After four episodes, BBC’s “steamy” drama of four modern mistresses is certainly hotting up. About time, you might think. It’s taken four weeks to plod through “shagging by numbers” and deliver the girls into the set of circumstances that, had I written my predictions on a postcard and sent it to myself, would have played out exactly as expected. The one whose husband is infertile has fallen pregnant to her office lover (Siobhan), who started off as a mere diversion but now might offer more than she realised she wanted. The one who thought she’d “try a lesbian” because she’d already tried pretty much everything else (Jessica), has gone and fallen in love with her tester. And the one who’s lover died and who started “comforting” his son (Katie), has found herself in the centre of a maelstrom that could wreck her career and pretty much her whole life.
So thank God for the comic relief that is Trudi. The only story that wasn’t entirely run-of-the-mill from the start (although if I’d thought hard enough…) has provided some of the funniest moments of this mostly drab drama, even if she is faintly unbelievable.
Aw shucks. I’ve done it again. I didn’t mean to… but I’ve gone and watched Masterchef (BBC Two, Tuesday, 8.30pm) starring Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee again. This time, there’s a worrying development. I’ve gone and convinced myself that Wallace and Torode present the show naked from the waist down.
Amongst all the ear splitting acid rave and drum ‘n’ bass, demands of passion and the strange never looking at the camera… a bit like a blind person does… you may have noticed that, not once in this show, do we see the judges legs. Why is that? Is it because Greg Wallace needs to feel ‘a bit freer’ when he’s tasting soup? Does waist bands get a bit tight after all that food tasting?
When I first glanced at my emails yesterday, I thought that this was just another one of those nob-enhancement projects that my poor old inbox is bombarded with every single day of the week. Then I saw the email was from Channel 4 and I knew that all was well. Willie’s Wonky Chocolate Factory (was a S**T title for a series) starts in March and, title aside, it looks quite interesting.
The four-part series follows Willie Harcourt-Cooze (I beg your pardon) – a man on a mission to produce the best chocolate in the world. For my money, he’s got some way to go if he wants to beat the chocolate Hob Nob, but this guy wants to produce ethically-beautiful chocolate and make it fine from bean to bar. Read on for more…
I originally thought I’d rather eat flies than watch this new series, but after watching this clip I must just do so. There’s no denying that Alan Carr is a very likeable person indeed, and some of his rather amusing banter here suggests that he was born to be a star (check the Tara PT joke). His new series – Alan Carr’s Celebrity Ding Dong – starts this Friday night on Channel 4, and looks a bit like the channel’s version of Family Fortunes to me. If you like the Friday Night Project, this will be for you.
Gladiators was curiously entertaining when I was growing up. It was rubbish, naff, the Gladiators were dreadful and Fashanu was annoying, but I still watched. When I went to Uni we watched it at Saturday teatime in that sort of arch, post-modernist way (when secretly we really quite enjoyed it). Lest we forget, those giant cotton buds they used to smack each other with was one of THE TV accessories of the 1990s. I’ll never forget, at our student ball, Eric Bloomfield getting a real pasting by his then girlfriend on one these hastily erected cotton bud battle places. Erm, anyway. Sky One, never one to miss a trick, is bringing it back.
There will be 10 episodes, and the channel is promising a real 21st century makeover for the show. Will it be as popular as before. Almost certainly not. Will John ‘Awooogaaa!’ Fashanu be brought back to present? No idea.
You can’t really knock ITV for sheer production of drama, and yesterday it announced details of yet another new project. I sort of knew about this early doors – I’d overheard one of the starring actors chat about it somewhere, but didn’t know which channel it was going out on. Now I do. It’s called Harley Street, stars ex-Corrie actress Suranne Jones, Paul Nicholls and Shaun Parkes. Say what you will after reading a mini synopsis below, but I think ITV is aiming for some sort of Nip/Tuck vibe with these.
So, Harley Street is based around a private practice that’s run by three partners – heneral medical practitoners Martha (Jones), Robert (Nicholls) and lifestyle surgeon Ekkow (Parkes). The practice is one of those ‘wraparound’ health care places – where the doctors are with their patients every step of a patient’s medical journey. Watch out for glossiness, some plastic surgery and some ‘complex personal relationships’ between the doctors. Supporting cast includes Kim Mecalf, James Fox, Leslie Phillips (!) and Will Mellor, and it’s all being filmed as I write this. Look out for it later in the year.
I learned a new phrase the other day (a phrase that seemingly every person in the world knew except me). That phrase was ‘Sloane Ranger’. So with that, it reminded me of the amusing pastiche on My Fair Lady by the Heineken ad-men which sees a Sloaney spewing “Ver waa’er in Madjowkaa…”
Yes, that long running, late night music show on which you’re as likely to see some obscure Mongolian world music quintet as, you know, The Gossip, has reached the grand old age of 200. It matters not that Jools can’t present for toffee, or that he insists on adding his particular brand of boogie-woogie piano to songs whether it fits or not; the fact is it’s still the best contemporary music programme around. This Friday (BBC Two, 11.35pm), Radiohead and Feist will be on hand to help Mr Holland celebrate, but all eyes will no doubt be on the soul legend Dionne Warwick, who’ll be performing tracks from her new album – and maybe a classic or two, as well, if we’re lucky.
