It’s a bit of a mixed bag across the schedules this weekend,and if the weather keeps up, who wants to be inside glued to the box anyway? Unless you’re like me and love camp nonsense with Graham Norton and dinosaurs (although not at the same time, but that would be cool).
How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? (Saturday 6.50pm, BBC1) sees the Beeb trying to wring every penny of value out of the top dollar price they paid for Graham Norton by getting him to front this frankly camp as Christmas search for a new Maria to go into a brand new production of The Sound of Music in the West End. And personally, I’m bang on for this. In the midst of Love Island and Big Brother, it’s good to see a bit of reality nonsense with some sparkle about it. For the hundreds of young hopefuls putting themselves through hell to get down to the last handful in this eight-part run, this is the biggest thing they will ever do, and could make the beginnings of a dazzling new career. The first episode focuses on the early audition stages, which on past experience always proves to be the most fun. Among the judges is John Barrowman, who continues his campaign to get just about everywhere on TV (and look, I didn’t mention Doctor Who once…)
If nuns, Nazis and snow are not your thing, Prehistoric Park (Saturday 6.50pm, ITV1) is a fun bit of fluff with some CGI dinosaurs that the kids will love, but adults might be a bit smirksome at. The McGuffin of the very beautiful looking series is that real-life wildlife type bod, Nigel Marven is blasted back 10,000 years in time to have a looksee at the dinosaurs and bring them back to the present to populate um… Prehistoric Park. The problem is, it’s all a bit too cutesy and nothing that Walking with Dinosaurs didn’t do a few years ago, and a little bit better. But, I’m always decrying ITV’s seeming inability to do something different and imaginative, and Prehistoric Park is deifnitely a stride in the right direction.
Sean “Corrie’s Martin Platt) Wilson’s guest turn in Casualty (Saturday 8.35pm, BBC1) might not appeal, so you can do a lot worse than checking out the second episode of The Story of Light Entertainment (Saturday 9.25, BBC2). Last week’s 90 minute marathon focusing on the rise and fall of TV double acts may not have contained much that was new, but it’s good to have this material documented under one roof. And that continues this week as the work of the all rounder is looked at. Everybody from Cilla to Brucey gets a look in here, and the nostalgia freaks among us will leave this show witha nice warm glow of contentment.
And come back tomorrow, when Square Eyes will give you the treats to come for your essential viewing on Sunday (don’t worry, it’ll be Where the Heart Is free… unless we can’t find anything else worth watching, that is.
I walked into something similar to Prehistoric Park (was this the first one?) halfway through the other day and was completely confused when the David Attenborough style documentary presenters started talking about an interesting creature I was convinced was extinct.
It took me a good ten minutes to work out there hadn't been some major scientific breakthrough and in fact this Jurrassic Park style tale of ressurection wasn't a true story.
(Dur! I need to pay more attention to those 'don't believe everything you see on TV' adverts they play on the cartoon channels all the time.)
And then I just got so irritated that they were presenting history as a current wildlife documentary that I switched off.
I hope the children watching were less confused and didn't go into school on Monday and get beaten up for saying Dodos still existed.
At least this one made the odd reference to time travel to suggest it wasn't real. But I still found it far too annoying to sit through. Those dinosaurs wouldn't have lasted a week at that park - all their zookeepers were clueless morons!
"Let's feed mammoths the same things as we usually feed elephants because they look a bit similar".
Hardly made to look like professionals in their fields, were they!