October 2006 Archives

Shakespearean is the only word that can be used to describe the departure of Five’s director of programmes, Dan Chambers. By ruthlessly appointing Flextechs’s Lisa Opie above him as managing director of content, Chambers’ latitude to manoeuvre in his existing role was effectively neutered, and in the final analysis, had little choice but to ask for his cards.

In light of alarmingly sliding ratings, clearly something has to change at Five, but whether the changeover will achieve that remains to be seen. Certainly Opie has a clear cut brief to turn things around: stop the ratings slide. But as ever, the devil is in the detail.

Where has it all gone wrong? In 2004, Five reached the apogee of a small, but sustained ratings growth, achieving an overall audience share of 6.4%. That’s as good as it got, and since then the channel has slid to, in the first 10 months of 2006, 5.8%. It might not seem like much, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s huge.

Chambers commenced his time with Five with a desire to up the intellectual clout of the channel, and he arguably achieved that. But where does a programme like Tim Marlow… Highlights of the New Tate Modern sit with Make Me a Supermodel following directly after it in the schedule? Your audience for one is not going to stick around for the other. Yes, Five’s documentary output is highly proficient, but, as is the case across the entire schedule, nothing fits. That has lead to serious problems of identity. In short, who is the audience for Five?

And then there are the much-vaunted US imports that now serve as a blessing and curse for the channel. The acquisition of the CSI powerhouse was a godsend that finally put Five on the map, and shows such as Prison Break, House and Grey’s Anatomy add to that sheen. But these shows have made Five over reliant in an “It’s all okay, we’ve got CSI,” kind of way. But when you can catch new episodes of CSI on Living (ironically where Opie hails from) and House essentially has Hallmark branding all over it, imports are not the great boon they used to be. Losing CSI in the future might be no bad thing, and could force the channel to think outside the box.

When there are home grown dramas and comedy (see Perfect Day), it’s always too little. With a miniscule programming budget of around 200 million, once the cheques have been written for CSI et al, there’s very little left in the coffers to pay for a top flight drama that might be able to build up some momentum and audience. There are the occasional successes, such as Suburban Shootout, but that success comes with too many caveats. Suburban Shootout was a co-production with Paramount Comedy, which aired the show within a week of its Five premiere, quickly tarnishing the terrestrial’s sheen of having a moderate hit.

It also easy to perceive the cancellation (or at least the lack of a new home grown soap to replace it) of Family Affairs as a mistake. Yes, Home and Away might do the business, but there’s nothing like your own soap to help anchor schedules and set out a thumbnail mission statement on channel identity and who your core audience is. And let’s face it, how many would take an episode of Family Affairs over EastEnders these days?

Finally, where does Five’s toe-dipping into the multi-channel pool take it with Five Life and Five US? Opie’s experience in this area makes her appointment quite sensible, and the starting figures for the channels haven’t been too bad. In fact, one success of Five Life has backfired – new episodes of Home and Away are now premiered here, ahead of a showing on Five. The soap still does well on Five, but fans are turning over to watch the new episode, leaving the 6.30 half hour on Five somewhat bereft of an audience. Oops!

And what of Dan Chambers? He should have no trouble finding gainful employment somewhere in the TV sector – he’s affable and intelligent, and made some good decisions. Shortly after he succeeded Kevin Lygo at Five, Chambers said to David Rowan of the Evening Standard:

“If the channel had continued as it was, with Keith Chegwin’s willy flapping about, it would be in real trouble by now.”

He had a point, but what would have happened had Five kept Keith Chegwin’s willy flapping around? Possibly not worth contemplating.

But is it possible that anybody sitting in the programming hot seat at Five is ultimately going to fail? Was the launch of Five just one terrestrial channel too many for an audience on the verge of a multi-channel revolution? With so much against it from the start, Five was always going to have a difficult upbringing. As it approaches its teen years under a new nanny, it remains to be seen whether Five will ever grow up to have the potential it surely deserves.

Awards shows such as the National Television Awards (ITV1, Wednesday) are all very well, but they do have a tendency to concentrate on the visual figureheads of each programme — pretty much the only awards given out in terms of technical skill are the Actor and Actress gongs, and even then (especially with the NTAs) the award often ends up in the hands of the shows with the largest fan base. It’s no surprise that Doctor Who actors are in the running for the acting awards at the NTAs this week, of course, and there’s every possibility that they’ll replicate last year’s double, where Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper won.

For me, though, it’s the craft awards that really allow the true talent to shine out. For all our feting of the big name stars, TV is a highly collaborative medium. And the breadth of this year’s Royal Television Society (RTS) Craft and Design Awards nominations show the best of British telly talent.

The elves over at MediaGuardian have calculated that the BBC gets 43 out of the 69 nominations, with Bleak House getting six nominations and, yes, Doctor Who getting four.

The hardest working man in make-up, Neill Gorton, gets three separate nominations for three separate shows in three separate categories: with Sheelagh Wells for Doctor Who (Best Make-up Design (Drama)), with Vanessa White for The Catherine Tate Christmas Show (Best Make-up Design (Entertainment & Non Drama Productions)), and with Rob Mayor and Millennium FX for Bodies (Best Visual Effects (Special Effects)).

My personal award for ‘nominees who sound most like a 1970s soul-funk group’ goes to Rudi Buckle and Hackenbacker, nominated for Best Sound - Drama with Spooks.

The awards themselves are held on November 20. Unlike the NTAs, they won’t be televised. But the achievements that they recognise will be substantially greater.

As it’s Monday, and in light of Liz’s great piece on drama last week, if I didn’t recommend Spooks (Monday 9pm, BBC1), then my TV Today future would seriously be in question. This week, the team (there’s an urge to call the Grid regulars the Merry Men, just to spite Dominic Minghella) are called in following the assassination of a Muslim cleric. As always with Spooks, nothing is quite what it seems, but it remains at the top of the Square Eyes viewing list.

It’s hard to take Vincent (Monday 9pm, ITV1) seriously with its supposedly hard man lead currently advertising a wholesome cereal product that’s good for your heart. Still, as long as the eponymous private dick doesn’t try getting his team to munch down on it, he should be okay. Tonight, Vincent (you can tell he’s sensitive because he wears nice glasses) is getting up close and personal with an old flame during a murder investigation. So far, so dull, but when the old flame turns out to be the rather fabulous Amanda Redman, Vincent suddenly looks like being worth tuning on for.

Ros Pritchard decides to ban the use of cars on a Wednesday, equating to another piece of bonkers wish-fulfilment that has made The Amazing Pritchard (Tuesday 9pm, BBC1) so hard to swallow. Even the liberal wet dream that was Jed Bartlett wouldn’t have gone that far. The jury is still out on this Sally Wainwright penned drama, but Exhibit A would have to be a PM who still sounds like Bubble from Ab Fab. There’s still a lot to enjoy here, but it’s a hard slog in places…

As a kid, I had to beg to be allowed to watch The Secret Policeman’s Ball, but that won’t be necessary with the return of this comedy institution (Tuesday 10pm, C4). I only have to ask if I can stay up to watch Torchwood these days. This new stand up concert, in aid of Amnesty International, features Eddie Izzard, Russell Brand, Chevy Chase (so that’s what happened to him) The Mighty Boosh and the cast of Green Wing, amongst others. Great fun, and for all a deserving cause.

For some spooky seasonal chills, the place to go is multi-channel, where The Haunted Airman (Tuesday 10pm, BBC4) will satisfy ghoulish tastes out there. Based on the story by Dennis Wheatly, this is just fabulous, and could almost recall some of those fantastic MR James adaptations, with a stunning turn from Robert Pattinson (pictured above) enduring a terrifying recovery from his experiences in WW1.

Oh, and Dinner with Portillo (Tuesday 8.30pm, BBC4) – the best invitation you’ll get all year? Discuss.

As a blog devoted to this wonderful business we call telly, it would be churlish not to highlight the most glittering event of the week – The National Television Awards (Wednesday 8pm, ITV). Sir Trevor McDonald is on host a duties (a great tribute to the man, for those who watched The Royle Family), and the usual list of names are ready to take to the stage in triumph, or put in the best performance of their career for the cameras. You either like these kind of shows, or you don’t, but some of the booing can be quite entertaining.

Lead Balloon (Wednesday 10.30pm, BBC4) might have just arrived on terrestrial, but this Jack Dee comedy is five episodes in on BBC4, and still remains a delight. This is the one with the scooter, and likely to be the best yet. Watch out for the brilliant Omid Djalili guesting as a dry cleaner who clashes with Dee’s dourly delicious creation, Rick Spleen.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is back with his always engaging boys’ own approach to the cooking genre in The River Cottage Treatment (Thursday 8pm, C4). Here he’s attempting to corral foodie philistines into abandoning their fast food comfort zones and embracing his favoured back to basics approach. The results are, to say the least mixed, but you can’t help but like this sometimes mad scientist of the food world (and my missus thinks he’s quite sexy, so there’s no accounting for taste.)

