Rugger off!

Posted by Stewart Turner

So, it seems the BBC’s been forced to issue a grovelling apology after viewers complained in droves about the wildly excessive amount of sport in the schedules last weekend.

From the moment Football Focus with Lawro and the gang kicked off at 12 noon, there was barely an hour’s worth of non-sporting telly on BBC1 right up until the end of Match of the Day just after 11.30pm – and most of those minutes were taken up by Anne Robinson.

Of course, it’s all down to Auntie Beeb forking out £160m for the rights to cover the Six Nations rugby tournament. If you’re spending that kind of cash on something – our cash, of course – you have to justify it by showing it off. I guess they think it’d be like buying a posh designer frock and using it as a nightdress. Or something.

Sports fans often bang on about how important it is that we get to see these big events on terrestrial TV. But this argument’s becoming increasingly poor, since there must be about three people left in the country who can only watch five TV channels these days. Why not just set up a BBC Sport channel and stick all the tedious ball-kicking over on there, 24/7?

In defence of its pandering to the rugger-loving minority, a BBC statement said: “The audience ratings alone justified our decision to show the three matches, with a combined total of 15 million tuning in.”

That’s as maybe, but when the remaining 45 million are sitting at home pouring bleach into their eyes, is it worth it?

Sources: BBC, The Guardian

Mad Men, Tuesday 11.20pm, BBC2

Posted by Jane Murphy

A few years ago, I wouldn't have thought it possible I'd be feeling bereft at the loss of a violent, overweight, manic-depressive Mafia boss - but, dammit, I am! Since The Sopranos drew to a close last year, nothing on TV has quite matched up, and I've been forced to watch back-to-back episodes of American Princess and Kerry Katona: Crazy in Love.

But all that could be about to change with the arrival of new US drama, Mad Men. And why am I feeling so confident? Well, it's the creation of Sopranos writer Matt Weiner - and it's already carried off the Golden Globe for best drama.

The 13-part series is set in 1960, in New York's Sterling Cooper advertising agency - where anything goes as long as it gets those products sold. The first episode sees ad man extraordinaire Don Draper attempting to work his magic for cigarette company Lucky Strike, despite pesky recent reports suggesting smoking gives you cancer.

Professional dilemmas aside, there's also plenty of back-stabbing, double-crossing, bad behaviour, sexual tension and affairs - those all-important ingredients in any must-see TV drama. Could this be the show that finally allows us to put our memories of Tony Soprano and co to rest? Let's hope so!

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Ladette to Lady, 9pm, Tuesday, ITV1

Posted by Jane Murphy
Oooh - the excitement. Tonight sees the grand final of Ladette to Lady, in which the three remaining pupils at Eggleston Hall finishing school go head to head in a bid to become this year's airs-and-graces champion.

The contenders? There's boozy Essex secretary Nicole, unemployed one-night stand fan Holly and erstwhile Nuts model Louise. But before the judges make their final decision, our feisty trio have to compete in three nail-biting challenges: learning to waltz; successfully greeting a bunch of toffs; and the all-important staircase walk.

Now, as much as I've enjoyed watching this series - in an empty, mindless, can't-be-bothered-to-get-off-the-sofa kinda way - I do think ITV should try a spot of role reversal next year. I'm not suggesting we condone binge-drinking, chain-smoking and casual sex (at least not on a school night), but I'd love to see Lady to Ladette - in which the staff of Eggleston Hall toss aside their twinsets and pearls and let their bouffant hair down for once...

The final three challenges? Learning to dance on top of a beer-splattered tabletop; successfully greeting a bunch of Geordies on a stag night; and the all-important staircase tumble (very useful when forced to negotiate a flight of stairs on the way to the loo in a pub or club). Now, that's what I call quality programming...

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Natasha Kaplinsky's wardrobe

Posted by Will Parkhouse

If the news of Natasha’s £1m salary got on your Kaplinskies, then this should wind you up even more. Apparently the newly-recruited Five newsreader is getting an additional big pile of raw cash to spend on clothes, even though she’s been asked to dress down for the job.

“You would think earning a million would mean you could buy your own clothes, but Natasha has hefty expense on top for her wardrobe,” a TV insider told the Daily Mirror. “This is not a small amount. We are talking thousands of pounds.”

