There was a lot of fuss in the build-up of Friday's Eastenders (BBC One, Friday, 19 February, 8pm). It was the 25th birthday of the show and it was to be shown live. From a TV critic point of view, that's an exciting notion - ER did something similar and it was all very thrilling. However, what was it like to watch?
You'd be forgiven for thinking that the only good thing shown on TV recently is Doctor Who and The Wire. Everything else is staggeringly crap. Right? TV continues to scrape the barrel with format reality shows and things featuring Amanda Holden and/or Piers Morgan. It's an insult. However, there's a show airing currently that's so classy that it should come with an olive on a cocktail stick.
What's weirder than a a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost sharing a flat? BBC Three showing a decent show, that's what. Luckily enough for you, both of these things are linked. I am, of course, talking about the brooding Being Human. Episode three of the new series transmits direct into your eyeballs on Sunday 24th January at 9pm... and we've got a sneak preview of it! Watch it then.
Great news! The Guardian has reported that BBC Two is developing a 21st century version of Our Friends in the North. Now, that's not strictly a new Our Friends In The North... but... well... read on.
Judi Dench, Imelda Staunton, Francesca Annis, Julia McKenzie and Jim Carter return in the popular award-winning BBC drama about the lives of the people of Cranford. In this two-part special, Judi Dench reprises her role as Cranford's much cherished Miss Matty Jenkyns, heading a cast that boasts some of Britain's top film, TV and stage talent including Cranford newcomers: Jonathan Pryce, Celia Imrie, Lesley Sharp, Nicholas Le Prevost, Jodie Whittaker, Tom Hiddleston, Michelle Dockery, Matthew McNulty, Rory Kinnear and Tim Curry.
What is it with the Beeb and Blyton? After years of snubbing her work, claiming she was a 'second rater' and 'lacked literary value', they decide to make a TV movie of her life which seemed nothing more than a stitch up 40 years after her death. OK, there is something more than unpleasant about some of her work, particularly her sexist and racist language (in the Three Golliwogs book my sisters had the Three Golliwogs were called Golly, Woggie and Nigger - and that was the 1960s!)
But she was very much a product of her racist and sexist upper middle class Edwardian, English upbringing and given that her output was prolific (over 6000 words a day for decades) it's easy to understand why some of her work varied in quality. For the most part, The Famous Five is glorious escapist stuff that children's dreams are made of and as for Noddy it's delightful pre-school entertainment. And these are just two examples from a stable that also included The Secret Seven, Malory Towers, The Wishing Chair and much, much more.
Watching Helena Bonham Carter play Enid Blyton though you would have thought she ate children, not wrote for them. Bonham Carter played the part brilliantly it has to be said but the leaden, two dimensional script made Blyton seem like an absolute monster of near Josef Fritzl proportions. Sure she probably wasn't the nicest of people, full of prejudice (as we have already seen) and hang ups about her own father who left the family home to shack up with another woman when she was a young girl.
But are we really meant to believe she completely ignored her own children leaving them to play upstairs with the Nanny, preferring at one point to pick up her dog rather than her crying baby from a cot. Then cruelly shipping the kids off to boarding school (the younger one played by the girl from Outnumbered) just so she could embark an affair with another man in her Knightsbridge love nest while her cuckolded husband was in charge of the Surrey homeguard.
In one scene she even boasts of having six different publishers just so she can get round war time paper rations to illustrate how little she cared about the war effort. In another she fails to recognise her brother who comes round to her palatial Beaconsfield home, Green Hedges, to tell her their mother has died. "She has been dead to me for years," Blyton coldly replies.
Sure she was probably an intensely driven woman who wanted to be loved by fans (what writer, performer, musician etc. doesn't) but was she really so, so evil and self-centred? Probably not. While Helena Bonham Carter seemed to relish the 'Cruella Da Ville' part, everyone else in the production, it seemed - including Denis Lawson who played her strong second husband Kenneth Darrell Waters - were reduced to little more than little lap dogs, quaking in her wake.
I'm sure Mr Stephen Fry won't begrudge us using an image of the very lovely Zooey in this news story. As much as we love Stephen, he's not as nice to look at as Ms. Deschanel. Anyway, Bones, Sky1 darkly amusing cult hit crime drama is welcoming back Mr Stephen Fry in his guest role of Dr. Gordan Wyatt on the show.
Eastenders is to broadcast a live episode next year to celebrate its 25th anniversary. A first for the show and, for anyone who saw the live episode of ER, you'll know how much fun they can be. Of course, with such a bold move, something big will need to happen in it too. This has seen the Beeb promising that the live show (which will air next February) will involve the "resolution of a big storyline". They're not letting on which storyline that will be of course (and naturally, it won't stop us speculating).