Drama of the week goes to the very promising first episode of The State Within (Thursday 9pm, BBC1). It’s like 24 meets The West Wing meets Spooks, and with that kind of cocktail in the glass, it might be little hard to swallow. Jason Isaacs is the upper crust British Ambassador to Washington, and he finds himself navigating a major diplomatic incident. He doesn’t know who to trust, or who to fear, and over six weeks this should become a brilliant twisty-turny drama. The Beeb will be hoping for a hit, as a second, lengthier run has already been commissioned, but anything with TV legend Sharon Gless on the bill gets my vote.

And then there’s the quandary that is Friday night. There’s nothing particularly bad on, but neither is there anything that should get more than a cursory nod as you pass it in the street. For curiosity’s sake, Auntie is sticking out the first episode of Open All Hours (Friday 7.30pm, BBC1), which is never a bad option for a repeat look, especially as it’s 30 years old this year. Now that should make some of you feel old.

Aside from that, this leaves Square Eyes in the position of having to recommend Blue Murder (Friday 9pm, ITV1). It’s not that bad really, and this is more noteworthy than most by the virtue of having one of Tom Bell’s final performances. Bell is Vinny McAteer, who confesses to the murder of his son-in-law. Open and shut, thank you very much. But then DCI Janine Lewis begins to pick apart the story…

Photo: BBC

Here at TV Today it always helps to keep an open mind, in fact, as part of The Stage it’s important that we look at all forms of entertainment equally, be it ballet, musicals, comedy, jazz or finger-clicking.

Yes, I did say finger-clicking.

I’d like to draw your attention, if I may, to a gentleman by the name of Bobby Badfingers. This man can click his fingers faster than, oh I don’t know, butterflies flap their wings. It is crazy, unnerving, fabulous to watch but I’m absolutely certain he’s going to have chronic arthritis later in life, either that, or shiny new bionic hands.

Born Bob Von Merta, the novelty performer has already racked up performances on programmes such as The Howard Stern Show and Live with Regis & Kathie Lee, but was catapulted into the major league limelight when he was a contestant on NBC’s America’s Got Talent (a UK version of the series, which is essentially a variety show but with X Factor production values is heading this way).

He didn’t win but the publicity has been in freefall ever since and guess what folks… this week he’s snapping his fingers over here. Catch him on Channel 4’s The New Paul O’Grady Show on November 1 at 5pm.

Blimey, Saturday’s aren’t half becoming a boring load of old nonsense, aren’t they? Two hours of The X Factor (Saturday 5.45, ITV1). Who Wants to be a Millionaire? (Saturday 7.35, ITV1) replacing Ant and Dec. And then, as always, there’s Robin Hood (Saturday 7.10pm, BBC1).

Aw, bless Robin Hood. It’s still trying, but by episode four, this will be the real test to see if the ratings leech anymore then they have been doing. For the record, the ratings haven’t dropped as much as the tabloids would have you believe, and if they stay above 5 million, the series should be safe. But you have to wonder who’s going to bother staying past the title of episode four… In an episode about an abandoned baby being found in the woods by Team Hood (remember, we can’t call them Merry Men, it’s just a bit too gay, okay?), who came up with the title ‘Parent Hood’? Taxi for Mr Minghella, taxi for Mr Minghella!

It’s probably best to abandon the usual Saturday night fare, and go highbrow with Hitler’s Holocaust (Saturday 7pm, C4). This is a truly excellent history series, but clearly is not going to make you feel good about the horrors history has given the world. What is uplifting is the human heart displayed at intervals throughout in the stories related by survivors of this terrible period. Recommended.

Kasabian take to the stage at Camden Roundhouse as part of the Electric Proms (Saturday 10pm, BBC3), accompanied by the BBC Concert Orchestra. It’ll be an unusual pairing, but isn’t that point of this series?

Sunday, thankfully, provides much better prospects for your viewing pleasure. Still, there is no way on the planet you will get me to tune in to the Deal or No Deal Anniversary Special (Sunday 8pm, C4). Do. Not. Get. It. I’m pleased for Noel and his return to the mainstream, but this is one boat that has definitely sailed without me.

Last week we had Prime Suspect, and this week sees a return for another TV great. The Royle Family – the Queen of Sheba (Sunday 9pm BBC1) catches up with the first family of TV six years after we last saw them. Not much has changed – although there’s a new telly in the living room, not to mention Nana’s bed – but it’s the much the same as before. It seems odd that the Beeb is using this one-off on a random Sunday, when it has Christmas special written all over it. But then, Auntie should be putting good TV on all year round, so maybe it does make sense.

By contrast to the bittersweet comedy on the Beeb, ITV gives us mental illness and suicide pacts in Mysterious Creatures (Sunday 9pm, ITV1). The never-less-than superb Brenda Blethyn and Timothy Spall star as Wendy and Bill Ainscow, parents to Lisa. Lisa suffers from Asperger’s syndrome, and, combined with a lack of help from the authorities, the toll this takes on her caring parents leads them to take tragic action. It’s quite heavy going, and based on a true story, but Mysterious Creatures is a thought-provoking piece of television sensitively handled.

Torchwood (Sunday 10pm, BBC3) hits episode three, and hopefully the series will now be allowed to settle down and get on with the job in hand. Certainly, writer Helen Raynor, script editor on Doctor Who, understands the genre, and this sci-fi ghost story has a nice tone in creepiness that convinces Torchwood is more than just shagging and swearing.

Photo: A still from Hitler’s Holocaust, courtesy of Channel 4

Monday’s blog round-up of Torchwood reviews seems to have gone down well, so we may try and make it a semi-regular feature. Today: what are people saying about BBC2’s new Thursday night comedy line-up (The Catherine Tate Show, Lead Balloon and Never Mind The Buzzcocks)?

Pippyrants: The new series of “The Catherine Tate Show” started last night and it was good but I want it better, some of the characters are getting a tad predictable. She is still one of the funniest women around at the minute and I am sure more new characters will be introduced and no doubt i shall be impersonating their catchphrases to an annoying level very soon.

The World in Focus: [The Catherine Tate show is] back and better then ever, with even closer to the bone observations… bovvered?… I would be if I missed it. BBC2 have a really good selection of comedy’s at the moment. Makes the Sky subscription worth while.

Shoot That Puck: Catherine Tate ★★★★ - still got it. Lead Balloon ★ - never had it. Never Mind the Buzzcocks ★★★ - losing it.

My Name is Al: 9pm: The Catherine Tate Show: Predictably uninspired. Looks like I’ve got a free half-hour next Thursday evening, then. 9.30pm: Lead Balloon: Perhaps unexpectedly, this was actually very good. Kind of like a British Curb Your Enthusiasm, but with less profanity and no Richard Lewis. Nice performances, very cleverly plotted, with some great gags too. This one may be a keeper. 10pm: Never Mind The Buzzcocks (Or should that be ‘Never Mind Buzzcocks’…?): New host Simon Amstell is genuinely witty, but shouldn’t this programme have been quietly retired a couple of years back? It does seem like everybody is just going through the motions a bit.

drak posting on UK Dance: I watched [Lead Balloon] for the first time last night and was disgusted and disappointed. I blame Curb Your Enthusiasm and all its slavish fans (yes, you, Gervaise). No one else should be allowed to attempt this sort of comedy (like making the special sushi from the fish with poison sacs that you have to be a Sushi Ninja or something with 20 years’ training to attempt). The Office was new enough and uncomplacent enough to work. Extras is horrible. Now Lead Balloon — oh for heaven’s sake, you being mean-spirited and afraid everyone will find out and then they do and you get embarrassed — it’s not funny! It’s HORRIBLE.

Blammy’s Blog: I managed to catch Simon Amstell’s debut as the permanent presenter of Never Mind The Buzzcocks, which I think was the first show to include an unbleeped f-word. Unless you count the video only edition release almost ten years ago where Mark Lamarr had sense to tell Jonathan Ross to “shut the fuck up”. Although the show’s essentially the same format the titles the set and even Phill Jupitus have been given a makeover. Phill in particular looking like an overweight Joe Pasquale having shaved his goatee and brought a pair of glasses.

Photo: Mike Hogan/BBC

01 811 8055 - a phone number burned indelibly into the brain of anybody in his or her mid-30s who was up at the crack of dawn to stare goggle-eyed at Swap Shop for three hours every Saturday morning. The news, as reported today by The Stage, that Noel Edmonds is to front a special edition of the classic show to celebrate 30 years of Saturday morning childrens’ TV, is a clarion call to anybody who press-ganged their mother’s into knitting them a Posh Paws. My mum started one, but never finished him. There he remained for years, eyeless and armless, but that’s nothing compared to the psychological scars that still remain.