Here’s a fantastic version of Lady Madonna (with added organ courtesy of Jools) performed by Sir Macca last year, just to get you in the mood…
For more music news and reviews, check out our sister site, My Chemical Toilet.
I refuse to read anything about Extreme Dreams with Ben Fogle (BBC Two, Thursday, 6.30pm) in advance because the title offers so much promise. Ben Fogle gets himself rigged up to a machine that can transmit his weirdest visions directly onto our screens. Underneath all that bonhomie lies a dark and troubled soul that is filled with apocalyptic visions of the future where lizard men goose-step around Britain tearing babies heads off and speaking in deafening white noise.
On Thursday, will we see Fogle’s dream of going completely mental in a shopping centre with a hosepipe shooting snake venom and screaming obscenities at shopping pensioners? Or maybe we’ll get to peer into Ben’s murky mind as he undergoes a hideous transformation into some kind of human/fly hybrid and takes flight over the Home Counties, spraying everything he sees with a pre-digestive bile and cackling wildly into the wind? In all honesty, the show will probably feature Fogle somewhere virtually inhospitable being rather nice and possibly sporting a blond beard.
Only yesterday, I was saying that Big Brother may be watching me, but I’m not watching Big Brother. As further proof, I twittered on about how no-one was watching and didn’t even mention that it was the final. Why? I simply didn’t know. It would seem that I wasn’t the only one to have let Celebrity Hijack slip under the radar as the show limped out with a paltry 644,000 viewers.
As you probably know, the ‘reality’ show was told to go hike by Channel 4 after the racism row, so, on E4, the show was left shivering out in the cold and lonely. If you wanna know how bad the figures really are, the last Celebrity BB landed itself 3.2 million viewers. So with that, Dermot O’Leary left the Big Brother franchise through the backdoor, under the cover of the night… and off to bigger things. Not that it’ll mean anything to you, but the show was won by John Loughton, a 20-year-old politician from Edinburgh.
When the BBC gets around to issuing a full press release you know there’s not long to wait, and that’s exactly what happened yesterday. Yes, the most hotly anticipated new drama of the year is barely more than a week away, and things are about to get 1980s crazy. Dig out your leg-warmers, glue your Rubik’s cube back together and make sure you’ve got a good supply of Campari and soda as we get into the 80s groove here on TV Scoop.
Paul, lucky bugger that he is, has already been given the privilege of a sneak preview at the press launch a couple of weeks ago. The rest of us will have to wait until next Thursday, but click through for a synopsis of that first episode, and some snippets of backstage gossip from the stars.
Of all the property shows on the box, I have to say that Property Ladder is by far the best. The host, Sarah Beeny knows her stuff and looks like a good craic. With that… I… uh… (gazes south)… bu… I…. (snaps out of it). Yep. Proving that she’s a game lass, Sarah Beeny has admitted that many viewers watch her shows just to admire her breasts.
“I’d rather they watch for the properties, but if they watch because of my boobs, that’s fine,” she told The Sun. “I have to say there have been a few shows when I’ve thought ‘Blimey, they look big’. In some they’re actually bigger than my head.” I’m not sure that’s true as such… the show is more than chest a pair of… I mean… just a pair of boobies. I’m off for a cold shower… this is ridiculous…
The current series of Horizon seems to be filled with doom and gloom. We’ve looked for better ways to kill people, locked them up in solitary for 48 hours, and now it seems we’ve found something wrong with that most fundamental force in the universe: gravity (tonight’s programme is called: “What on Earth is Wrong With Gravity?”).
Although there are many theories about how gravity works, the reality of it never quite fits them, so a true understanding still eludes us. The holy grail of science – the Grand Unified Theory – depends on uncovering the fundamentals of gravity, and to explain the problem one of today’s foremost physicist goes on a road trip around America trying to work out what on Earth is going on.
Horizon: What on Earth is Wrong With Gravity?: BBC Two, Tuesday 29 January, 9pm
I quite like The Eels. They’re a good little pop group fronted by Mark Oliver Everett. A few years ago, I was due to interview him for another publication, but alas, it didn’t end up happening. However, during the build up to the (now failed) interview, I did my research and found out loads of interesting… and depressing… facts about the country rocker. His past was blighted by untimely deaths in his family and his dad was a very famous scientist indeed. However, with E (has Mr Everett is better known) is a very private man… so a documentary looking at his dad’s work, Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives (BBC Four, Monday, 10.40pm) looked pretty darn interesting.
Everett traveled across America to learn about the father he never really knew. His father, quantum physicist Hugh Everett III died of a heart attack in 1982, where his body was found by 19-year-old Mark. The two didn’t really know each other… and now, on a strange and complicated journey into the world of quantum mechanics, we saw Mark growing closer to his old man.
