Thursday, March 20, 2008

Karma'n over to my place

PROPERTY! I Own Britain's Best Home, Five, 8.00pm

Now we know there are a lot of you out there who like property porn (or more specifically, property porn with a bunch of foolish 'real' people and some clever and just the right side of condescending experts.... OK, property porn that features Sarah Beeny, Kirstie'n'Phil, Ann Maurice or Kevin McCloud) and we wondered if this new little show would be up your street.

However, despite I Own Britain's Best Home being trailered like crazy on Five at the moment, we couldn't find out much about it (they are adopting the Channel 4 tactic of not updating their website until after new programmes air, and stfu if you want to find out about them before they start to decide if they are worth watching).

We think the gist is that a bunch of people get to pose their houses up before the camera and we get to presumably laugh at their sumggery. We *think* there might also be some viewer vote action along the way. Sadly, we suspect the crazy house boat people from the last series of Grand Designs won't be featuring.

PRISON! My Name is Earl, Channel 4, 10.00pm

Well, this is a turn up for the books. After series two of My Name is Earl turned up a gazillion years after series one, we are quite surprised that series three has turned up so comparatively quickly. We're not complaining. We like this show a lot, and what with the writers' strike and all, there has been a dearth of US comedy on our screens, and seeing as Channel Four don't seem that inclined to show much home-grown comedy either at the moment, this is doubly welcome.

Last time we saw Earl he took Joy's place at her theft trial, and in this opening two-parter (part two next week! What sort of nonsense is this, Channel 4!), he is in jail. We presume some how he will get out next week, no doubt through a series of karma-riffic komedy kapers.

We have heard a few rumours that this opening episode isn't quite up to the usual standards of the series. We hope that a) that isn't true, or b) if it is, that it's just a blip. Thursdays have not been all that funny since Lead Balloon and Buzzcocks ended, and we could do with something to take their place.

Labels: Channel 4, Five, I Own Britain's Best Home, My Name Is Earl, TV

By Rad :: Post link :: ::  
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Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Rimmer's Dinners

CONTEST! Recipe for Success, BBC Two, 5.15pm
CONTESCO! Breaking Into Tesco, Five Life, 9.00pm

So last week saw the finale of Masterchef (About which: Ha! Johnny made a chocolate fondant! Fool!) and new series of Celebrity Masterchef and Great British Menu are yet to begin. What, then, is telly doing to fill the foodie gap in our lives?

Well, apparently it is turning to one man, 'celebrity' (us neither) chef Simon Rimmer, who looks like the bizarre mutant lovechild of Richard O'Brien and Dominic Littlewood. This man is at the helm, of not, one, but two-count-em brand new foodie shows.

We know both of these series technically began last night (Breaking Into Tesco was on normal Five, as opposed to tonight's Five Life repeat), but as we didn't have much clue what they were about, we thought we'd wait till tonight to preview them.

Filling the gap left by The Weakest Link, which in turn is filling the gap left by Neighbours, we have Recipe for Success (and can we just remind the Beeb here that the proper allotted time for food shows is 6.30pm, not 5.15pm, or 8.30pm or anything else). This show is a bit like a low-budget version of LC-fave The Restaurant (so sadly no Maman Blanc here). Each night we see a couple trying to run a restaurant type affair and they get marked by the audience. The winning couple at the end of the week presumably go into some later stage (we kind of missed the details of the rules and the prize and all that gubbins). Anyway, it's not as classy as it's BBC stablemates (except Kitchen Criminals, it's probably a bit classier than that. Sorry Angela) but it's a bit of fun and worth tuning into if you watch Neighbours at lunchtime. Or in the evening. Or the middle of the night. Or the omnibus.

The other new show, Breaking into Tesco is actually the more exciting prospect of the two. If you can try to stomach the elements of it that feel like an extended advert for our supermarket overlords, it's actually a warm, interesting and quirky little show. The premise is that four contestants each week design a dish that they hope to get on the shelves of THAT shop. They go through various rounds, including an audience taste test, a supermarket tasting panel and a pitch to the store's product team. Along the way some of them get elimated until the last one standing goes through to a final where the winner will get their product made.

It sounds a little dull, but it genuinely isn't. It combines the competitive elements of The Apprentice with the crazy contestants of Come Dine With Me, the wacky innovations of Dragon's Den, and a little bit of Schools-programme style education. In other words, it's proper lowculture fare.

Tonight's contestants are Jolly Jenny, with her Lancashire foot (a hot pot in a pasty, basically), desperate Danni with her gluten-free-egg-free-sugar-free muffins, Jovial Jenny (#2) with her Malaysian noodle soup and Passionate Paul with his, er, cherry ravioli.

We know who wins, obviously, but they are all television gold. The only problem is that the trailer for next week basically gives away who gets to which stage of the contest, which is blatantly rubbish. Sort it out, Five. You don't get that sort of behaviour on Masterchef.

Labels: BBC Two, BBC2, Breaking into Tesco, Five, Five Life, food, Recipe for success, Simon Rimmer

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Friday, February 29, 2008

Ice ice baby

BRAVERY! Ice Road Truckers, Five, 8.00pm

If you're looking for something to watch on TV tonight, the first question we should be asking you is why are you not attending the great lowculture meet-up of 2008, eh? Although we suppose there are some acceptable reasons why you might not be there, such as being under house arrest, attending your own wedding, or possibly just living a little bit too far outside London for it to be a realistic possibility. If that's the case: sorry. Maybe next time, eh?