On the one hand, it’s great that the BBC is choosing to mark the 30th anniversary of a fantastic TV genre, but when every channel is beginning to skim hours off the top of their kids’ schedules, and shunting the Saturday morning show around in favour of cooking programmes, it could be somewhat bittersweet.

But still, It Started With Swap Shop will reunite Noel Edmonds with Keith Chegwin, John Craven and Maggie Philbin (let’s hope Keith and Maggie are over the divorce…), as well as other presenters from the three decades of BBC Saturday morning kids shows. But, if there isn’t a replica of the Swap Shop set and the chance to phone Noel and swap your Etch-a-Sketch for a Stylophone, I’ll be writing to my MP.

But beyond that, I have a palpable sense of fear over the inclusion of archive clips, especially from the Chegwin/Philbin hosted Swaporama roadshow section of the series. Somewhere towards the end of the run, possibly in 1980/81, Swap Shop came to my hometown of Halifax, and here is where I have to make an embarrassing confession. I made my TV debut in a three-legged egg and spoon race, refereed by Cheggers, alongside my brother. Erm… we lost, but I did get one of those fab plastic bowler hats with the Swap Shop logo on the front - which I duly sold to somebody for a quid half an hour after the show finished and spent it on chips and space invaders. I weep to think what I could sell one of those for on eBay these days.

Oh, and Keith Chegwin, you didn’t sign an autograph for me. Thanks mate, thanks.

In the time it’s taken me to scribble this, some well connected wag of a friend has informed me that this particular edition of Swap Shop went out on 16th January 1982. And aren’t I lucky? It’s one of the few editions to exist in the BBC archives. I’m sure the blackmail letters will start pouring in any day now…

As Liz as already highlighted in the news story, if you ever appeared on any of these magical Saturday morning shows and want to share your experiences, go to www.saturdaymornings.co.uk and follow the link at the top of the page.

As a final word on Torchwood (yes, we do like it here at TV Today, with couple of reservations, but we don’t want this to become a love in), it seems the Sunday Express has been concerned about the moral irresponsibility of the BBC for screening a post watershed show in a post watershed slot.

Lets read that again (and these are my words): a post watershed show in a post watershed slot.

A common theme running through various complaints about Torchwood is from parents. Many are having difficulty with the concept of explaining to little Timmy that he won’t be allowed to stay up and watch the spin-off from his favourite TV show. How dare the BBC put parents into the position of actually taking responsibility and policing what their children watch. Fine, little Timmy might be upset. He might stamp his feet. He might bludgeon you to death with his 12-inch Cyberman doll as an act of revenge for depriving him of Captain Jack. But, if it is the choice of the parent for Timmy to not watch Torchwood, then surely that’s how should it work?

I might be being naïve. And no, I’m not a parent, but, as I understand it, nobody ever said that role in life was an easy one. I’m sure it is one of the hardest things in the world to see that bottom lip start quivering and the tears begin to flood, but when a parent is held to ransom by a doe-eyed child, forcing them to cry J’Accuse at a TV channel for putting them in the position of being a responsible parent, then something is wrong somewhere. When I was a child, I had to learn that I couldn’t drink beer in pubs until I was 18 and wasn’t allowed to stay up and watch The Professionals on a Sunday night.

It’s a life lesson that needs to be learnt:

“Dad, I want to watch Torchwood!”

“You can’t. It has people touching each other in their special places and aliens who say ‘bum’.”

“But that’s not fair!”

“Yes, I know. In years to come, you’ll thank for me this important life lesson. Now get over it!”

And on the flipside of this argument, next year, little Timmy will have his very own Doctor Who spin-off with The Sarah Jane Adventures, hitting CBBC screens in the not too distant. What’s more tragic, an eight-year-old child being denied his Torchwood fix, or a 34-year-old man setting the video for Sarah Jane Smith?

You work it out…

Photo: Eve Myles as Gwen Cooper in Torchwood episode 3, “Ghost Machine”. Picture © BBC

My name’s Liz and I am a Spooksaholic. There, I said it. I’ve always loved the show for its theatrical, fantastical storylines, but frankly, this series has been a belter. A masterclass in pure escapsim to the point that I have to watch it on BBC3, none of this terrestrial waiting around for me. Like a greedy little schoolchild snaffling all the sweets until I get my Monday night high.

I’m not going to give anything away by talking about last night’s episode - although frankly if you’re a TV fanatic I don’t see how you can wait (perhaps you can help me with my addiction).

But is anyone else noticing very soft anti-Israeli undertones in parts of the series? It’s not particularly a criticism, I think the state is as culpable as America, Iran, Pakistan or Britain in this current crossroads of Islamo-Christian relations. I just wondered if anyone else had noticed — and before the debate becomes twisted — in my view, anti-Israeli is not the same as anti-semitic.

But back to the matter in hand, I’ve been getting that greedy feeling about a few dramas recently. As I mentioned previously, Jane Eyre was a family favourite, while Helen Mirren was compelling in Prime Suspect.

Last night’s Fear of Fanny on BBC4 (which, incidentally I was able to watch, because I’d already sucked up the terrestrial episode of Spooks the week before - so you see there is practicality in my madness) had moments of loveliness.

Overall it was a okay production with Nighty Night’s Julia Davis strong as Fanny Cradock, in the same way, (I’m not sure if what I’m about to say is blasphemy in some quarters — if I’m not blogging tomorrow you know why), that Torchwood made a credible, if not compelling, start.

But it seems that suddenly, even these programmes I might once have dubbed mediocre, have shifted up a gear, be it in the production values, the writing or the performance.

All this and we haven’t even had Channel 4’s Longford, where Andy Serkis is terrifyingly brilliant, or the fun of ITV1’s Strictly Confidential, where Kay Mellor’s skill as a storyteller shines or BBC1’s The State Within, which has the style and plot of a Hollywood feature film.

Things may be far from perfect every time, but the bar has definitely been raised.

So, according to Terry Wogan in his new book, Shooting Stars, the legendary broadcasting icon says that the BBC overpays its stars.

“The culture now in television is that the presenter calls the financial and, increasingly, the creative shots. It is comparable to what happened in Hollywood 15 or so years ago.”

he says in the forthcoming book of essays on the TV industry.

While Sir Tel may have a point, the BBC news report of the story contains the following line:

“Wogan, reputed to earn £800,000 a year at Radio 2…”

One can’t help but smile at the irony…

Monday’s star turns will involve something of a time shift decision, with high-octane espionage action in Spooks (Monday 9pm, BBC1), vying for your attention with high-octane camp biopic Fear of Fanny (Monday 9pm, BBC4)

Spooks wraps up the two-parter commenced last week, with Ros trapped in the middle of a siege, while Adam is still going a bit barmy (and bedding the nanny) and Harry looks for an industrial sized toothpick to deal with the scenery that Peter Firth expertly chews throughout each episode. It’s probably right to worry about Adam, as on the law of Spooks averages, he should be out on his ear by now, being halfway through Rupert Penry-Jones’s third series in the role. All three of the original leads were out of the door by the end of their third, so I fear for Adam surviving any other attempts on his life this year.

And with Fear of Fanny, Julia Davis gives the turn of her career (and surely there are many more to come if she can erase the memory of the woeful second series of Nighty Night). This biopic of the legendary TV cook has more camp than Billy Butlin, but there’s also a streak of melancholy running through what could be the viewing opportunity of the week. Mark Gatiss (a collaborator on Nighty Night with Davis) graduates from versatile comedy performer to understated character actor as Cradock’s down at heel hubby, the equally legendary Johnny. If only TV chefs were like this now.

Bon Voyage (Tuesday 9pm, ITV1) is a typical ITV two-part drama – typical in that it starts with promise as a couple head out on a family camping to France, where they encounter a couple of fellow campers who may, as is the way with these things, be not quite what they seem. The predictability of the ITV two-part psychological drama genre (because a genre it has become in these troubled times for ITV) is reinforced when the second part is not much cop. Ah well…

Ah, and the hour long slice of everyday Yorkshire folk in Emmerdale (Tuesday 7pm, ITV1) as is to be expected, will probably leave EastEnders (Tuesday 7.30pm, BBC1) blushing come Wednesday morning when the overnights are out.

Perfect Day – The Millennium will leave confusion in its wake as you wonder how something so good (well, maybe let’s not overstate things here) ended up on Five. That’s obviously an ungenerous slant to take, as Five clearly can deliver when it gets its head down. It seems an odd choice to do a prequel to the previous Perfect Day, but one of the joys of the piece, starring Claire Goose and Aidan McArdle, is being aware of what happens to this group of uni friends in the original (set five years hence). Good, solid, funny stuff.

