, it
sighed sadly, frowned then ended.
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