This year the BBC turns 100. Fundamental to Britain and funded by licence fee payers, the BBC has garnered a worldwide reputation for quality. For this special post highlighting the highlights of the corporation's massive contribution to television, I've decided to...
In a week in which we lost an X-Factor host, a Top Gear host and gained a new Homes Under the Hammer host in Dion Dublin; the actual TV output has been quite quiet. Indeed it comes to something when one of the biggest shows of the week is a macabre comedy drama that...
After sending Karl Pilkington to see the Seven Wonders, and then on a journey of a lifetime to experience the ultimate ‘Things To Do Before You Die’, Ricky Gervais has now persuaded Karl to embark on an epic journey following the footsteps of...
ITV has three celebrity travelogues planned; Joanna Lumley's Greek Odyssey, Mighty Mississippi with Sir Trevor McDonald and Cornwall with Caroline Quentin. This reviewer is looking forward to them. Why do we prefer watching celebrities presenting a show more than an...
The brazen fixation of gluing a celebrity to a show born of a necessity to lure an audience that dumbly follows the lives of the fatuous and feeble to drink at their televisual waterhole is as an objectionable a trend as the spiteful sullying of the altruistic notion...
Its happening less and less of late but occasionally TV does get it right. There's no better example than this BBC4 documentary which managed something that few programmes on our reality-obsessed screens have failed to achieve for a good few years. The programme in...
Did we like it? A passionate and largely even-handed analysis of the decline of Britain’s railways in the 1950s and 60s, delivered by the engaging Ian Hislop. What was good about it? • Ian Hislop began from a position of bias; he was on the side of the poets, chiefly...
Did we like it? Michael Palin’s great skill is segueing from the benignly engaging beauty of the geographical and social landscape to the disturbing and harrowing history of the places he visits; and few places in the world are so suited to this description than...
At the commercial TV station meeting on their hands a dead, decaying mound of formulaic tripe. The steps ITV take in producing a prime-time programme. 1. See what is popular on the BBC and Channel 4, which is braided with an originality well beyond them. In this case...
Did we like it? The BBC seems to be spending more time trying to analyse comedy (the Dawn French series, Comedy Connections, The Comedy Map of Britain etc) than producing decent examples of the stuff. And this four-parter is a complete waste of time. Lenny is lacking...
Did we like it? Our appreciation of Victora Wood as a comedy star has diminished in recent years (the rot set in with dinnerladies) but as a serious actress (in Housewife, 49) she has class and, as a travel documentary-maker, she's slmost up there in the Michael Palin...