If you haven’t taken the Freeview plunge yet, Torchwood makes its terrestrial debut a mere three days after its BBC3 premiere. This is a good way to go, as holding the really rather excellent adult Doctor Who spin-off (ooh, it’s like one those late night Hollyoaks specials with shagging and everything) for a BBC1 showing next year would doubtless have left it feeling a bit cold and overcooked. With a double-header to kick things off (FYI the shagging is all in episode two), get the pizza in and enjoy.

On a related Doctor Who theme (long-time readers will know there are always endless possibilities for this), incumbent Whovian Christmas special guest-star Catherine Tate returns with a real TV Today favourite. The Catherine Tate Show (Thursday 9pm, BBC2) may be suffering from third series fatigue, (although not to the depressing levels that Little Britain sank to), but Tate still manages to pull blinders on a regular enough basis to keep her faithful interested. The usuals are there, mixed in with some new characters, and as this may be Tate’s final outing with sketch based fare, enjoy it while thee may.

Meanwhile, another multi-channel show previously feted by TV Today (for good reason) comes to terrestrial. Jack Dee’s Lead Balloon (Thursday 9.30pm, BBC2) sets the dour-faced comic on a new career path, starring as similarly grumpy comic Rick Spleen. The script, co-penned by Dee, is sharp, and has an obvious debt to Curb Your Enthusiasm, but Dee’s inherent lovable quality within the dark cloud he lives under, pushes it in different directions.

Alongside Fear of Fanny, drama of the week goes to Longford (Thursday 9pm, C4), allowing Jim Broadbent to further prove he is one of our finest actors. He’s barely recognisable here as Lord Longford, the controversial peer who campaigned for years for the release of Myra Hindley. Samantha Morton is Hindley, and the piece will provide much food for thought, challenging you to consider in detail whether Longford was right or wrong in his dogged pursuit of seeking forgiveness for the murderess.

After what could generally be viewed as a good week in viewing terms, Friday is a bit of a letdown. Having to rely on The Green, Green Grass (Friday, 8.30pm, BBC1) and Have I Got News For You (Friday 9pm, BBC1) seems a bit desperate, but sometimes any port in a storm will do. Instead, Simon Schama gives the Dead Ringers team more material than they probably deserve in Simon Schama’s Power of Art (Friday BBC2, 9pm). Taking a different look at history through artistic stop-offs isn’t really that original, but Schama has become one of those fantastic self-parody figures that it’s hard not to get drawn into his enthusiastic patter. This week he looks at the work of Bernini, and sometimes on a Friday night, it’s nice to be educated.

Okay, so while we wait for last night’s overnight Tv ratings to see whether BBC Three’s big-money gambit with Torchwood paid off, let’s see what the public thought. Oh, wait, the figures are just in (via Broadcast (subscribers only)): the first episode got 2.4 million viewers, with a 12.5% share — as suspected, a record for BBC3. [Warning: may contain spoilers. If you want to save yourself for Wednesday’s BBC2 repeat, look away now.]

Tom’s View of the World: I kinda liked it, but I think it’s gonna take a few episodes to “get going”. However the production is very slick and very “American” looking. As for the set design, keeping the Millennium Plaza fountain under which the hub is located running on downwards through the Torchwood complex was a stroke of genius, and locks the location of the Torchwood Hub very precisely.

Dave Cross: The word that mostly springs to mind is “derivative”. The whole idea of group of strange people investigating even stranger goings on looks a lot like Angel, the secret hideaway secreted behind a normal-looking building was all very Man From UNCLE. The Torchwood HQ looks a bit like an untidier version of the Batcave (with a holding cell that was taken directly from Silence of the Lambs). The lift that takes you up to the Millennium Centre is like something out of Thunderbirds. Oh, and since Captain Jack was brought back to life by Rose Tyler in Doctor Who last year he seems to have mutated into Captain Scarlet (he’s IN! DE! STRUCT! IBLE!)

We Are As Gods: It is refreshing to see a science fiction programme that is adult in terms of sex, violence and language, not to mention a lot of the sexual overtones were not just heterosexual in nature; which is bound to turn some heads, but once again; it is refreshing.

Iain J Coleman: What really makes it adult is the mature emotional reality that the show portrays. The scene where Gwen is facing down the Torchwood employee who is pointing a gun at her is a great example. The helpless despair and desperate disappointment in her face and her body language when she realises she’s about to die are just not the sort of thing you see in heroic family drama.

Not Now, Paleface, posting on Barbelith: By and large, it’s managed to pull off the “adult” part of its remit relatively well. I was always concerned that “Who for grown-ups” would be little more than Who with some gore and some swearing. In one sense, they’ve definitely gone down that line, but there’s a degree of subtlety at times. At others, though, it feels quite heavy-handed… One query - what is it about John Barrowman? For me, half the time he’s great, and half the time he’s Reading The Script Intercapped So You Know What’s Important. Which irks the living shit out of me. Not that he cares, mind. He’s too busy standing on top of a building.

John C Kirk: There are a few open-ended mysteries at the moment, but one major concern I have is that they may just be making this up as they go along, rather than gradually revealing information that they’ve already planned out. More specifically, I’m not sure whether they’ve really thought about their basic premise. (I had a similar problem with the series Dead Like Me…) For instance, is this still the same organisation that Queen Victoria founded, or are they a splinter group? If there are only five of them, and they claim to be a global power that outranks the UN, i.e. they have no particular allegiance to Britain, why do the Army and the Police just step aside to let them through? I think you can do some interesting stories with that premise (Warren Ellis did something similar with Stormwatch and The Authority), but I don’t think that Torchwood is going down that path.

Film Rotation: A solid start to this 13-part series was what everyone wanted, and of course, there could be much to learn from Captain Jack Harkness and his adventures — How did he get back from the 51st century? Is he bisexual? Is Doctor Who his absentee father? Will the pterodactyl get a spin-off show? Will Joss Whedon sue? Will Russell T. Davies stop pushing a metrosexual agenda? Admittedly, these are important questions, but whichever this show offers answers for it has proved to be, and it does have the potential to remain, an entertaining, emotional, and witty fifty minutes of television.

As Saturdays descend further into over familiarity of schedule (although Ant and Dec are off to throw some celebs into the jungle shortly, so it’s ta ta to Saturday Night Takeaway this week). If you’re having a lazy day, although this is more of a Sunday movie, plonk yourself down in front of The Guns of Navarone (Saturday 4.10pm, C4). Yes, it’s a movie, and technically out of TV Today’s remit, but it doesn’t stop it being bloody good.!

Hopefully Little John can get his bizarrely fluctuating whiskers under control in time for episode three of Robin Hood (Saturday 7.15pm, BBC1). Last week it fluctuated between some stubbly 5 o’clock shadow, to a full grizzly Gandalf job between scenes. And poor Gordon Kennedy, not the exactly a hulking giant, is he? More like Slightly Paunchy John. However, this episode is a further improvement on the poor opener, building on last week’s stronger effort. Robin is blamed for the deadly work of a mysterious assassin, and is forced to form an alliance with the Sheriff. At least they’re doing things with swords and stuff now, which is a merciful blessing, but the shallow metaphor for the times we live in are still there. However, writer Paul Cornell (a scribe on Doctor Who) seems much more comfortable in dressing proceedings up with some entertaining swashbuckling, which is sort of the point. Robin himself is still rubbish, though.

Ahead of Monday’s much anticipated Fear of Fanny, treat yourself to the real thing with Fanny Cradock Invites You to a Cheese and Wine Party (Saturday 8.35, BBC4), which is the best invitation TV Today has had all year (yes, we’re still smarting from not being summoned to the Torchwood launch). Marvel as Ms Cradock prepares some treats that will go with any entertaining event, and we sincerely hope that your cold green omelettes turn out like Fanny’s too. Kitsch doesn’t even begin to cover it…

And just to give a kind word to Five’s fledging cable operations, check in to Five Life for a marathon reservation with The Hotel Inspector (Saturday 2pm-9pm, Five Life). We love the very ground our favourite tough telly lady walks on, but even for TV Today, a whole seven hours worth is a little daunting. Still, nice to see the channel putting out a wide, varied choice of content.

Sunday is all about drama, and there are going to be some arguments come 9pm.

For a more sedate drama experience, following last week’s farewell to Jane Eyre, The Wild Sargasso Sea (Sunday 9pm, BBC1) turns back the clock to provide a prequel in this adaptation of Jean Rhys’s novel. Rochester (Rafe Spall) is living in Jamaica, where he falls in love with Antoinette, who becomes the first Mrs Rochester. As passionate as you’d imagine, this is a tidy piece of work with a talented cast.