This just in: life not fair.

My Street, Thursday 9pm, Channel 4

Posted by Will Parkhouse

Our rating:

"Everybody needs good neighbours," a wise man once sang. But in this age of big, grey, unsociable cities and big, blue social networking websites, who actually knows the people who live a few doors down?

This is a question that troubled filmmaker Sue Bourne, so she decided to go out (with a camera crew, natch) and knock on all the 116 doors in her road to see what kind of people she was living close to. This wonderful documentary is the result of her inquisitiveness.

And so, among others, we meet 25-year-old Adam, whose Tourette’s syndrome makes his life a daily struggle; a Jewish composer who’s writing a children’s opera; a Margaret Thatcher impersonator who’s looking for love online; two young men bravely dealing with their father’s incurable cancer; a forlorn 91-year-old Polish man who sits alone in his kitchen all day; a house of partying Kiwis; and a former convict whose three years in solitary confinement turned him into a schizophrenic.

On the surface, Bourne seems to be a friendly insider. But she’s also an adept interviewer, getting some extraordinary stories out of her fellow residents, and the “and all on one street!” conceit gives the tales a coherence that might otherwise be missing.

My Street reminds us both of the fantastic variety of human life and, through its downbeat ending, that loneliness and despair are not always as far off as we may sometimes think.

That Mitchell & Webb Look, Wednesday 9pm, BBC2

Posted by Will Parkhouse

Our rating:
Pointing out that sketch shows are notoriously hit-and-miss is the bread and butter of any TV reviewer – and I’m hungry... So here goes: sketch shows, they’re notoriously hit-and-miss, you know.

The first series of That Mitchell & Webb Look helped popularise the view that David Mitchell and Robert Webb, hitherto stars of the staggeringly brilliant Peep Show, were not in fact the saviours of comedy. Despite that, Auntie Beeb decided the pair were still good enough to be invited back – actually, you can just imagine David Mitchell lapsing into an Alan Partridge-style “smell my cheese, you mother” bid for a second series in the BBC canteen.

Anyway, here we are. Thankfully the duo haven’t gone all Little Britain and we get an honest peppering of Proper New Characters and ideas – though sadly the massively unfunny drunken tramp detectives from series one remain. Robert Webb's “Numberwang”, however, has had an inventive revamp.

Some of the new stuff, though, is cracking. A particular highlight is the OTT Sky Sports presenter whose fervent advert attempts to whip up his audience are scuppered by his script, which features lines like “On Sunday, it’s the battle for the North West, when Shrewsbury meet Macclesfield in a match already being described as ‘on this Sunday’”.

Meanwhile, the weak sketches – which appear in roughly equal number – often consist of fairly decent ideas which feel forced, or look patched up by exuberant costumes and the distractingly bad laughter track. Hit-and-miss, then. You can’t say I didn’t warn you.

Kerry Katona: Crazy in Love, Sunday, 10pm, MTV1

Posted by Jane Murphy

I've just lost a whole hour of my life I'll never get back - and yes, I know I've only got myself to blame. I agreed to watch the opening double episode of MTV's Kerry Katona: Crazy in Love - purely for professional research purposes, you understand. (Plus there's some sad, dysfunctional little part of me that finds these fly-on-the-wall "reality" shows oddly addictive.)

I know most of it's just set up for the TV cameras. I know they're only doing it for the money. I know it's a sad indictment of all that's wrong with the modern world. And yet before I tuned in, I really wanted Ms Katona and her much-maligned husband Mark Croft to prove us all wrong - to show they're caring, sharing members of society who've simply been misunderstood and deserve every penny they get. Funnily enough, I came away disappointed.

"I'm pregnant," said Kerry at the start of the show, perhaps a little unnecessarily given her humungous baby bump. "I'm even going to give birth on TV."

But sadly we have to wait until May for that televisual treat. In the meantime, we were treated to footage of Kerry and Mark going about their daily business. Some sample scenes? Mark sits on the loo while Kerry lies in the bath and tries to "push out a fart". Kerry confesses she's only spent £12,000 on Mark's Christmas presents because they've got to rein things in a bit this year. Kerry jokes about the size of Mark's "little willy" and informs us she often gets it muddled with his belly button... You get the picture?