So, those of you unable to attend may need some form of televisual entertainment for tonight after all, in which case we'd like to recommend this: a quirkly little ob-doc that's made the transfer from the History Channel. We realise that sort of talk has probably already got a certain section of the audience running for the hills, but stick with us, because it's a good'un: the truckers in question transit supplies to diamond mines over deeply dodgy terrain, on what basically amounts to frozen lakes, which are supposed to support the weight of fucking great lorries. These people have got serious fucking balls, we don't mind telling you.

Obviously, any show of this nature stands and falls on the strength of its characters, and as you might expect, the sort of people who undertake a job of this nature tend to be a little on the idiosyncratic side. But they're very watchable, they tell it like it is, and they swear and rant with the same sort of ferocity as we do whenever we sit through one of Hollyoaks current drugs hell scenes (though sadly in an edited and censored pre-watershed sort of way). We can give it no heartier recommendation.

Labels: Five, Ice Road Truckers, TV

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Monday, February 25, 2008

Mistery thriller

REBORN! The Mr Men Show, Five, Mon-Fri 7.30am

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Is it a dream, a parallel universe or another planet? Is it a bold new re-imagining or a parade of distorted foetuses flaunting their personality quirks in the name of entertainment? Or is it just another rebrand? Yes, that sounds a bit nicer, let's go with that.

So! This week marks the UK premier of the brand new re-imagined TV rebrand of the perenially popular Mr Men and the slightly less perenially popular Little Miss in The Mr Men Show (not to be confused with Mr Men, Little Miss - later broadcast together as Little Miss and Mr Men - or Mr Men and Little Miss, also shown on Five back in those crazy 'Channel 5' salad days). What it basically means for you, the viewer, is that around 56% of everything you thought you knew about the Mr Men and the Little Miss has been quite literally THROWN OUT OF THE WINDOW, with the morality tales of yore replaced by a sketch-show format, the temperament-based locations (inconsistently switched with the occasional and possibly metaphorical setting of Misterland) replaced by a Kosovoesque Brand New Country Or Place called Dillydale, and the vast, sprawling, repetitive original cast pared down to a tidy twenty-five key figures. Some have been renamed, many redesigned, a couple have had their gender reassigned and one or two have been plucked out of thin air and apparently created to enhance and complement their friends and colleagues.

While old favourites such as Mr Bump, Mr Grumpy, Little Miss Sunshine and (obviously) Mr Happy have survived the transition unscathed, others have been subtly modified. Mr Tickle's long arms are now retractable! Mr Strong's arms are massive, as is his big, sexy, V-shaped back! Little Miss Naughty has candyflossy hair! And the changes don't end there. Mr Lazy is now green, not pink! Mr Quiet is now light blue, not light brown! And he's doing yoga! Mr Nosey doesn't have a long nose any more! And he's fat! And he's got bad posture and a little tie that makes him look like a character from Top Cat! And he's gay, and living in an observatory with Mr Small for no apparent reason! And Mr Small's orange! And wearing a very tall top hat! And then there's the accents: Geordie for Mr Nosey, West Country for Little Miss Naughty, French for Mr Rude (hmmm) and retarded for Mr I'm-not-a-woman-anymore Scatterbrain. The whole cast, and their sordid/exciting exploits - including the pretty astonishing sight of Mr Strong flexing and kissing his mighty biceps - can be seen on the official site.

The Mr Men Show has already been airing on Cartoon Network in America for several weeks, and was almost entirely redubbed from American into English for a UK audience. The British voice-over artists include such luminaries as Simon 'Michael from I'm Alan Partridge' Greenall, Jo 'Natella from Bromwell High' Wyatt and Tim 'Angelo from Mike and Angelo' Whitnall, although the class-factor is enhanced considerably by the presence of Simon Phillip Hugh Callow CBE, who steps into Arthur Lowe's shoes as the narrator. Each episode features a particular theme (this morning it was Going To The Hospital To Have A Carrot Removed), and it's on every weekday morning, so there's no excuse for not having a look (unless you really just can't be arsed, or always found the Mr Men a bit frightening). Welcome back!

Labels: animation, Five, rebrand, The Mr Men Show, TV

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Libbin' it up

RETURNING! Neighbours, Five, 1.45pm, 5.30pm, 5.10am, Five Life, 7.00pm

One of the great things about Neighbours is that whenever a favourite character leaves, there is always a good chance you'll see them again. Even if they die. (See also: Home and Away, EastEnders, Emmerdale).
Tonight sees the return of an old favourite, Libby Kennedy. Libby comes back to support mum Susan through her trial and her still-a-mystery-but-not-for-much-longer illness. It's a good job someone in the family cares. Mal and Billy are both too busy being overseas, and Carytyre is too busy going out with Paul McClain to actually give a damn. Seriously, they could at least phone.