As such, a bit of Bronte bodice ripping provides a nice alternative to the marvellous silliness taking place on Freeview. We’ve already told you what we think about Torchwood (Sunday 9pm, BBC3) (in short, we like it, a lot), so there’s not much point going into detail here. Just one piece of advice, to echo Scott’s earlier cautioning, keep your hand on your ha’penny, cos Doctor Who this ain’t!

And as the legacy of one television great opens up a new chapter, the final chapter of another comes to a close. DCI Jane Tennison takes her leave in the second of a two part Prime Suspect (Sunday 9pm, ITV1). While the police procedural side of this story has shown the usual competent level of plotting, nobody is under any illusion that this is why we watch Prime Suspect. We stick around to see just how much of a train wreck Jane can make of her life. And when the performance is this hypnotic, that is never, ever going to be a bad thing. Will Tennison get to retirement? Will she jump into bed with an inappropriate man? Will she solve the case and be crowned the conquering heroine? Will she be alive when the credits roll? Who knows, but TV Today will be there to raise a farewell glass to one of our all time favourites.

Until the comeback tour, of course…

The members of Torchwood Cardiff (Photo: BBC)

It looks like Torchwood is going to be BBC3’s big drama hit of the season (although Doctor Who über-fan Ian Levine may disagree after being the subject of an appropriately post-watershed putdown from Russell T Davies at the press launch). But it’s going to be doing so without a substantial portion of its predecessor’s audience.

Any parents who let their children watch Saturday teatime Who may be tempted to allow the little ‘uns to stay up late on Sunday night to watch Captain Jack Harkness and the rest of his team (after all, it is half-term next week, so it’s not as if they have school the next morning). However, the first few minutes are deliberately designed to dissuade any parents that this is family viewing; as Mark pointed out earlier this week, within the first five minutes, the dialogue has (in pre-watershed terms), “one F, one B and one A”.

Which made me wonder: is this the first TV spin-off ever to actively discourage a substantial portion of its parent’s audience from turning in?

Of course, back in the 1980s, the creators of Saturday morning slapstick show Tiswas conceived the late-night O.T.T. — which was basically Tiswas with Benny-Hill style humour. But, er, that’s about it.

Sure, Hollyoaks has its occasional late-night strands, as well as notionally separate series such as Let Loose and In The City — but those are shows which court the same audience as their progenitor, and just the later time slots to shovel in more gratuitous sex, bad language and violence.

Just looking down Wikipedia’s List of television spin-offs, I can’t see anything else which, like Torchwood, makes the transition from family show to adult series. The closest, really, is Lou Grant, a hard-hitting drama that was spun off from the altogether lighter sitcom, The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

What say you, our beloved (and often more knowledgeable) TV Today readers?

Any impression that ballroom dancing is the preserve of the older generation must surely be laid to rest now, as Jimmy Tarbuck has been forced to pull out of Strictly Come Dancing for health reasons.

The BBC press release says:

Following a doctor’s assessment this week, Jimmy, the doctors and the BBC have come to the decision that for the good of Jimmy’s health he should no longer take part.

Earlier in the week, the BBC downplayed reports that Trabuck had been taken to hospital with a heart murmur, saying only that he’d been diagnosed with high blood pressure.

With a celebrity down, the BBC are now promising “an exciting twist to the competition to look out for”. Let’s hope they don’t just mean “we’re drafting in somebody else”…

According to today’s Sun, TV Today favourite The Outsiders will, in a shock move, not be going to a full series.

You could cut the shocked, grieving silence at TV Today towers with a blunt butter knife.

According to the TV Biz section of the paper:

ITV bosses said that The Outsiders lacked humour.

Really? We thought it was hysterical…

While the assembled hordes of hackdom assembled in the fair city of Cardiff last night for the press launch of Torchwood, the hip, happening new sci-fi drama from the mighty pen of Russell T Davies, TV Today settled down in the comfort of the living room with preview discs of the first two episodes. There were no canapés here (and the pizza was late), but on the basis of these episodes, Torchwood has all the air of a (cautious) hit.

It’s fast, although doesn’t go at the breakneck speed that every episode of Doctor Who gallops at to get the job done. The fixed location of Cardiff is a help as the writers won’t have to establish a new location every single week. Having said that, the sweeping aerial shots of the city do put one in mind of Hotel Babylon, but thankfully Tamzin Outhwaite fails to materialize.

And let’s be clear about this, despite several veiled references to the parent show that only the faithful will pick up on, this isn’t Doctor Who, so don’t be letting little Timmy stay up on Sunday night to watch. As the Torchwood team turn up in the first five minutes to monkey about with a murder victim for the good of science, we’ve already had one F, one B and one A, which elicited several sharp intakes of breath. While we’re on the subject of the Torchwood (Cardiff branch) team, there is the question of how Torchwood went from being a high-budget, top secret, xenophobic, para-military, slightly evil organisation run by Chrissie Watts from the top of Canary Wharf, to five people in a van in Cardiff, but that’s quibbling.

The first episode is an economical, by the numbers introduction to the team and the character of WPC Gwen Cooper, who encounters Captain Jack Harkness and ends up being drafted into Torchwood by episode’s end. Eve Myles as Gwen is the solid, down to earth character needed to anchor Torchwood to the real world, and her turn is a nice counterpoint to the more fanciful Harkness. John Barrowman is clearly having a ball, running around with a gun and a grin, and his presence means you never quite take things seriously, which is a big help with a big, silly sci-fi series.

Does Torchwood have what it takes to go the distance? It’s certainly bold, the cast are very pretty and the dialogue has a zippy archness to it. Whether that will become grating after a few episodes remains to be seen, but on the basis of the first pair, if you like your sci-fi drama a bit punchier than the whimsical Doctor Who, touch wood, you should find a lot to enjoy in the adventures of Torchwood.

Torchwood premieres on BBC3, Sunday 22nd October at 9pm. It will be repeated the following Wednesday on BBC2

Ouch!

TV Today’s heart goes out to Mastermind second round contestant Simon Curtis, who managed the lowest ever score for a specialist subject in the show’s history. Answering question on the films of Jim Carrey, Mr Curtis struggled through some quite detailed probing from John Humphrys, passing on the first three questions and getting his fourth wrong. He went on to answer one question correctly and suffered the walk of shame back to his chair, only to turn round and come back within seconds because, as is Mastermind tradition, the lowest specialist scorer goes first in the general knowlwedge round.

Simon shouldn’t feel too bad, though. His score of seven in the general round put him on eight, narrowly avoiding being the lowest overall Mastermind scorer ever by a margin of one. That dubious honour goes to one Colin Kidd, who chalked up an overall score of seven in 2005.

Aside from being a fixture on any documentaries about Mastermind in the future, Simon Curtis can have the final laugh. Last year he bagged £250 grand on Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, so as far as we’re concerned, he can start and finish as much as he wants!

As any long term fan of Doctor Who — indeed, even the most cursory viewer — knows, it was a long-running staple of the show that the Doctor’s time machine, whilst being a technological marvel, had a remarkable tendency to appear somewhere completely different from the intended location. In one of life’s perpetual imitations of art, something similar has happened to the BBC’s audience of the series’ TARDISODES, designed for mobile phones but which have proved far more successful on PCs.

The one-minute episodes, made available in the week prior to each new Saturday night show, attracted an average of just 3,000 mobile viewers per episode (via MediaGuardian - registration required). However, as the clips were also made available on the BBC website, the TARDISODES received an impressive 2.6 million download requests over the web during the course of the 13-week run.

So why was the target audience — the mobile phone users — so small? Iain Tweedale, new media editor for BBC Wales, points out two significant factors:

• The cost of downloading on-demand video to mobiles is prohibitive. Even though the BBC did not charge for the download, networks’ charges for the 3G bandwidth meant each one could cost up to £2 to download.
• The profileration of video codecs (compression/decompression methods) used by the different phone manufacturers make it harder to support all available handsets. Tweedale experienced the same problem I had — my Samsung 3G phone, while supporting video downloads, was rejected by the BBC’s service as incompatible.

While the first problem is certainly out of the BBC’s hands, the second isn’t really. If small commercial indies such as Flextech and Mint Digital can develop systems that can cope with many different codecs, surely the BBC’s coffers can extend to a slightly more technical system than the one they have at the moment. (And if they can’t, they could at least make the list of compatible handsets easier to find).

But Tweedale ignores one of the biggest problems with the episodes — that, while they may have been intended to be played out on mobile phones, there was no attempt to work with the limitations of the platform. As I pointed out on this very blog back in June:

We’re coming to the end of the BBC’s own experiment with content especially for mobile phones, with their TARDISODE drama-cum-trailers for Doctor Who. It’s interesting to note, though, that the BBC have pretty much ignored MTV’s rules of thumb, with the result that the episodes don’t really work on mobiles, although they look pretty good streamed from the BBC’s site.

