Episode Featuring A Planet of Quite Interesting Prospective House Wives

All of the sport in the world seemed to be happening this weekend. But, if like me you only have basic cable then the only spot that you could feast upon was the snooker. Snooker when placed alongside the plethora of steak and caviar on offer this weekend definitely looks like the Iceland own brand party pack of vol-au-vents that the cheap skate brought to the dinner party as their ‘pot luck.’

So bereft of sporting options, the rain lashing down outside and with no one to visit the cinema with I settled down to see what the BBC iplayer had to offer.

QI is the programme which in my opinion sparks more pub debate than any other programme. Though it can be tedious to listen to someone regurgitate verbatim some interesting fact or anecdote they saw on the show to be that fella is never dull. QI is without a doubt my favourite long running TV show. The show started humble and without any fan-fayre and over the years it has changed nothing. This further endears the programme to those who were fans from the start and the new fans who can watch the incessant feed on Dave. Flicking between Dave and Dave + 1 to observe Stephen Fry’s yo-yo weight is worth a laugh once before you realise that one should never laugh at Stephen Fry only with him. The anti-intellectualism of many of the channels means that QI is a programme that could only have been conceived for the BBC. Watch it here http://goo.gl/lUvO3

Next on my bedroom TV marathon was Episodes. Episodes is a new sit-com starring Matt Le Blanc (yes him from Joey and a little watched spin off called Chums), Stephan Mangan (I most recently watched him in a version of Douglas Adams’ Dirk Gently) and Tamsin Greig (You know the one who was in Black Books). The eclectic cast isn’t even the most interesting thing about this project that honour falls to the distribution. The show is being shown in both America and the UK at the same time.

The show follows an award winning British husband and wife writing team who have their show commissioned ‘to be made for an American audience’ with the kind of consequences that often come about when such a thing is attempted. I’m going to hold off making a judgement about this one until we are a little further down the line but the transatlantic mix of cast and humour gives the show a really interesting dynamic and I have high hopes. Watch it here http://goo.gl/lnSLe.

Human Planet is yet another fantastic BBC natural world documentary but with us knuckle dragging humans as the subject matter. The show really is amazing in both its visuals and the stories that it tells. As has become the tradition with BBC documentaries there is a little ten minute documentary extra at the end which only serves to add further colour to the show. Get yourself a cup of coffee turn up the speakers and watch in awe http://goo.gl/y7OVG

Now over to ITV where, after the horrors of ‘Take Me Out’ Dinner Date has come into my sphere of awareness, doing so in the manner of an ill kept fart on a crowded public bus in the height of summer. It really is a stinker with gender politics taken straight from the 60’s, the 1860’s. I am now going to describe the premise of the show, no jokes, no exaggerations just the premise. The review will then end and you can draw your own conclusion whist I go and research the history of feminism just to check that I hadn’t imagined the whole thing. So, a young man (usually of the nicely mannered rugby playing meat head variety) is presented with five menus which have been prepared by five hopeful ladies. The man, we will call him Harry, then picks three of the menus to be cooked for him by the hopeful ladies (at their houses) in a blind date style. After Harry has been cooked for and cleaned up after by all three of the dates he then gets to choose his favourite to take out to a restaurant. The ladies also rate the man out of three after he has attended their date but this doesn’t have any effect on anything other than to allow the programme makers to claim that the opinions of female participants were taken into account.

Magic Catch Phrases and Polar Bears

It is true to say that I don’t watch a great deal of ITV. This is for three reasons. Firstly, I don’t have any children. Secondly, I am in full control of most of my mental facilities and finally I don’t give a shit about Coronation Street which seems to be at least a quarter of their output. However every so often you have to go back and try something, just because you didn’t like it in the past doesn’t mean that things haven’t changed. Your tastes may have developed (who likes their first sip of wine or taste of olives?) the product may have changed (Channel Five no longer shows erotic thrillers on Friday nights and Huba Buba isn’t made of Whales) or you may have just been wrong about something the first time you saw it (Chris Jefferies…too soon?). With this is mind I have watched not one but two ITV prime time shows each achieving varying degrees of success.

Fool Me

If you had asked me a few weeks ago if there were any ‘magic’ programmes on television I would have said no and I don’t see a comeback for the genre any time soon. However both the BBC and ITV must have spoken to the same focus group (how do you get onto a focus group?). What came from these groups (or group) was a keen desire for Magic shows on TV and to have them hosted by past it presenters. Fool Me is what ITV came out with. Making use of Jonathan Ross and Pen and Teller the magicians of Great Britain come out and perform their best trick to Pen and Teller who then try to cryptically describe how the trick was achieved. If they are unsuccessful in doing so then the acts that fool them get to go off to Las Vegas to open a show. Think of it like Jonathan Creek but without a murder or anyone punching a tramp neither of which would be appropriate on this show.

Depending on the success of having someone who plays a mute as a judge maybe the idea could be extended to Luis Walsh who could judge the x-factor in a gimp mask and gag. All in all the programme was very entertaining and gave some very talented magicians a chance to show off their talents without having to be in the same room as Simon Cowell.

Take Me Out

Let us get straight into the important issues with no dallying about. Who the fuck told Paddy Mcguinness that “No Likey, No Lighty,” was a catch phrase that was of sufficient quality to appear on British TV or to be even uttered in the English language. Just having written this napkin scrawl of a swollen fuck wit’s half idea on this page is annoying me. Even lines away from where it appeared my attention is drawn to it by the red squiggly lines that are the curse of the illiterate. I will not however let my slight OCD tendencies win on this issue and I will not be adding these words to the dictionary gifting it the legitimacy of appearing as equal with the real words of the English language.

For those who aren’t aware of the premise of the show Paddy Mcguinness (off of the back of being mates with Peter Kay and marrying a model fifteen years younger than him) is the ring leader of the ‘flirty thirty.’ Some fella is brought out and the ladies giggle, wink and pout to within an inch of their lives each trying to look more like a sex crazed cartoon adolescent than the previous. The ‘lucky fella’ (although I would say there are rarely any winners in this show) is then judged worthy or otherwise by the ladies, he shows off a ‘talent’ which in some cases can be as amazing as being quite tall or looking a little like someone famous. Finally the power goes back to the man who gets to cast an eye over each of the ladies like a butcher at a meat market before deciding which one he is going to take out on a date.

I could look at some quite questionable gender politics here but I am not a good rider and that horse is a really high one to attempt humour from.

Spy on the Ice

Flamingo Land in Yorkshire used to be home to a Polar bear, it didn’t do much. In fact it looked so sad in its white painted concrete prison that my mum stopped walking us through that side of the zoo. When I saw that the BBC was showing a documentary about the hapless creatures I wondered how interesting they could be. The answer was very. “Polar Bear: Spy on The Ice” achieved what the BBC do so well: that perfect balance of informative footage, narration, a slight anthropomorphism of the subject and moments that just make you go awww. With Mr. Attenborough hanging up his microphone and empire hat the race is on to find the next king of the wildlife documentary and the throne has a number of suitors. Leading the pack are David Tennant and Stephen Fry. I have now seen quality documentaries narrated by them both and I have complete faith that either one of them will continue to keep BBC wildlife documentaries as the source of worldwide envy that they deserve to be.

The TV schedules are a little thin at the moment but if you have spotted something that I haven’t then please let me know and I will give it a watch and spew forth my unwelcome opinions.