I watched the last half of Panorama last night while I was preparing myself for City Of Vice over on Channel 4. Blur’s Alex James – now cheese maker and farmer or something – went to Columbia to investigate the country’s rampant cocaine industry. It was very interesting, but trying to fit a whistle-stop tour around Columbia in half an hour? C’mon! This subject deserves to be exlpored in much greater depth, as there were some new approaches to drug taking and drug production.
We saw Alex (he’d taken cocaine once at a party and his hip with the kids, so he was the perfect man to host this, surely) in Bogota, talking to dealers, users, contract killers and evern journeying out into the jungle to meet some cocoa farmers. He even met the president and presented him with some cheese from his farm (did I say he was now a farmer?).
ITV is commissioning loads of stuff at the moment, and here’s another one of those short-run dramas to tell you about. Based on a novel by Val McDermid and made by the people that brought us Wire In The Blood, A Place Of Execution is a ‘taut, psychological thriller’ (I bet you guessed that after reading the name).
Based in 1963, it tells the story of a small village rocked by tragedy – a 13-year-old girl has gone missing, and the self-sufficient locals have to ask the outside world for help, pretty much for the first time. For newly promoted Detective Inspector George Bennett it’s his first serious case, and one that just might break him. The story then jumps to the present day, where George is preparing to promote a book about the case. Trouble is, new evidence comes to light that may turn his world upside down. New cast has been announced yet, but filming starts in April (presumably with a cast).
Here’s something heart-warming – a clip from tonight’s episode of Ladette To Lady (ITV1, 9pm). In it, we see drunken young women falling about while drunk (hold on, wasn’t that last week’s episode?) and getting a good talking to from one of the posh teachers.
Of course, it’s the bit of the series where the girls are having trouble conforming to their new surroundings. I wonder what they will be like in a few weeks time…
How did Coleen McCloughlin become a star? She has a famous footballer as a partner, that’s how. But there’s no denying her appeal. It’s really mad. I went, somewhat suprisingly to some showbiz party a year or so ago, and she was guest of honour. There were the usual Big Brother Z-listers knocking about that should have provided ample fodder for the journalists there. But no. Coleen was whisked off to a VIP area, and there was a queue of cynical hacks waiting to meet her. A queue. Honestly, it was insane.
So good luck to her. She has obviously struck a chord with the public, and it was only a matter of time until she got her own TV show. And here it is, and I wouldn’t bet against it being absolutely massive, even if it is on ITV2.
“London… my city. It is a monstrous place…” By now, we’re used to this foreboding voiceover at the start of City Of Vice. It’s a good way to start because it sets the scene, and you just know that there will be a murder of some sorts for the brothers Fielding and their Bow Street Runners to sort out.
Already in the series, we’ve seen them investigate cutthroat goings on in a whore house, and erm, some more cutthroat goings on in a molly house. What’s in store for us this week? While they are reminded of their duties to protect the rich by their patrons, it doesn’t stop them hunting down a murderer in the Irish shanty towns of Covent Garden.
After four episodes, BBC’s “steamy” drama of four modern mistresses is certainly hotting up. About time, you might think. It’s taken four weeks to plod through “shagging by numbers” and deliver the girls into the set of circumstances that, had I written my predictions on a postcard and sent it to myself, would have played out exactly as expected. The one whose husband is infertile has fallen pregnant to her office lover (Siobhan), who started off as a mere diversion but now might offer more than she realised she wanted. The one who thought she’d “try a lesbian” because she’d already tried pretty much everything else (Jessica), has gone and fallen in love with her tester. And the one who’s lover died and who started “comforting” his son (Katie), has found herself in the centre of a maelstrom that could wreck her career and pretty much her whole life.
Aw shucks. I’ve done it again. I didn’t mean to… but I’ve gone and watched 
I refuse to read anything about Extreme Dreams with Ben Fogle (BBC Two, Thursday, 6.30pm) in advance because the title offers so much promise. 
Only yesterday, I was saying that 
When the BBC gets around to issuing a full press release you know there’s not long to wait, and that’s exactly what happened yesterday. Yes, the most hotly anticipated new drama of the year is barely more than a week away, and things are about to get 1980s crazy. Dig out your leg-warmers, glue your Rubik’s cube back together and make sure you’ve got a good supply of Campari and soda as we get into the 80s groove here on TV Scoop.
Of all the property shows on the box, 
The current series of Horizon seems to be filled with doom and gloom. We’ve looked for 
I quite like The Eels. They’re a good little pop group fronted by Mark Oliver Everett. A few years ago, I was due to interview him for another publication, but alas, it didn’t end up happening. However, during the build up to the (now failed) interview, I did my research and found out loads of interesting… and depressing… facts about the country rocker. His past was blighted by untimely deaths in his family and his dad was a very famous scientist indeed. However, with E (has Mr Everett is better known) is a very private man… so a documentary looking at his dad’s work, Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives (BBC Four, Monday, 10.40pm) looked pretty darn interesting.
From:Coronation Street fans apply here