Blogger Rob Buckley has other creative concerns:

1. They were only a minute long and nothing happened in them really

2. They didn’t feature either the Doctor or Rose

The lack of series regulars didn’t concern me that much (indeed, it’s not the first time Doctor Who has done a preview episode without its regular cast) although I did find the general quality of the episodes varied wildly — despite being written by TV stalwart (and a writer on Series 3 of Doctor Who) Gareth Roberts. As Rob points out, big US series such as Lost and Battlestar Galactica are beginning to plan and produce ‘webisodes’ alongside their full TV content, and that may spur future British series to better plan their new media preview content.

However, both those shows have long term standing sets and a large regular cast list, which mean that additional content can be filmed out of sequence as and when both space and actors are available. Doctor Who, with just two series regulars, a handful of occasionally recurring characters and a new location and/or time period every week, has additional constraints that neither of those series have. But one thing’s for sure — the viewing figures for the Tardisodes on phones and the web show that it’s as important as ever to concentrate on the content of what you produce, rather than allowing yourself to be seduced by the potentials of new technology.

Amidst all the hoo-ha over the BBC’s move (or non-move) to a new media city in Salford, Greater Manchester, it seems that Granada/ITV is considering a sale of Granada’s Manchester HQ on Quay Street. As reported in various newspapers, including the Sunday Mirror, this would be to facilitate a move to the same Salford location as Auntie.

Naturally, the story focuses on the possibility that, if any sale goes ahead, it would mean moving the current external Coronation Street set to the new location, which has occupied space on the Granada backlot since 1982. Apparently this would be a bad thing, for reasons of programme heritage or some such.

Why?

It’s not the first set Coronation Street has ever occupied, starting life as a studio set, before graduating to an outside location in 1968 (following a studio based train-wreck episode to explain away any discrepancies in the move). Over the years, the external set was expanded with backyards and roofs before decanting to the bigger, much more impressive and solid construction on the backlot. This then formed the cornerstone of the now defunct Granada Studios Tour in the late 80s and throughout the 90s. At the height of the tour’s popularity, Corrie was only three episodes a week, and the relatively low (compared to now) requirements for filming on the set allowed members of the public to wander down the cobbles five days a week. Just think how awed they were by the stone cladding outside Jack and Vera’s.

According to the Mirror, Manchester Council is keen to keep the studios in the area as they are a draw for tourists, which is an odd view to take. Since the demise of the tour in 1999, there has been no access to either the Street set or any form of studio tour for the general public. Tourists would have to be pretty desperate to come and stand outside the Quay Street Granada building and point for a couple of minutes before moving and finding something less boring to do.

Unless Granada is hell bent on staying at Quay Street, there is no earthly reason why Coronation Street should not be moved to a spanking new production home in Salford. Salford, in geographical terms, is about 30 seconds walk from Granada’s current front door anyway, and as Weatherfield is said to be based on a Salford street in the first place, it could be considered something of a homecoming.

With the looming clouds of the digital switchover on the horizon, and moves towards a HD future, doesn’t a show that is still a backbone of British TV deserve a tip top new home? One of the joys of working through the excellent Coronation Street DVD sets is how changes in production style (ah, remember when the Street exterior was shot on film?) and location help to identify different eras of the show. Otherwise, the homogenised look we have now (and for all our soaps) will continue forever.

If there are valid financial and logistical reasons not to move the Street set, or indeed Granada as a whole, then this point is moot. Otherwise, the Street is dead! Long live the new Street!

Find information from Wikipedia on the various sets Corrie has occupied here, and some background on Granada Studios Tour here.

Before we begin, it’s probably best to mention tonight’s launch of Five’s new freeview services, Five US and Five Life. So, if you want to watch wall-to-wall CSI and Grey’s Anatomy, that’s the place to go from now on.

With Robin Hood being so prominent at the moment (Saturday’s was a merciful improvement), I can’t help but have the fondly remembered 80s arrowfest Robin of Sherwood in my thoughts, and that path usually takes me to Ray Winstone. Winstone played Will Scarlet in the last TV incarnation of the outlaw, and generally comes out of it retrospectively as one of the best things in it, playing him like a beefy footie hooligan. Which, on the whole is how he approaches most roles (yes, even Henry VIII), making him a frustratingly likeable yet lovably rubbish performer.

And so we have Vincent (Monday 9pm ITV1), Winstone’s ITV private detective drama that garnered some decent notices on its first outing. In this second series opener, Vincent finds himself on the wrong side of the law when he’s in the frame for the murder of a chambermaid (clearly it wasn’t him wot did it, which rather ruins the suspense). This episode is notable for an appearance by Winstone’s own daughter, Jaime, as the murdered girl, but also for an incredibly solid turn from Suranne Jones as one of Vincent’s team. In this, continuing on the sterling work she put in during the first series, she proves there’s more to her range than Karen McDonald, and surely it’s a matter of time before she’s taking the lead in her own series.

As ever, if Winstone’s gruff charms don’t appeal, the always-reliable Spooks (Monday 9pm BBC1) provides a healthy, but silly (naturally) alternative.

Thankfully, Anna Madeley seemed to come out of the car crash that was The Outsiders relatively unscathed, escaping from a fate as sidekick to Nigel Harman and taking the lead role on The Secret Life of Mrs Beeton (Monday 9pm, BBC4). She was a Victorian Nigella Lawson, possibly the first celebrity cook, and her Book of Household Management was a benchmark for cookery books, and in this zesty biopic, Madeley gives her an arch, comic slant. It’s the sort of thing BBC4 does very well, and for the clearly talented Madeley, a much needed and timely tonic.

There’s something about The Amazing Mrs Pritchard (Tuesday 9pm BBC1) that’s hard to take seriously, but the reasons aren’t exactly obvious, but the ability to suspend a thimble-full of disbelief just isn’t happening. There just seems to be something inherent in Jane Horrocks’s mumsy performance that’s difficult to buy in to, but there’s still plenty to enjoy in this silly bit of wishfulfilment.

Talking about taking people seriously, The Madness of Boy George (Tuesday 10pm, C4) is likely to be a beautiful piece of car crash TV. This slice of fly on the wall looks at the controversial singer turned DJ’s brush with community service in New York following his conviction for narcotics possession. The footage of George picking up litter on the mean streets of the city are madness indeed…

And I still can’t praise The Unit (Tuesday 10pm, Bravo) enough. Pacey, witty and brilliant.

Wednesdays on Channel 4 have become something of a staple for the Square Eyes viewing habits. How Clean is Your House? (Wednesday 8pm, C4) still has a certain shabby charm as far as light reality goes, but You Are What You Eat (Wednesday 8.30pm, C4) is something else entirely. There’s something quite disturbing about a show that actively portrays a bad tempered lady turning up at the house of somebody who clearly has self-respect issues beyond eating one pie too many, and then bullying them about their diet. Somehow, submitting to Gillian McKeith examining your tongue and bodily excretions on national television is not really going to solve any of the wider psychological issues. This is entertainment of a dubious nature, and it’s recommended that you order a very large pizza to ward off the utterly depressing McKeith effect.

Continuing the Channel 4 theme, Goldplated (Wednesday 10pm, C4) looks like it could be a bit of vacuous fun, focusing on the doings of the elite middle-class Cheshire set. Hard-nosed socialite women, sex-obsessed men, backstabbing, bed hopping… it’s all there. In the first episode, construction magnate John finds his empire crumbling, and turns to his wife for help, but as he’s already bedding Cassidy, will she bring herself to do it. It’s a bit like Footballers’ Wives in some respects, and has guilty pleasure written all over it. Hurrah!

Extras (Thursday 9pm BBC2) bows out from what has been a very hit and miss series, but then, that’s typified both series of the Gervais/Merchant juggernaut. While Gervais heads off to tackle drama and with no more Extras currently planned, disciples will have to settle for being paid off with a guest-shot from Robert Lindsay. Andy’s career is on the up, he’s hanging out with Jonathan Ross (life imitating art?), and crossing swords with a jealous Lindsay while visiting a sick child in hospital. A good episode to go out on, but as a whole, not as great as it could, or should, have been.

It’s always depressing seeing a talented actress doing the equivalent of clock watching at the office, and that’s exactly how it feels to watch Caroline Quentin pulling teeth in Blue Murder (Friday 9pm ITV1). After the relative brilliance of Life Begins, this is a real come down (and always has been, to be honest). It’s such a pedestrian piece of going through the motion TV, high flying career cop juggling busy family life, blah blah blah. Quentin is too good an actress for this pap, and it’s about time she had some more decent roles thrown at her again.

Finally, with the today’s release of Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace on DVD, it seems fitting for the famous horror writer to be the first guest on Channel 4’s new chat show, Man to Man with Dean Learner (Friday 11.05pm, C4). Learner was Marenghi’s long-term manager, so it’s nice he’s repaying their long service together by showcasing his former client in this way. For those who relished and mourn the lack of further instalments of Darkplace, this is just what you need. Twisted, silly and inspired.

