Category: tv

The not particularly scary or believable Primeval returns for a second series very soon, hoping to breath life into ITV1’s post-Christmas Saturday schedule.

I spotted an ad for the new series on a bus this morning and was mildly surprised to see who the show’s sponsor is – none other than Haven holidays.

Please, please, please tell me what the link is between a show about prehistoric monsters terrorising the UK and a family holiday company. Is ITV that desperate to find a sponsor for a show?

Quick, I don’t want to be overrun by a Velociraptor this summer, so I’ll book a holiday to a caravan park in Dorset – lovely jubbly!

There are TV programmes you can look back at realise how many stars it produced (the original Comic Strip on C4 is a good example).

Then there are the programmes in which some of the participants go on to greater things, while at least one of the ensemble gets cruelly forgotten.

I was reminded of this recently when I saw the new advert for SpecSavers which ‘stars’ an actor called Matthew Cottle.

His big TV break was appearing in the so-so BBC2 comedy Game On in the mid 90s, alongside none other than Ben Chaplin and Samantha Janus.

These two went onto bigger and better things (movies alongside Nicole Kidman/EastEnders), but poor old Matthew’s career nosedived and he hasn’t really appeared in anything for longer than one episode since. That’s gotta hurt.

It also put me in mind of the early-80s sketch show Three Of A Kind, which starred Lenny Henry, Tracey Ullman and David Copperfield – who?

Lenny Henry is, of course, now one of the UK’s best-loved comedians, while Tracey Ullman went on to have huge success in America and her show was the launch pad for a rather insignificant comedy called The Simpsons. Copperfield did pretty much nothing else and is now a mere Gagfax in the annals of TV history.

How many more nearly-rans are there out there?

* Image courtesy of Wikipedia

When I was working on more! magazine, one of the things we did to pass the time was to come up with the most ludicrous headlines or even magazine coverlines and, potentially, see if they could be turned into features.

We’re talking “I ate my hat and almost died” kinda stupid here (which didn’t ever get written, as far as I’m aware).

I imagine that meetings at the ‘we’re so down with the kids’ BBC3 are similar, because tomorrow night they’re broadcasting a programme called Can Fat Teens Hunt?

Yes, this ‘socially-aware’ programme is dropping 10 kids who live on Burger King and Pizza Hut into the Borneo jungle with a tribe that lives on slugs, insects and other such tasty morsels. The teens are then given a bow and arrow and asked to hunt for their food.

Pretty ridiculous, I’m sure you’ll agree, and I say, what a missed opportunity. They could have combined it with one of their SAS-style programmes.

Why didn’t they turn into some Battle Royale style reality show called Can Fat Teens Be Hunted?

Drop them in the same jungle, but have them try to survive off the land, while they were being pursued by a bunch of teen-hating people determined to humiliate them and see the error of their junk-food eating ways.

Not only would you see the teens trying to live off nothing more than the odd piece of rotten fruit, but you could see how they handle living like Andy McNab in enemy territory, where one false bivouac would leave them open to mortar fire and certain death.

They need people like me in TV, you know!