We're not sure what kind of job Libby will have, what with Riley being the new resident journalist and 'Fitzy' the new teacher, but there's still a doctor's position going, so maybe she'll have had yet another career change. However, all is not well in Libby-land. She and Ben (worryingly, he is played by the brother of the actor who plays Mickey, we thought we ought to warn you) are back, but where is Darren?

What this all means is that not only is Libby back, she's back with a bang, as the Kennedy-Smith-Kennedy-Smith-Kinski-Kennedy clan enter into some of their biggest storylines to date. Following on from this, can we have Lucy, Gail and RobRob back now please?

Labels: Five, Five Life, Libby Kennedy, neighbours, TV

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Thursday, February 14, 2008

Lowculture vs. Cuoco, Round 2

"REALITY"! Big Brother US, E4, 9.00pm

We can't say we felt especially upset about the lack of Celebrity Big Brother this year - even the Big Brother: Celebrity Hijack on E4 left us feeling utterly uninspired, considering that by the time the finale was being promoted, we'd forgotten it was even on. And while the USA's Big Brother has always been the rather poor relation of its UK, erm, big brother, the phrase "any port in a storm" springs to mind. You may note that it seems to be on a little early this year - another side-effect of the writers' strike (which is now over, hooray!), causing network heads to scrabble for any non-scripted programme to put out rather than end up with a schedule full of dead air.

And since our chums across the pond are no less prone to tampering with an established working formula than we are, this year's competition is all about coupling up, so each contestant will be paired with a house "soulmate" (the show's subtitle is 'Til Death Do You Part', in a splendidly macabre sort of way). They stand for Head of House together, get evicted together, go to the toilet together (probably) - everything. And best of all, one of the couples is a set of gays! How very awesome. Even better, one of them "slept with his sister's cheerleading coach - ruining her cheering career." We bet she was S-A-D sad about that. So, excellent idea or transparent tokenism? Probably the latter, but we're sufficiently intrigued to tune in and find out.

"COMEDY"! The Big Bang Theory, Channel 4, 10.00pm

One of our crowning memories of bizarreness here at lowculture was the time when we previewed season eight of Charmed and found ourselves having to defend our opinions against a particularly zealous defender of bleached blonde talent vortex Kaley Cuoco. Anyway, we've sharped our claws and prepared for battle again, since our arch-nemesis has returned in a new sitcom about a hot girl befriending some nerds. Oh yeah, we can see how this one's going to go.

In fairness to Cuoco (ugh, we feel dirty just writing that), she started out in sitcoms and was generally agreeable on 8 Simple Rules, although we get the impression that her role as an airhead didn't require a whole lot of acting. So she's playing to her strengths, such as they are, because in this show she's cast as a beautiful bimbo (the producers claim the character is not an idiot; they are fooling no one but themselves) who moves in next door to a couple of geeks, the variety of which only ever exist on television or occasionally in movies, because they have no dress sense and talk about science fiction all the time. Hilarious, huh?

It's not doing too badly in the States, but its relative popularity is a mystery to us - we've watched a fair few clips of it on the internet and just don't see the funny, and it saddens us greatly that the lovely Johnny Galecki has been reduced to appearing in this show. And knowing the way our luck runs, it will almost certainly rate higher than...

TRAGEDY! 30 Rock, Five, 11.45pm

Our current favourite show ends tonight, and is bowing out with very little fanfare. It hasn't really done the business for Five, ratings-wise, and has been punished by being given the dreaded double-bill treatment (though this was an extra treat for fans of the show, when you think about it) and pushed later and later into the night, up to the point where only insomniacs and the truly devoted are likely to be watching. This show deserves so much better, and if The Big Bang Theory ends up becoming a smash hit over here, we may have to go around whacking the offending viewers with sticks until they see sense.

So, final episode, and things are not currently looking up for ol' Liz Lemon. Floyd's moved to Cleveland and she's attempting to maintain a long-distance relationship. Tracy Jordan is currently missing in action (this sounds like a job for the marvellous Dr Leo Spaceman), and Jack's set to get married to hollow-boned possibly fake British chippie Phoebe. Oh, and his sassy old broad of a mother is back in town.

We've loved this show dearly, and it truly saddens us that, much as in America, it hasn't had the viewing figures it deserves. But by the hammer of Thor, let's just hope we at least get to see season two at some point, rather than just getting left in limbo like we were with Big Love. Don't think we've forgotten about that, Five.

Labels: 30Rock, Big Brother US, Channel 4, e4, Five, our nemesis Kaley Cuoco, The Big Bang Theory, TV

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Monday, February 11, 2008

The Second Coming

ARRIVED! Neighbours, Five, 1:45pm, 5:30pm, 5:10am and Five Life, 7pm

Labels: Five, Five Life, neighbours

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Thursday, January 24, 2008

Rock on

LATE! 30 Rock, Five, 11.05pm

We've grown used to the fact that shows we adore will, more often than not, turn out to be fairly unpopular among the public at large and disappear from our screens lamentably early (see also: Night & Day, Crossroads, Veronica Mars, etc), and we've been nursing a suspicion for some time that 30 Rock was set to join their ranks. For starters, 10.40pm on a Thursday was never really a prime slot to launch a sitcom (especially not on Five), and then it started getting pushed later, and now it's come to double bills, which are seldom a good sign. Oh dear.