Come on now, it’s October. I’m supposed to be wrapped up against the elements, popping echinacea like Smarties and looking mournfully in at the window of Starbucks because they haven’t put gingerbread latte back on the menu yet. Instead it’s sunny, and I’m heading into work sans coat. Who knows what affect this unseasonable weather will have on our viewing habits, because weekends should be about being on the sofa watching good telly.

Still, there’s plenty on the box to keep you occupied over the weekend, and if you find yourself at home tomorrow afternoon, Monk (Saturday 3pm, BBC2) should start off your programme of viewing nicely. This US import, starring the brilliant Tony Shalhoub as the San Francisco detective suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder. It’s very gentle, but very entertaining, not least for Shalhoub’s utterly engaging performance. The fourth season opener sees Monk competing with a second-rate PI who suddenly develops amazing detection skills to rival those of Monk himself. This should be the biggest show on the box, and it always pains that Monk largely goes unrecognised on these fair shores.

Keith Allen gets to take centre stage (or forest clearing) in the second episode of Robin Hood (Saturday 7.05pm, BBC1), and for this, we can be thankful. As the Sheriff of Nottingham, he’s much more entertaining than Jonas Armstrong’s very dull Robin, and you’re almost cheering for the bad guys as he strides into Locksley. Even Marion doesn’t seem too impressed with Robin, saying: “He’s an outlaw now, just not a very good one,” which is an unfortunate gift to pithy TV reviewers. Encouragingly this is much better than the first episode and is starting to feel a lot more like the silly, exciting adventure series it needs to be.

Churlishly I’m not going to recommend The X Factor or Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway. They just sit there like a breezeblock across the Saturday night schedule from 5.50pm through to 9.45pm. Sorry, but that’s too much, even for my viewing stamina. And if you’re made of sterner stuff then me, you can relive the The X Factor marathon again on Sunday. Slump…

A better option to add some texture to your viewing pleasure is the excellent Life of Pryor – the Richard Pryor Story (Saturday 9.40pm, BBC2). Was he the greatest stand-up of all time? Possibly, and in this piece presented by Lenny Henry, the likes of Whoopi Goldberg and Eddie Izzard present very good cases in amongst a fascinating and often tragic life story. For more evidence of Pryor’s hallowed status, stick around for Richard Pryor: Live in Concert (Saturday 10.40pm, BBC2), but be warned, the air will be blue!

Jane Eyre (Sunday 9pm, BBC1) bows out of the schedules this week, providing Ms Eyre with a final dilemma: shack up with St John Rivers, or wait for Rochester to come and find her. It’s all very passionate stuff in only the way a BBC cossie drama can be, but my inability to warm to a Toby Stephens performance has stunted my enjoyment of an otherwise impressive production. I suspect that’s very much my loss.

However, I do fear for Jane Eyre’s chances in the ratings this week when DCI Jane Tennison staggers in from an absence of a couple of years (I suspect it was a very long pub lunch). Prime Suspect - the Final Act (Sunday 9pm, ITV1) is said to be the final ever appearance for Helen Mirren as the First Lady of telly ‘tecs, and you know what? I actually believe it this time. Mirren seems to not need Jane as much as she used to, and that makes this final case more vibrant than usual. There’s almost a cliché to a copper who’s on the edge of the retirement cliff, has no significant other to speak of, her dad is on his deathbed and she is battling alcoholism, but when it’s played this well, who cares? This just resonates with quality, and sharp-eyed viewers should watch for a final turn from the late and very great Tom Bell, reprising his original Prime Suspect role as Bill Otley.

In fact, so good is Prime Suspect, there’s not much point recommending anything else this weekend, so the case rests, your honour.

It’s a case of “all change” in Emmerdale this weekend, as Victoria Sugden returns from a holiday in Spain. At least, she claims to be Victoria, and everybody recognises her — everyone except the audience…

In real life, Hannah Midgely, the original Victoria, has been replaced by Isobel Hodgins. But it’s not as if we can’t understand her father, Jack, taking this transformation in his stride. After all, he’s not only been through it with his son, Robert (played as a baby by Richard Smith, as a child by Christopher Smith, and from 2001 by Karl Davies — a transformation that also happened off-screen during a holiday in Spain. Must be something in the Sangria…), and his wife, Sarah (Madeleine Howard 1988-1994, Alyson Spiro 1994-2000) — but he’s had to put up with his own reflection changing: while Clive Hornby has played Jack since 1980, the character was originally played by Andrew Burt.

Of course, all soaps occasionally have to recast. Beyond the Sugdens, Emmerdale (back in the days when there was still a farm attached) changed Dolly Skilbeck from Katherine Barker to Jean Rogers (now a leading light in actors’ union Equity) in 1979; down Coronation Street way, the Tilsley/Platt children and Rosie and Sophie Webster have all changed. While in a way, it’s more understandable that child actors may end up being replaced, when there are so many other pressures on them, it’s the adult transformations that require the most extreme suspensions of disbelief. Quite why Dynasty required Steven Carrington to be involved in a fire, necessitating plastic surgery to allow a change of actors from Al Corley to Jack Coleman, when his sisters Fallon and Catherine changed overnight without, is a mystery; though none more so than, in a reunion miniseries, how the same character ended up looking just like Al Corley again…

At least Dynasty made the attempt to cast actors of a similar size and build to their predecessors. Quite the biggest — and most inexplicable — transformation is that of Peggy Mitchell in EastEnders. While Barbara Windsor has dominated the role for ten years, first appearing in 1996, the character had appeared briefly five years earlier, played by Jo Warne, a lady who physically is as different from our Babs as it’s possible to get. And thanks to the glories of YouTube, you can see what I mean:

With impressively dark trailers now doing the rounds and John Barrowman’s strangely Manga-style face adorning the sides of buses across the country, the old BBC publicity machine is in full swing for the premier of Torchwood on 22nd October.

Problem being, nobody seems to know which channel the Doctor Who spin-off is officially going out on. From the get go, TW has been showcased as a major undertaking for BBC3, and it seems clear that the show will complete its initial 13 episode run here. This is a very positive state of affairs for BBC3 – with repeats of Doctor Who still doing storming business, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that come 22nd, the channel may be reporting its highest ever viewing figures, certainly for an originated drama. And that also casts Auntie in a good light politically by placing an important show on a digital channel to hammer home the corporation’s commitment to multi-channel and the digital switchover.

But now the water’s get muddy. The original plan for Torchwood was to simulcast episode one on both BBC1 and BBC3 (ie, at the same time), with episode 2 premiering straight after solely on BBC3. Odd perhaps, but the showing on BBC1 would certainly raise the profile, and high ratings for second episode on BBC3 would be assured.

That plan has now been abandoned, and the line is now that episodes 1 and 2 will premier exclusively on BBC3, with a BBC2 repeat the following Wednesday for these and all other episodes throughout the run.

Only schedule analysing dafties like the TV Today team would possibly wonder at the reasons behind this. It’s down to three things:

1) Torchwood is brilliant, and the various sectors of the BBC are fighting over having a piece of the next hot thing.

2) Torchwood is a bit of a let down, and the various sectors of the BBC are figuring how best to get mileage out of the show before the audience at large realises.

3) Going out on BBC1 would put the first episode in a head-to-head collision with the final Prime Suspect, and battening down the hatches and retreating to BBC3 is the best option for preserving a healthy rating for a show that deserves to be seen. Certainly the words ratings and juggernaut can be attached to Prime Suspect.

The realist in me suspects (and hopes) that it’s a combination of 1 and 3. I desperately want Torchwood to be good. For all my love of Doctor Who, it’s like the lover who you adore beyond all else but you know they have faults that will always be forgiven unconditionally. Could Torchwood be the new, exciting, dangerous other woman who might have what it takes to tempt me from the well-worn path?

It’s either that or DCI Jane Tennison…

The rather pretty Torchwood website has now gone live, providing a nice preview of the series.

So, Flextech’s youth channel Trouble has announced that its user-generated video site, Trouble Homegrown, is to get its own TV show from next month.

It’s been no secret that Trouble wanted to do this — Gavin Newman was open about at the UGTV’06 conference back in July (and which I blogged about at the time).

What impresses me with Trouble’s approach is the way that they’re building up Homegrown. By allying it closely to their existing brand, they’ve kept the user base very focussed, while at the same time expanding the awareness of the website through occasional on-screen campaigns with real-world benefits, such as fast track auditions for dance show Bump’n’Grind’ and the chance to appear in ad spots (if you’ll pardon the pun) for Clean & Clear facial cleansing products. And that has all meant that Homegrown’s community has stayed coherent, even as usage of the site has grown. I’ve been involved in various online communities over the years, either in a management or participatory role, and the biggest killer to long-term success is that a greed for more users often eliminates the initial reason for the site’s success. Happily, that doesn’t seem to be the case here.

