After the shock of my EastEnders experience yesterday that almost forced me back into holiday exile, thankfully there is Spooks (Monday 9pm, BBC1) to restore my faith in our glorious TV output. And after last night’s sensational opener to the fifth series, the tension just keeps on going, higher even than Rupert Penry-Jones’s impressive cheekbones.
What I love about Spooks is that it manages to take the perils and worries of this modern world we live in and amplify reality by far too many degrees of magnitude, yet somehow remains vaguely plausible. All you need to know about tonight is that there’s lots of running round, some punching, some fast driving, lots of Adam and Ros (Hermione Norris at her absolute best) batting their eyelashes at each other, while giving Peter Firth enormous mouthfuls of set to chew in the most delicious fashion. Welcome back Spooks, you’ve been needed.
After the satisfying finale of How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?, Graham Norton crashes back down to earth for the new series of Graham Norton’s Bigger Picture (Monday 10.30pm, BBC1). This spin on the chat shoe concept is not bad as far as it goes, but isn’t time the Beeb found something that Norton could truly sparkle in again? Maria was a definite step in the right direction, but Bigger Picture never manages to fire on all cylinders.
Tuesday’s most noteworthy piece of must see TV is Stephen Fry: The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive (Tuesday 9pm, BBC2). Most things with Fry are a guarantee of quality viewing and this is likely to be even more poignant than his tear-jerking turn on Who Do You Think You Are? Fry examines his own battle with chronic depression and shares his experiences with other sufferers, some of them celebrities. After this, his terrified fleeing from the production of Cell Mates in 1995 will doubtless be a lot easier to understand.
The first of two telvision milestones this week sees Doctors (Wednesday 2.05pm, BBC1) clock up 1000 episodes with an hour-long special. I have a real soft spot for this most curious of BBC shows - it’s like the bumble bee - shouldn’t really work, but somehow does in a creaky, cheap kind of way. But, it always has great gusto, and with an hour, there’ll be plenty of time for even more illnesses of the week.
ITV is definitely on the bounceback (weekend ratings were up considerably thanks to Ant and Dec, The X Factor and The Royal, and with Wire in the Blood (Wednesday 9pm, ITV1), some fantastic drama returns to bolster things further. It’s all too easy to dismiss Robson Green is a golden handcuffs kind of actor, but in these adaptations of Val McDermid’s novels, he absolutely shines as criminal psychologist Tony Hill. With Hermione Norris heading off to Spooks, her place has been filled by the always reliable Simone Lahbib as the new DCI, and it seems Tony’s services to CID are no longer required. Let’s see how long that lasts, shall we. Never short of compelling, and it’s not often I say that.
I spent a portion of my holiday relistening to the excellent That Mitchell and Webb Sound while lounging round the pool, so was much cheered to see the premiere of the TV incarnation. That Mitchell and Webb Look is a bit more hit and miss than the radio series, but the Peep Show boys are still deft masters of the comedy art. While there is some repetition that could lead to the odd cathphrase, hopefully this has a touch more about it to not descend into Little Britain ham fistedness after a couple of series.
Elsehwhere, Michael Sheen is going to have to watch himself if he doesn’t want to be considered the heavyweight thesp equivalent of Rory Bremner. In Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire (Thursday 9pm, BBC1), this brilliant actor brings his interpretation to the role of the insane Roman emperor Nero in the first of this documentary/drama series. Now, Nero is not on a level with Tony Blair (no laughing at the back there) or even David Frost, but I’m yearning to see Sheen be noted for something other than turning in deft impressions of other people. He’s a bloody good actor, and I want to see him really let loose on bringing his art to an original creation. As for the piece itself, it’s all very lovely, but will it pull in the punters? Didn’t we have enough after Rome?
Friday brings the second milestone of the week as the evergreen Neighbours (Friday, 1.40pm, BBC1) celebrates a mammoth 5000 episodes. I’m not quite sure how that happpened. I mean, isn’t Kylie still in it? It’s still business as usual though as Paul Robinson is held hostage in a mineshaft by his evil son Cameron, who is masquerading as his twin, Robert. Or is it the other way round? Neighbours clearly hasn’t twigged that all Evil Twins need a goatee beard?
Rebus (Friday 9pm, ITV1) provides me with something of a quandary. In literary terms, I’m a Rebus junkie. I can’t get enough of Ian Rankin’s Edinburgh copper, and have diligently worked my way through them - in order. The previous run of Rebus tales with John Hannah were great adaptations of the books, but Hannah was not Rebus. He’s ex-SAS, alcoholic and, on the whole, a bit of a shit. Now Ken Stott, he’s just about as much the real deal as TV will allow Rebus to be - some of the stuff the DI gets up to in the books just woulodn’t be filmable. But the problem I have with Rebus now is that the adaptations are like Bond films - take the title, chuck the story out and go off piste. Shame. But Rebus is eminently watchable, even though the plot of Strip Jack, this week’s tale, bears little resemblance to the book of the same name, which is one of my favourites. As I keep telling myself, we’ve got a great Rebus now, everything else is window dressing.