It's disappointing, because 30 Rock has a higher laugh-per-minute ratio than any other show we can think of right now. We still dissolve into fits of giggles every time we think about Jenna's appearance on The View ("Your father Werner was a burger server in suburban Santa Barbara when he spurned your mother Verna for a curly-haired surfer named Roberta. Did that hurt her?"), or Tracy trying to act as much like a stereotype as possible in order to embarrass Jack at the golf course, or Liz making a list of reasons to dump her boyfriend ("Pro: Jack likes him. Con: Jack likes him."), or Jack's frequent accidental double entendres ("I'll be your bottom, Kenneth, and I want you to ride me as hard as you can.") But then, it is very US-TV in-jokey, so we can see why it might not be to some people's tastes. Especially if they haven't completely rotted their brains from over-exposure to American television in the way we have.

Tonight: it's time for the renegotiations of the staff contracts, with Jenna anxious to make up for some unfortunate comments she made in an interview (only to go on TV and get Barack Obama confused with Osama bin Laden) and in the second episode, Liz is anxious to prove she isn't racist. We're fairly certain there will be hilarious misunderstandings of epic proportions, and we can't wait.

Labels: 30Rock, Five, TV

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Thursday, December 13, 2007

Checking out

POST-WATERSHED! The Hotel Inspector, Five, 9.00pm

We're here today to mourn the end of an era. No, not the last episode in the current series, not just yet. Instead, we're here to mull over some slightly old news (our finger being ever on the pulse): that of Ruth Watson moving to Channel 4. Obviously it's good news in the sense that somebody had the sense to sign up our current favourite lifestyle guru in a golden handcuffs deal, but we can't help worrying about some of the possible after-effects.

First of all, The Hotel Inspector will continue next year without her. Obviously Five are well within their rights to do this, and we can see why they would want to hold on to a successful programme, but we worry about what the show will be like without Ruth? Who will fill her shoes, or perhaps more aptly, her seemingly limitless collection of brightly-coloured blazers? Who will have the same balance of genuine empathy and no-nonsense business sense? Who else can wander around a B&B and surprise you with an unexpected f-bomb every now and then in quite the way that she does?

Which brings us to another point: what if Channel 4 - horror of horrors - put her on before the watershed? Surely such a move would be foolhardy. The brilliance of the Hotel Inspector format is that it's one of the very few programmes of its ilk that regularly screens in a post-9pm slot, and since we've all been indoctrinated to expect a certain type of language from lifestyle shows, that's why you forget that Ruth's allowed to swear, and why it's even more awesome when she does. Censoring Ruth would be like censoring Gordon Ramsay.

However, these are concerns for the future, and we can do little else but hope that someone somewhere is heeding them. In the meantime, Ruth fulfils her contractual obligation to Five by doing a revisit to the Key West Hotel in Newquay, which was once savaged by countless careless stag and hen parties. Ruth pops back to see how proprietors Brian and Gill Scott are getting on, and probably to say "fuck" a lot while she still can. God speed, Ms Watson.

Labels: Five, The Hotel Inspector, TV

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Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Trial and error

ZIG-A-ZIG-AH! The Spice Girls on Trial, Five, 9.00pm

Swing it, shake it, move it, make it - indeed, just who do you think you are, eh? You cannot have failed to notice that the Spice Girls are back and attempting to conquer the world all over again, minor setbacks involving this year's official Children in Need single notwithstanding. Sadly, the comeback appears to be inescapable for all the wrong reasons - not because the populace is standing with open arms waiting to welcome our glorious leaders once more, but because a lot of people seem to want to be the one to shout first and loudest about what a terrible idea it is, what horrible people they are for even considering it. And that strikes us as unfair, frankly - not to mention a tad misogynistic. (We realise lowculture is not generally one's destination of choice for angry feminist polemic, but we're taking a leaf out of Jamie Oliver's book and trying something new today.)

We read an article the other day (our sense of class and decency prohibits us from saying where, but you can probably guess) which decried the Spice comeback as a failure, on the grounds that the single failed to crack the Top 10 and the tickets for UK tour dates were changing hands for a pittance on ebay. It compared the tour unfavourably to Take That's return, and suggested that Take That had gone about it the right way, while the Spice Girls had Done It Wrong, of course, being women with no grasp of anything beyond shoes and dresses. It conveniently overlooked the fact that the Spice Girls are returning with a world tour, and thus that their appeal extends beyond the usual staples of western Europe and Asia. It also didn't account for healthy sales of the Greatest Hits CD, or the way the news of the return was greeted with excitement on even the more cynical corners of the internet, or the fact that all five of the girls remained comfortably in the public eye during the band's hiatus, which suggests in turn that the appetite for Spice Girls news has never truly gone away. It felt like a particularly British kind of cynicism, where we can't be happy that one of our most successful pop exports have returned for a victory lap - we have to rain shit on it, just to make sure they don't go thinking they can get away with such things.