Related: Eastenders/George Michael | Eastenders has lost its mind
It's almost beyond the realms of my imagination that, last year, one of my favourite dramas of the whole year was on ITV1. I mean, ITV1 is pretty much a withered hand amongst the jewellery. However, The Fixer was a preposterous success, with Cracker-style gritticism and savage violence. In Andrew Buchan, we have a new actor to keep an eye on while we mutter about how he's destined for bigger things. The best news about it all is that ITV have seen sense and decided to commission another series... and there's a sneak preview to watch too!
Anna Friel stars in next week's The Street (BBC One, Monday, 20 July, 9pm) which will thrill fans of hers no end. For admirers of her physically, you will no doubt be titillated at the news that she will be playing Dee, who just so happens to have a job that requires her to wear stockings and suspenders and all that. Naturally, this being Jimmy McGovern, it's not going to be some tit-fest, but rather, a gritty Lady Madonna story about making ends meet.
Related: The Street Series Three Episode One
The Street has won a load of awards and a hundred times the weight in fans. It only serves to further my thinking that Jimmy McGovern can do no televisual wrong. With that, I'm a little cut up at the news that the current series of the BBC One drama is set to be the last ever. Why? All because of cuts at ITV Studios in Manchester, where the show is made. On BBC Radio 4's Front Row, McGovern said that he wouldn't take the drama to another producer when ITV's Manchester drama department is scrapped as part of money saving cuts by ITV. That means no more episodes of The Street when the current series finishes.
Related: Reviews of The Street
I'll watch absolutely anything that has been penned by Jimmy McGovern. I mean, here's a man that has contributed to some of my favourite dramas ever made. Cracker, The Lakes, Hillsborough and The Street (BBC One, Monday, 13 July, 9pm), which returned to our screens last night. The show has had a knack for getting actors on board that you immediately trust. In previous series, we've seen Jim Broadbent, Jane Horrocks, Sue Johnston, Gina McKee, Timothy Spall and David Thewlis. Last night, it was Bob Hoskins turn.
Related: More on The Street
After a couple of sluggish episodes that could have been combined into a single much better one, and a chapter that hinted at better things to come, last night's fourth episode finally delivered on the promise that had been established. Dark and gripping, there still wasn't much action in the truest sense of the word until the last few minutes, but those appalling conversations in the Cabinet made that episode something special. And after that, you just knew the finale was going to be a humdinger...
Related: Day I review | Day II review | Day III review | Day IV review
A drama looking at the implosion of the world's finances has been on the cards and next week, we get to tune in to Freefall (BBC Two, Tuesday, 14 July, 9pm) which is already being chattered about as being one of the best shows of the year. In it, we'll follow Dave (played by Mamma Mia! spunk Dominic Cooper) who is a roguish, laddy mortgage broker who shows a cartoonish lack of conscience when dealing with just about everyone in the entire universe. People sign on the dottted line for mortgages they can barely afford and off he scoots, living the high life. Of course, it then comes tumbling down...
I despair when people suggest that TV isn't as good as it used to be. I mean, these people have clearly never watched The Street (BBC One, Monday, 13 July, 9pm) which, as the words and numbers in the brackets show, returns to our screens next week with a new series. The Street is written by Jimmy McGovern. He's the master of making emotionally powerful and beautifully written dramas. He won a Bafta for this show. They're often difficult to watch, but always worth it in the end. So what will next week show us?
Related: The Street review
On Day II, the focus switched from the 456 to the Torchwood gang themselves - running from the authorities, hiding amongst the spuds and getting captured in cement, Han Solo style. Tonight things stepped up a gear and we started to learn just a little more about those aliens with designs on Britain - and even Captain Jack's past.
The last series (or 'season' if you're American or British and trying to be cool) of Heroes was a massive disappointment. As a show, it had gone from ambitious and confusing to barrel scraping, ab-flexing, thicko-action sci-fi. The next series had a fair amount riding on it. Such a departure left the show feeling like it was sat in it's own urine with the commissioner's axe swaying precariously overhead. So when the news came in of a potential storyline for the next batch, I was rather intrigued. Would we get a new, even badder baddie? Would the Petrelli sprout insect wings? No. Heroes looks like it's going to stoop low and give lonely sci-fi nuts a cheap trouser shuffle. Ladies and Gentleman... when in trouble, get Claire (Hayden Panettiere) to get off with a girl.
Russell T Davies has said that he wanted to make the Torchwood team less indestructible, and he's certainly done that. At the end of series two, Owen and Tosh were killed of by a nuclear explosion and Jack's brother respectively, and now the government want the remaining 'staff' dead to ensure that there are 'no survivors'.
From: Coming Soon... BBC Three's Scallywagga