Just when you thought it was safe to start switching the TV back on and have a decent chance of avoiding sweaty men knocking balls around, Wimbledon comes along and spoils it all. Oh well. Not to mention the fact that TV listings magazines currently read like one of those old Fighting Fantasy books. If there is no live football tonight, turn to page four and the schedule might look like this. Otherwise, if Argentina thrash Germany and it doesn’t go to extra time and only two goals have been scored, then turn to page 7 and if you’re lucky, Emmerdale might be on at 3am. On ITV4. They’d have better luck turning the Radio Times into an episode of Deal or No Deal…
Thankfully, as last week, there is an oasis of sanity in Still Game (BBC2, Monday 9pm). This brilliant comedy gets better series by series, and in a world where the loss of the sit-com is bemoaned with the regularity of an Edinburgh Castle cannon, it’s good to see this unashamedly traditional comedy still doing business after five series. This week, Jack and Victor offer to decorate Isa’s living room, but go a little further than Homebase in their enthusiasm to get the job done. Brutal one-liners exist in synergy with a great cast of characters – a treat.
Conversely, the jury is still out on Saxondale (BBC2, Monday 10pm) after an intriguingly patchy first episode last week. There’s no faulting Steve Coogan’s performance in this latest vehicle, and now we have the set-up of Saxondale’s world mapped out, this second episode may well bring everything together to be truly great (much as Tim Henman says to himself every year around this time).
Technically outside our remit of drama, comedy and light entertainment, the dawn of a new series of Property Ladder (C4, Wednesday 8pm) is always worth mentioning. If there was a religion devoted to the property goddess that is Sarah Beeny, I’d be first in line at the altar to worship. She’s like your best ladette mate fused with schoolmistress charm, and you ignore her advice at your peril. But, ignore it they do, these fools who arrive week in and week out to do up their recent property purchases. Will they ever learn? Let’s hope not.
I’m the first to admit that I can have some strange leanings in my viewing habits, but even I spend sleepless nights worrying about my soft policy on Holby City (BBC1, Thursday 8pm). I might even go as far as believing it to be compellingly plotted, excellently acted and tightly directed, but some of you might start suggesting stronger medication. By comparison, Casualty feels like it’s stuck in 1987. This week, the magnificent Connie Beauchamp has some probing questions to ask Elliot Hope… You see? Brilliant!
Finally (a word Tim Henman has to look up in the dictionary) there is Coup! (BBC2, Friday, 9pm), a satire on Sir Mark Thatcher’s involvement in the attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea from the pen of John Fortune. Robert Bathurst is Thatcher, with Jared Harris as Simon Mann, who tapped Thatcher for a loan and a helicopter like you might borrow a tenner from your dad. This is bound to be controversial, and so it should be, but the satirical bent seems at odds with what are quite weighty issues. After her recent turn in The Line of Beauty, Caroline Blakiston climbs the political ladder to the very top here, getting to play Mrs T herself. One to watch, if only to see where the fallout starts and ends.
Oh, and finally, come on Tim! Or not…