While the Take That reunion attracted some raised eyebrows and sarcastic comments, as did the respective returns of Five, Boyzone, All Saints, and Pepsi and Shirley (maybe not that last one), they were never asked to justify themselves in the way that the Spice Girls have had to - tonight's programme being a case in point. It claims to be revealing "what the world really thinks" about the reunion, presumably in the hope that they'll get enough people to respond "I'd rather they just all fucked off, to be honest", at which point, this poll obviously being final and legally binding, the Spice Girls will be banned from appearing together in public forever and everyone can stop being worried about the possibility of some women being successful and having a bit of money. Other questions intending to be answered include "were they the starting point for our inane obsession with celebrity culture?" (this from Five, you'll note - physician, heal thyself) and whether there was "any substance" to Girl Power.

There wasn't, to our recollection, quite such a clamour for Take That to defend their reasons for reuniting. There wasn't an entire TV show devoted to whether we really "need" them to come back - which is a ridiculous concept anyway. We didn't "need" the return of Cadbury's Wispa, but that didn't mean it wasn't exciting and pleasant. We don't "need" another X Factor winner, but we're getting one. And we certainly don't "need" an hour of primetime television amounting to a glorified show of hands that will ultimately prove to be of no purpose, but -- oh, look at that! Here it is all the same. And in much the same way that we can choose not to watch this show tonight, people can choose not to endorse or support the Spice Girls return in any way. That doesn't mean it's necessary to seek to find any possible excuse to suggest the wheels are about to fall off.

We don't pretend to be music critics, nor do we pretend to be qualified spokespeople on the subject of pop culture - we've not once been asked to be a talking head on I Love The Greatest Worst Years of the Most Hilariously Annoying 1990s, much to our chagrin - but we like to at least consider ourselves some kind of bastion of decency, and supporters of equal rights for everyone. Either reunion tours are acceptable, or they're not: let's have none of this hair-splitting on a case-by-case basis, depending on whether we think the act in question needs taking down a peg or two. Perhaps this programme thinks it's being clever or irreverent or zeitgeisty, but ultimately it's unlikely it will achieve anything when all's said and done. Which is, curiously enough, one accusation you definitely cannot level at the Spice Girls. Fancy that.

Rant over. Let's resume normal service and go back to staring at Gethin Jones groping Matt di Angelo, shall we?

Labels: Five, pop music, Spice Girls, TV

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Friday, December 07, 2007

Never Cheer In Sandpits

WTF? NCIS, Five, 9.00pm

Over the many, many years that we've been doing our best to tell you all about the many fine things you can find on your television box, we like to think we've done a good job of keeping you abreast of the top US imports. Every so often, however, there's one that slips under our radar. We assumed it would be a little low-key, unwatched show, that would disappear soon enough. How wrong we were - the ratings in America are strong, and even over here it's nipping at the heels of timeslot rival Ugly Betty. And yet, no one we know watches it, and we don't really understand what it's about. So we hereby devote this update to discovering what the fun NCIS is. (Standard lowculture disclaimer: this is all the result of a five-click Google, so we hold no responsibility for the accuracy or otherwise of what follows.)

First of all, that title. At least CSI had the common decency to elaborate on what its initials meant at the back-end of its title. So that's the first stop on our quest, which we're going to call "NCIS! (Huh!) What does it stand for?" A basic googling informs us that it stands for "Naval Criminal Investigative Service", which clears things up a little. We also discovered something of which we were previously unaware: it's a spin-off of JAG, another acronym-based show that we never watched. The plot thickens.

So, we deduce that essentially it's a crime procedural focusing on matters relating to the US Navy. At first we thought that seemed like rather a narrow scope, until we realised that you could level precisely the same charge at Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Footballers' Wives, if you judge them purely on the title. If we bastardise an old theatrical saying, there are no small shows, only small writers. And it sounds like it could be quite an interesting concept; especially since the trailer we saw yesterday in the middle of 30 Rock had lots of people running around aiming guns at people and making demands in a Jack Bauer-sort of way.

Cast-wise, we note with interest that this is possibly the only show ever to have featured Alan Dale in a main role without killing his character off. Yet. It also boasts Jessica Steen in a recurring role (which will mean nothing to a lot of you, but she was great in her guest role on the first season of Supernatural, so we love her). In the main cast, there's Michael Weatherly, whom we know for being in Dark Angel, also known as That Show We Only Watched Because Jensen Ackles Was In It. And to add local colour, Scottish actor and star of Sapphire and Steel David McCallum plays a character called "Ducky" Mallard.

So, to conclude, it's an acronymed show about a naval military police force with lots of cast members whose faces will probably make you sit up and go "hey, I know him/her!", and it's starting its fourth season on Five tonight. This may not be the most compelling reason to tune in - indeed, we haven't even decided if we're going to watch it ourselves - but never let it be said that we don't give the less-hyped shows a chance at the limelight every so often.

Labels: Five, NCIS, TV

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Thursday, November 29, 2007

Rock solid

BACKSTAGE! 30 Rock, Five, 10.50pm

This is fast becoming one of our favourite shows, you know. We've even managed to coerce our flatmates into getting addicted to it as well, and that almost never happens. So the other week we thought we'd check the ratings to see if it's as popular across the nation as it is with us - bearing in mind that anyway we love is almost invariably a ratings flop - and were flabbergasted to see that not only are the ratings below par, but it's actually getting fewer viewers than the programme that follows it: A Girl's Guide to 21st Century Sex, which might just be the worst piece of television we've ever seen. It involves enlighting facts such as "anal sex is sex involving the anus", for fuck's sake. Sigh.

