Category: tv

Why being a couch potato has never been more enjoyable

As magazines and newspapers exhort us to get up and start exercising, in an effort to shift the excess pounds piled on during the Christmas festivities, I for one take great heart in the fact that I will be steadfastly glued to my sofa over the next few weeks.
 
The reason is that January TV viewing in the UK has now become one of the great joys of the modern age. In spite of the onward march of boxset viewing and timeshifting, terrestrial and satellite channels are pulling out all the stops during the first three months of the year.
 
Probably most exciting is the long-awaited showing of Glee on E4. A post-modern take on High School Musical with nods to the likes of Drop Dead Gorgeous and even Heathers. It has garnered awards galore since its debut last year in the US and is now being unleashed on the British viewing public with predictably gushing results.
 
At the total opposite end of the humour spectrum is the return to our screens of the brilliant Edie Falco as the eponymous heroine in the black dramedy Nurse Jackie. Mixing elements of Scrubs, ER and Six Feet Under, this packs more into 25 minutes than many other shows manage in twice the time. Sharply funny, squirm-inducing, but also poignant, it manages to hit a number of sweet spots simultaneously and anyone who stays with it will be richly rewarded.
 
But it's not all about American shows. The much underrated Being Human has just begun its second series on BBC3. Three housemates – a ghost, a vampire and werewolf – try to negotiate everyday life, without giving into their desires or revealing their true selves. Being Human is funny, well-written and a rollicking yarn and deserves a bigger audience when it gets shown on BBC1 later down the line.
Back over the Atlantic for my final two picks of the moment. Next week (21st) sees the return of Brothers and Sisters, sometimes seen as a slightly mawkish family drama revolving around the sprawling Walker family. 
 
The show has an astounding cast including Rachel Griffiths, Matthew Rhys, Calista Flockhart, Sally Field and Rob Lowe and has drawn some of the most rounded, if mildly infuriating, characters you will see on TV for a while.
 
It's not pretending to have the political insight of The West Wing nor the wackiness of, say, Six Feet Under, but it cleverly highlights the flaws and redemptive qualities of a family and how they somehow keep things together.

Last but definitely not least is possibly the new series I'm looking forward to the most. Mad Men is coming back for its third series in the UK and promises to be just as compelling as the previous two.

 
Acres has already been written about this show and it has won countless awards, seemingly without anything happening. Describe an individual episode and it sounds as interesting as watching grass grow, yet the sum of its parts reveal why it's so feted. 
 
The period details are wonderful in themselves, the acting is of course astonishingly good, coaxing career-defining performances from people who were previously barely known – not least John Hamm and January Jones as Don and Betty Draper – and the writing is close to peerless.
 
There's much more good stuff out there, including Survivors on BBC1 and The Misfits on E4, but these are the ones that stand out for me.

Posted via email from Rob’s stream of web

David Tennant saturation…

david_tennantYou just might have noticed that there are a couple of Doctor Who episodes showing on BBC1 during this festive period.

What’s more, they are the last appearances as the Doctor by David Tennant – a role he has played for the past four years.

It’s generally accepted that Tennant has played a blinder as the time-travelling Gallifreyan, something no-one thought possible when he took over from Christopher Eccleston, back in 2005.

I’m a big fan and have already watched the Christmas Day episode and am looking forward to the final throw of Tennant’s (and Russell T Davies’) dice on New Year’s Day.

What I do object to, though, is the utter Doctor Who – and of David Tennant, in particular – saturation across the BBC in the last couple of weeks.

He alone is apparently making 75 appearances on the BBC over Christmas and New Year.

I’ve seen him presenting Never Mind the Buzzcocks, as a panellist on QI and a guest on Alan Carr’s Chatty Man. I’ve also heard him on radio being interviewed by Kirsty Young for Desert Island Discs, co-presenting the Jonathan Ross Saturday morning R2 slot with Catherine Tate, interviewing Dr Who collaborator Russell T Davies on R2 for a show called Who on Who and at least one other appearance I can’t remember.

Surely, this is total overkill? Most of us understand the need to plug important shows, but there’s a limit to the amount of exposure one show/man can expect.

Worst of all, it doesn’t even seem to have worked that well. Christmas Day viewing figures showed that, although 10 million people tuned in to see Tennant in action, it was only the 3rd most watched programme behind EastEnders and the Royle Family, and down on both of the previous two years’ audiences.

The Tennant exposure is not the first time that the BBC has been accused of overfilling schedules this year. When U2 released their new album back in February, the BBC came in for flak for heavily plugging the launch of No Line On The Horizon on Radio 1, 2, 4 and BBC2.

On the one hand, this shows how popular the BBC is and how many external outlets desperately want to be linked to its important shows, but it also gives weight to those naysayers who are trying to reduce the BBC’s power and influence.

Let’s just hope the New Year’s Day episode of Doctor Who does well, because otherwise poor David Tennant’s efforts will be sorely in vain.

Why the X Factor judges aren’t as clever as they think

Last night was George Michael night on X Factor – a particularly ill-starred night as far as the contestants went, with a number of duff performances.

Yet again, Joe McElderry was the star of the show with his version of Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me. As Louis Walsh – Mr Rulebook for this year’s X Factor – pointed out, it’s technically an Elton John track and not a George Michael one. George only guested on it.

Surprisingly, though, none of the judges picked up on the fact that Stacy Solomon also sang a technically ‘illegal’ song. I Can’t Make You Love Me was indeed recorded by George Michael, as part of Double A Side back in 1997 with Older, but that was a cover version.

The original rendition was recorded by Bonnie Raitt. Clearly Louis, Cheryl, Dannii and Simon don’t know their music as well as they think they do.