By the end of the hour, I'd been reduced to a gibbering wreck, rocking backwards and forwards on the sofa and screaming, "Why? Why? Why?" at the TV screen. But the sad truth is: people like Kerry and Mark are paid above the odds to appear totally "shameless" on TV because people like me are prepared to watch them. Hell, I really hope I can beat my own addiction - and not tune in next week.

Picture: Rex Features

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Baby Bible Bashers, Thursday 9pm, Channel 4

Posted by Will Parkhouse

Our rating:

Seven-year-old Sam Boutwell, nine-year-old Terry Durham and 12-year-old Ana Carolina Dias are youngsters with a difference. While most children their age are busy beating up pensioners and injecting heroin, these three spend their time preaching the word of God.

Baby Bible Bashers first introduces us to Sam, whose favourite preaching place is outside the local abortion clinic, where he yells, “Don’t killya child!” at would-be terminators – although presumably being yelled at by a precocious brat only strengthens their resolve.

Then there’s Terry, who’s incredibly shy – but give him a microphone and a congregation and he sermonises with both anger and frightening volume. “That dynamic dynamite,” says one impressed parishioner. “It was like a Tom bomb that came to church today.”

A Tom bomb? Yes, since you ask, both of these mini-preachers do indeed hail from the US, but before we wheel out the “only in America” platitudes, get a load of Ana Carolina. She’s a huge celebrity in Brazil, regularly pulling in TV audiences in their millions. Oh, and she really loves her father.

Ping! There it is. As you've probably already guessed, it’s the parents who seem to be behind it all – whether they’re over-compensating for their own sinful pasts or eyeing up the business prospects of their child’s success.

Although director Amelia Hann doesn’t get as much time to explore this side of things as much as it deserves (the Ana interludes feel tacked on), her laissez-faire approach provides enough creepy moments get the point across.

Skins, Monday, E4, 10pm

Posted by Amanda Vlietstra

Who’d be a teenager these days? It looks like such hard work. If you’re not taking drugs, being run over by buses or chased by chavs (the boys), you’re taking drugs, having meaningless sex with idiots and crying with self-loathing (the girls). On top of all that, you’ve got to fit exams in somewhere. The only plus side seems to be that you look good in over-the-knee socks (the girls) or without a shirt (the boys). Blimey, it’s enough to get you chucking your anti-wrinkle cream into the bin and embracing your middle-age spread with cries of glee.

That said, Skins was great fun last night, even if you do have to take it with a pinch of salt the size of a house. The kids are less two-dimensional than they were last series (the hot boy, the geek, the gay, the kook and so on) and have been allowed to develop actual personalities – apart from Tony, the former hot boy, who’s had his surgically removed as a result of being run over by a bus.

Bill Bailey as Maxxie's line-dancing, possibly psycho dad is a great addition to the colourful cast – and I was also delighted that the highly irritating Cassie has been shipped off to Scotland and is apparently making insensitive videos of her antics with which to taunt her boyfriend Sid. Did I mention Skins isn’t always entirely believable? Oh yes, I believe I did.

Dave Gorman in America Unchained, Tuesday 10pm, More4

Posted by Amanda Vlietstra

Dave Gorman (the man who once attempted to find and meet all the other Dave Gormans in the world, so a little eccentric to say the least) is on a mission – to try to live without The Man. Who’s The Man? I don't know about you, but I always think of the intro to Primal Scream’s ‘Loaded’, which in turn is taken from 1966 film The Wild Angels. The full quote is: "We wanna be free! We wanna be free, to do what we wanna do! We wanna be free to ride. And we wanna be free to ride our machines without being hassled by The Man. And we wanna get loaded. And we wanna have a good time."

"The Man" is the faceless totem of authority – he's the government, he's your boss, he's your dad, he's anything and anyone you've ever tried to rebel against. And according to Gorman, he's also Starbucks, Best Western Hotels, Shell Petrol stations and any other big American brand you care to mention.

Gorman believes The Man has cunningly tricked us into becoming dependent on him. And so he's breaking free – by buying a second-hand car and driving it across America without once making a purchase from The Man. Nope, none of your big brands for brave Dave, it's independent retailers all the way – and when that fails (and when he runs out of gas, which he does), relying on the kindness of strangers.