Anyway, we thought we'd use this page and the literal dozens of people who read it every day to sing the praises of 30 Rock, which is really hitting its stride now that it's got a handful of episodes under its belt. Show creator (and writer and star of Mean Girls, thus she can do no wrong) Tina Fey is brilliant as Liz Lemon, head writer of live sketch show The Girlie Show, which is now TGS with Tracy Jordan after her boss went behind her back and hired an unstable Hollywood star to front it. She's trying to keep the show afloat while dealing with the all-male writing team, the neurotic female lead, and her aforementioned oleaginous boss. Okay, so it doesn't sound groundbreaking, but the sparkle is in the execution - literally, in fact, because the dialogue is so polished it shines. Check out the scene from a few weeks back where Jack confronts Jenna to discover whether she's been lying about her age, if you don't believe us.

Over the past couple of episodes we've been introduced to Liz's loser boyfriend Dennis, who works at Beeper King. Liz likes Dennis because the sex is fast, and only on Saturdays, which makes her life a lot easier. Liz's love life is a constant source of amusement for everyone else, and tonight she attempts to put an end to this by breaking up with Dennis. Well-meaning but utterly self-involved Jenna tries to help by taking Liz out on the singles scene, and we're fairly confident we can predict how that will go. Meanwhile, a fight between Tracy and Toofer puts them both in sensitivity training. Watch out for a brilliantly politically incorrect gag, by the way, when Tracy mentions the TV show Black Frasier. It's a corker, even if you'll be squirming when you hear it.

Labels: 30Rock, Five, TV

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Friday, November 16, 2007

Don't mind doing it for the kids

CHARITY! Children in Need, BBC1, from 7.00pm
COMEDY! Angelo's, Five, 11.00pm

Ah, time for a charity telethon again, is it? We rather like these, because they tend to make it very easy for a person to plan out an evening's viewing. Not only do you get a wide selection of pop music, comedy sketches and drama in the telethon itself (interspersed by frequent pleas for you to hand over some cash, but we suppose that's the price you pay - literally), but the other channels don't tend to schedule anything too competitive. It would be uncharitable, since they would be luring viewers away from worthy causes, and it would be also be fairly misguided, since big long telethons tend to be ratings slam-dunks for the most part. Note the absence of Ugly Betty in Channel 4's schedule tonight, for example; although the omission of that show could be rather serendipitous, since the WGA strike is looking like cutting most of this year's seasons down to around 12 episodes or fewer anyway, so Channel 4 will probably want to extend the run as far as it can, so the gap in the schedule might help them out. And for those of you who can't go a week without your fix, here's a quite literally brilliant clip from next week's episode:



Anyway, that's for next week, so what can we expect for tonight? Well, there's the now traditional teeny tiny episode of Doctor Who, some of the cast of Hollyoaks doing a Marc Bolan tribute (egad), a junior version of Dragons' Den, the BBC newsreaders doing Chicago, plus West End Leading Man Lee Mead and those people who won that Grease show as well. And when the show goes off air for the news at 10pm, there's a special CiN-themed QI on BBC2, with Pudsey on the panel. Awesome? We suspect so. Oh, and the Spice Girls will be performing. Tsk, fancy forgetting about them! (Also, what's the deal with Pudsey's redesign this year, and why does he now look like Laughing Bear from Boo!, eh?

Of course, having said that nobody in their right mind would try to competitively schedule against this, we find ourselves wondering why Five chose tonight to premiere Angelo's, the new sitcom written by and starring Sharon Horgan, to whom you may remember us writing a sort of epic love poem last week. 11pm on a Friday night (not to mention on Five) doesn't seem an especially thrive-y sort of slot so our hopes for this do not generally involve a multi-year run, but we're planning to tune in to see if it's as brilliant as Pulling was.

Labels: Angelo's, BBC1, Children in Need, Five, TV

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Thursday, October 11, 2007

Live from New York, it's Thursday night

BOSS! 30 Rock, FIVE, 10.45pm

The best US series from the 2006-2007 television season debuts this evening on Five. 30 Rock was 'the other' Saturday Night Live-based, backstage show. But unlike Studio 60 On Sunset Strip which was about funny people being very unfunny, 30 Rock took the more radical approach and is actually hilarious. Quite unusual in a season that saw all the ratings go to a show about attractive people who can fly, turn invisible, not die and who are all miserable about it.

As someone who has defined the better part of his life by his hatred of Alec Baldwin, it is difficult to admit that he is amazing here. Promoted by NBC's parent company General Electric to oversee television programming following his stellar work with ovens, Baldwin plays the annoyingly perfect executive with blunt ease. This is the development that starts the series, much to the continual annoyance of producer Liz Lemon (played by SNL alum Tina Fey, the mastermind behind this and the rather good film Mean Girls). Liz is a woman in her thirties who is fiercely independent yet has serious worries about choking alone in her apartment and will buy a hundred and fifty hot dogs just to prove a point.

Around them is a fun cast of characters which includes mentally ill comedian Tracy Jordan (played by SNL alum Tracy Morgan), the wonderfully neurotic Jenna Maroney (Jane Krakowski from Ally McBeal) and an NBC page who makes everyone uncomfortable with his glowing love of television. Look for ongoing cameos from Rachel Dratch who plays the cat wrangler in the pilot. Keep watching as it only gets better. You'll love it so much you'll take it behind the middle school and get it pregnant.

Labels: 30Rock, Five, Mean Girls, TV

By Mark :: Post link :: ::  
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Wednesday, September 26, 2007

A Heatoned debate

IMAGE! My Body Hell, Five, 8.00pm

Some shows, we can't help thinking, exist purely just to taunt us. We wonder sometimes if they really exist, or whether they're some kind of nefarious plot by schedulers and TV producers everywhere whose sole purpose in life is to make shows so utterly insane that they can't do anything but make the front page of lowculture. (Because we're that influential, obviously.) And then we wonder if actually putting them on here is just playing into these people's hands, but seriously: what the heck is going on with this programme, eh?

Apparently this five-part series (of which tonight's episode is the second) sets out to tackle the whole spectrum of women's self-image issues, issues which go a long way towards funding the £1 billion a year that gets spend on cosmetics. And this sort of thing is all very laudable, especially when handled sensitively as in, for example, How to Look Good Naked. And fair enough, celebrity culture obviously has a role to play in all of this, since everybody wants to look as buff and bronzed as their favourite sleb, so it's a good idea to get a celebrity's perspective on the whole thing, but...Michelle Heaton? Charley from Big Brother? Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear.

So tonight we'll get to model as Michelle Heaton braves the red carpet without makeup, folks. That sounds interesting, because we're not entirely sure that Michelle Heaton actually exists without make-up, so we have visions of her walking around entirely faceless, like in that episode of Doctor Who with Maureen Lipman. Meanwhile, Charley clings ferociously to her almost-expired 15 minutes by allowing the cameras to see her fighting her extensions on a particulary bad hair day. It's shows like this that make us hate ourselves, just a little bit, but we have this horrible feeling we'll still end up watching it.

Labels: Five, My Body Hell, TV

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Thursday, September 13, 2007

Hotel couture

ACCOMMODATING! The Hotel Inspector, Five, 9.00pm

In yet another example of us apparently having been half-asleep last week (note to self: check the label of those pills just to be on the safe side), we missed the fact that Five was showing the first episode in a new series of The Hotel Inspector. How could this have happened? Especially when we were babbling on about the new series of Suburban Shootout, which was on right afterwards. Gah! Fail, lowculture. Fail.

The previous series of this was one of our guilty pleasure television highlights of last year. Ruth Watson is an absolute find - surely to be a TV legend on the level of Phil'n'Kirstie or Ann Maurice soon, if there's any justice in the world - marching through grubby-looking B&Bs wearing a selection of brightly-coloured yet severe-looking blazers (not more than one at a time, obviously), running a white-gloved finger over radiators to check for dust, shooting a raised-eyebrow at the inevitable touches of "personal" décor, like the creepy dolls dotted all round one establishment we remember. And on top of this, she swears like a bloody sailor. We don't know quite why this is so surprising - perhaps because shows of this ilk are usually pre-watershed, so we only get to hear PG-rated language at the absolute worst (although we'd like to start a campaign here for late-night Location, Location, Location, because we'd love to see what sort of colourful language Kirstie Allsopp comes out with in a post-9pm context), but not so here. Ruth throws around fucks like confetti at a wedding, and we love her for it.

This week, Dame Ruth is in Reading, trying to turn around a fifteen-bedroom hotel, complete with obligatory stubborn owner who refuses to acknowledge any kind of problem. But Ruth is no Sarah Beeny-type diplomatic wallflower - our money's on her telling him it's his fucking money he's fucking well wasting, and if he doesn't do something about it soon, he's well and truly fucking fucked. Ruth, we love you. Please be our new best friend.

Labels: Five, The Hotel Inspector, TV

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Thursday, September 06, 2007

Dangerous Housewives

GUNS! Suburban Shootout, Five, 10.00pm

It was an odd one, this one. When we first heard about it, some time before the first series hit our screens, it was mainly referred to as being the UK's answer to Desperate Housewives. And in a way it sort of is, although people who tuned in expecting the shows to have a similar theme were probably quite surprised, since this show makes no attempt to hide the fact that its main characters are, for the large part, absolutely batshit crazy and armed to the teeth. Then again, given the choice of watching women of a certain age passive-aggressively battle over cake decorations and watching them actually gun each other down, we know which one we'd pick.

The ladies of Little Stempington are back for a second series, and it doesn't particularly look as though any of them have successfully completed an anger management class in the interim - which is just as well, otherwise the main plot would be severely lacking narrative thrust. The stakes have changed slightly since last year, since Barbara is currently in prison, leaving Joyce to somewhat unwillingly take over leadership of the gang, in competition with the sanity-challenged Camilla - not a position we'd want to find ourselves in, since Camilla's the sort of person who'd blow your head off if you ate your dinner with the wrong fork.