Can he do it? Can anyone? Watching America Unchained got me thinking: are we really selling out to The Man by doing our shopping at Sainsbury’s instead of going to independent retailers? And does it matter anyway? Hell, I’m a grown adult, not a teenage boy whose parents won't let him grow his hair...

Oh my lord! It's finally happened - I AM The Man!

Wife Swap, Sunday, Channel 4, 8pm

Posted by Amanda Vlietstra

Our rating:

This really got my (organically-fed) goat last night. An eco-warrior mum who lives a self-sufficient lifestyle on a battered houseboat swapped lives with a pampered, leather-skinned mother of four from Marbella whose wealthy husband ensures she never has to lift a finger - unless it's for a manicure, of course. Much to my surprise, I found myself empathising far more strongly with the latter - mainly because eco-husband was such a self-righteous, humourless prat.

I'm quite up on my environmental issues but saving my pee to pour over my vegetable patch, as the Dharby-Dyans do, is a step too far for me; nor could I live off €7 a week, even if I did have my own goats to milk. I thought Marbella mum Anna did pretty well to cope with all that – not to mention precocious eco-daughter Jess yelling at her for not pulling her weight.

I also utterly agreed with her that the home-schooled eco-kids need a proper education. Anna packed the kids off to school, and I was shocked at the way eco-dad Dan emotionally blackmailed Jess into reluctantly saying she preferred home-schooling when it was obvious she'd loved having her brain challenged – not to mention having kids her own age to play with. Dan claimed she could learn “more in two hours with him than a whole day at school” which was clearly rubbish, as his kids could barely read.

While it's fun for kids to learn how to milk goats and grow tomatoes, the ability to read, write and do sums will be far more useful to them in later life. As Anna said, their parents were being utterly selfish keeping them at home and forcing the eco-lifestyle down their throats. God forbid those kids should grow up to be venture capitalists!

For hippies, the Dharby-Dyans had a remarkable lack of understanding or tolerance of anyone else's lifestyle – predictably, eco-mum Kara was horrified at the waste, spending and sugar consumption in Anna's home. It was enough to make you throw away your recycling bags and pop to McDonald’s…

Lost, Sunday, Sky One, 9pm

Posted by Alan Tyers

Our rating:

Confused? Frustrated? Trapped in a nightmare where nothing makes sense? You may be a resident of the Lost island.

Then again, perhaps you are just a Lost viewer.

It's crunch time for this programme.

The superb first season (who were all these people? How were they going to interact? What were their backstories? Were they alone? Was that a polar bear?!) was exciting, thrilling and fresh.

Season two was pretty good, but cracks began to appear: Desmond and his bloody hatch started to try the patience. Season three saw viewers begin to desert the show, frustrated by the endless questions and seeming lack of cohesion.

But Lost rallied with a thumping conclusion to season three – Jack (Matthew Fox, left) and Kate (Evangeline Lily) seemingly in the future, having escaped from the island, but vowing to go back. Why? And who is in the coffin in that flash-forward?

Season four starts promisingly, but it is time for the show to start giving up the answers. Apparently rescue is on the cards for the survivors… let's just hope the viewer isn't left high and dry.

Hey Paula!, Friday 10pm, ITV2

Posted by Alan Tyers

Paula Abdul, says the woman herself at the start of this fly-on-the-wall documentary series, is “just like everyone else".

(Excuse me while I interrupt this TV preview to make my housekeeper clean up some dog poo, from the same dog that will shortly nearly choke on the priceless diamond ring I’ll be wearing to the Grammys tonight.

Get me my stylist! Yes, Daniel, the camp one who is also my BEST FRIEND IN THE WHOLE WORLD.

What do you mean you don't know where he is? Get Jeff my publicist! Where's my other stylist, Kylie? And that other blonde woman who seems to do all my stuff for me?

Don't you know that, in addition to going to the Grammys, I have to get a plane someplace else tomorrow? And it takes me four hours to get ready and I only have two full-time assistants to help me pack for the trip.

I'm sorry, I’m too tired to finish this preview. It's the stress, the exhaustion. I love you…)

My God, she’s annoying. Oh, but do look out for the bit where she says: "I am a warrior." While having her hair done…

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