If the above sounds utterly bonkers, that's because it is - but that's half the fun. The cast looks like they're having a whale of a time, and although you don't need to so much suspend your disbelief as issue it with a P45 and agree a workable notice period, the fun is pretty infectious. Switch all of your critical faculties off and enjoy, that's our advice.

Labels: Five, Suburban Shootout, TV

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Thursday, August 23, 2007

A bit of House your father

LAST! House, Five, 9.00pm

Having had the weekend to indulge our inner Stephen Fry fanboy thanks to BBC Four, it was only natural that we got to see a fair amount of that nice Hugh Laurie on the telly as well. Particularly in the vintage episode of A Little Bit of Fry and Laurie, where it was rather hard to reconcile the younger version as the curmudgeonly medic from the top US drama series, but then perhaps that's just our lack of imagination.

Anyway! Those nice people at Five have planned a double bill for us to see the season out, so the big fans amongst you will probably want to take all the usual precautions of unplugging the phone and putting the cat out before settling down with a tipple (but not too much, in case it prompts an ill-timed toilet break) for two hours of maverick medicine. In the first episode, House deals with a teenage chess champion who's prone to random violent rages, which we're assuming have nothing to do with being checkmated.

In the second and final episode, the team are trying to save a Cuban woman's life and accidentally cause her heart to stop beating, leaving them with a rather pressing obligation to get it going again. This being the season finale, obviously that's not quite enough drama, so House decides to fire someone. Who? We're not telling you (even though the trailers make it totally obvious), but there will be repercussions. Hoo boy, will there be repercussions...

Labels: Five, House, TV

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Thursday, August 09, 2007

An unexpected development

BUILDINGS! How to be a Property Developer, Five, 8.00pm

We figured that the country had officially reached saturation point with shows about houses. Beyond the holy triumvirate of Property Ladder, (Re)Location, (Re)Location, Location and Grand Designs (even though that last one fills us with an unspeakable rage that we're at a loss to explain), surely all the necessary ground is covered? And if you really need more beyond that, you just have to watch daytime TV to find yourself splattered with it from every angle.

But then while we were at the gym this weekend (this toned figure doesn't just happen by itself, you know) we happened to catch a repeat of this on the big screen while we were on the treadmill, and in all honesty, we got quite into it. It makes quite a nice change that Gary McCausland has no time for the niceties of Sarah Beeny, or even the direct criticism of our current favourite TV icon Kirstie Allsopp - admittedly this is pretty much all conjecture on our part, but he appears to be very much from the "you fucking idiot" school of feedback, of which we approve, even if the constraints of pre-watershed television means he can't use those actual words. Our confidence that he must be thinking it at least half the time is enough, somehow.

In this episode, two people who share the name of Daniel are doing up a property in Margate. Hailing from quite near there ourselves, we can only begin to imagine what they must have to deal with. Meanwhile in Edinburgh, a lady called Paula has a development that's running over schedule. It helps to soothe the blow of those bastards having more money than you and driving up the house prices for the rest of us when we can at least watch them fucking up royally, doesn't it?

Labels: Five, How To Be A Property Developer, TV

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Friday, August 03, 2007

Oops...we did it again

We really have to apologise for our disgracefully unprofessional behaviour this week, since this is the second time that we've ended up gallivanting down the pub in the evening instead of writing our previews. If it helps at all, we had a lovely time and are now slightly inebriated, and to top it all off, we're still here writing this in the wee small hours before we go to bed, such is our devotion to you. We love you guys. Awwww. But that might be the drink talking.

So, given that we're a bit on-the-hoof again due to our lack of preparation, but also because there's frankly bollock-all worth discussing at length on tonight's telly, we're going to do a Bambi-esque gambol through various programmes at speed again, just like we did on Tuesday. It's kind of more fun this way, actually, but we'll try not to get too reliant on this as a fallback all the same. First of all, on behalf of our lovely flatmate, we're going to recommend The Shield on Five at 11pm, because it's one of her favourite shows. This may or may not be related to the broadness of Vic Mackey's shoulders and arms, but we don't know for sure; you'll have to ask her yourselves. For those of you who like your cop shows gritty, look no further, because everyone in this reeks of Eau de Corruption, and it's all the more fantastic for it. This week, the Strike Team find their position compromised by the death of a city official's daughter. We assume that the kicking of asses and the taking of names will follow shortly.

Elsewhere, there's a new Star Stories on C4 at 9.30pm, delivering a spoof on the irrepressible Tom Cruise (and on that subject, what the hell is up with Katie Holmes this days? Why does she dress like a fifty-year-old? If you know, please explain that to us), which should be good for a laugh. BBC2's got a new series of Grumpy Old Women at 10pm, and just because we can, we're going to invite you to watch our guilty pleasure: Supernatural on ITV1 at 11.00pm, where the unspeakably beautiful Sam and Dean Winchester deal with a necromancer, while angsting prettily about their unresolved daddy issues in their spare time.

That's it, then. Apologies for the brevity, and we'll see you back here on Monday, with freshly-ironed clothes and newly-polished shoes, as is our custom. Have a lovely weekend!

Labels: BBC2, Channel 4, Five, Grumpy Old Women, ITV1, Star Stories, Supernatural, The Shield, TV

By Steve :: Post link :: ::  
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