In fact, Trouble’s careful approach makes the forthcoming all-UGC channel, Fame TV (which I blogged about on Monday), look even more amateurish. When you’re building a show that relies on 100% audience participation, it’s essential that the audience is there in the first place…

According to today’s Guardian (registration required), it seems that Prehistoric Park may not be as extinct as it probably should be.

After spending a huge amount of folding stuff on the first series of Prehistoric Park, only to see it crash in the ratings to a disappointing 3 million, the question of the week has to be why the channel is seeking to recommision this dodo of a show by having distributor Fremantle hiking its leathery hide around Mipcom looking for more money. Yes, because ITV has slashed its budget commitment to a future series, a further backer is needed to secure a greenlight for Prehistoric Park 2, which is already top heavy in the co-production stakes.

Only yesterday, I discussed the concept of giving something a chance to bed in, to find its feet. I think, after one complete series, Prehistoric Park found its feet and found those dinosaur claws a bit unsteady, to be honest. It feels like ITV have learnt nothing about scheduling and catering for a family audience outside of Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway. Dinosaurs were cool five years ago, when Walking With Dinosaurs did it first, and better. It was what it was, a nature documentary of conjecture that was utterly poker faced. By introducing a real naturalist in Nigel Marven to front PP and then bolting a very clumsy time travel MacGuffin on, doesn’t suddenly make it Doctor Who.

This is one of those situations where it’s probably best to cut your losses (unless the international sales of Prehistoric Park are particularly lucrative). With the much-touted action drama Primeval, also containing a time travel/dinosaur element of a more fantastical bent, due to air before the year is out, it seems the schedules might be a bit too packed with beasties of a prehistoric nature.

ITV can do family shows, the channel just needs to relax and remember how to do it, and stop pouring money into ideas that were clearly ill-judged and achieved largely unconvincing results to justify the current hiking around in Cannes like Harry Secombe at the beginning of Oliver! Altogether now: “One show for sale!”

If anybody’s being keeping up with my viewing habits of late, you’ll know I was in a holding pattern on the last five episodes of The West Wing, which I have drip-fed myself over the last week. Last night, I poured a glass of wine and watched the last hurrah for Jed Bartlett and his team.

I’ll spare you the gushing eulogy (I’ve said enough on the subject before), but I’d just like to paraphrase the Pres to his loyal Chief of Staff, Leo McGarry (played by the late John Spencer):

Thanks. That was an awfully nice thing you did.

After a cautiously lukewarm preview from TV Today, it seems Robin Hood did the business on Saturday night, nicking 8.2 million viewers from under the noses of Ant and Dec and The X Factor. A very, very good result, and one that must have the Beeb smiling, especially combined with the double whammy punch out to ITV with the return of Strictly Come Dancing.

The top five overnight ratings for Saturday night look something like this:

1 …. 8.8m (38.2% share) …. Strictly Come Dancing (19:45) BBC1

2 …. 8.4m (35.9% share) …. The X Factor (20:30) ITV

3 …. 8.2m (37.0% share) …. Robin Hood (19:00) BBC1

4 …. 7.4m (34.4% share) …. Strictly Come Dancing (21:45) BBC1

5 …. 7.1m (41.7% share) …. Match of the Day Live (16:45) BBC1

Source: BARB))

Which, all told, are pretty damn impressive, and Ant and Dec were just edged out by the Nottingham outlaws, still showing at number 6 with a healthy 7 million. So, as happened with the revival of Doctor Who, there is an audience of pushing 16 million viewers who will happily spread themselves across the two main terrestrial channels for Saturday evening TV.

But!

How will the board look next week? This was an unusual night, with lots of publicity surrounding the big BBC launches. Next week, Strictly Come Dancing airs its first slice of the night before Robin Hood, going up against The X Factor at 5.50pm, with Robin slugging it out with the second hour of Cowell’s marathon edition.

Will Robin’s ratings hold up? I doubt it, to be honest, not at 8 million (the Appreciation Index figure was quite low at 74), but I don’t think it will be the ratings tanking that some may be predicting (some of that predicting having being muttered around the hushed cloisters of TV Today towers). Certainly word on the later episodes is very positive, and now that the setup is out of the way, the series should hopefully be able to get down to some proper Merry Menning, and a healthy 5 - 6 million might not be out of the ballpark.

Actually, while we’re on that subject, why this rule that Robin’s chums must be referred to as ‘the gang’ or ‘the outlaws’? What is wrong with Merry Men? I can just see the focus group taking place in Sherwood, wipe board and all, as “the gang” workshop their way through a list of acceptable titles. Why not go the whole hog and have Team: Hood branding on their tunics (or hoodies, as it were). And poor Friar Tuck…

Anyway, coming back on topic (ahem), the quality of what is to come later in the series may be evident in the healthy takings at this year’s Mipcom, currently underway in Cannes. Our moles at the event say that sales to Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, Spain and Portugal have been secured, and that more deals are expected to be closed before the weekend.

Could we have misjudged Robin before it had chance to prove itself? Maybe, maybe not. I still stand by the view that the first episode was lacklustre and plodding, but if there’s one thing that the TV industry never does these days is give something a chance. So let’s buck tradition (with apologies to Friar Tuck) and do that just that…

For anybody who’s interested in any aspect of Britain’s media, then The Guardian’s MediaTalk podcast should be essential listening every Friday, just as its print supplement is every Monday and the website is throughout the week (as long as you register). It has everything a good podcast needs: a regular, reliable format (round table discussion, conversations with the week’s columnists in the paper, main feature, rounding off with Gareth McLean’s wonderfully bitchy gossip column); strong ties with its print equivalent, while keeping the overlap to a minimum; knowledgeable and articulate regulars. It has also — at least, within my small circle of friends and colleagues who also listen regularly — generated its own catchphrase. Thanks to Emily Bell, editor-in-chief of Guardian Unlimited, and recently promoted to the Guardian board as Director of Digital Development, the phrase “the death of linear television” is starting to enter the podcast’s listeners’ lexicon.

The trouble is, I don’t think it’s true at all — and in last Friday’s ‘cast, visiting expert Tess Alps concurred. (Worryingly, she also backed this up with a letter in Monday’s Media Guardian. With all the interaction the paper’s encouraging with its readers, it’s disappointing that the limited space for letters was taken up by a regular columnist. But I digress.)

There are advances in new media, in recording technologies, in mobile phones, that mean that the collective viewing experience is fragmenting. But while on-demand broadband, sites such as YouTube and Google Video, PVRs and television-by-internet (IPTV) are introducing new ways of accessing televisual content, that doesn’t mean the concept of the channel, with programmes available at fixed times of day, is going to die out. And there’s a simple reason for that: it comes down to money.

Now, nobody’s ever going to suggest that scheduling a TV channel is ever going to be cheap. But at the very least, the costs of doing so are predictable in advance. I’m not necessarily talking about costs of making, or buying in, programmes, but their transmission to the viewing public. Pick an hour of the peaktime BBC One schedules — any hour — and the costs of transmitting it are fairly constant. In contrast, if a programme is made available for streaming on the internet, the bandwidth costs ramp up with every user. When any video clip can be started and stopped at any time, the scalability becomes a real issue. Just take a look at YouTube — whose short, 10-minutes-or-less videos are about as far away from scheduled, linear television as it’s possible to get. Estimates vary about how much their monthly bandwidth bill is, but it’s in the region of US$1million every month. I haven’t seen any business analysis to refer to it yet, but I’m sure that this cost was an integral factor in the company’s recently announced decision to be taken over by Google, which has one of the largest network infrastructure setups in the world.

One way in which video-on-demand services cope with the bandwidth nightmare is to limit the quality of the video they transmit — a smaller video signal means less data to shove from end to end, so while bandwidth remains an issue, more viewers can be served. However, the quality limitations severely impinge on the viewers’ enjoyment of the service. That’s surely one reason why Virgin Mobile’s TV-to-mobile service (powered by BT Movio) is a linearly scheduled platform — with handsets picking up universally broadcast channels rather than the customised clips early 3G handsets tried to foist on a credulous audience.

Recently, a new form of TV via the internet has started to spring up. IPTV channels broadcast their show, or shows, on a fixed, linear schedule. While internet traffic means that there will still be some bandwidth scalability issues, the fact that everyone is watching the same thing at the same time allows for a much wider range of optimisation techniques to help reduce costs without compromising quality. A lot of these channels further reduce their costs by recording only a few hours’ worth of programming per day, and then running the show on a loop until the next instalment — a process that’s not unlike Sky Box Office, or the forthcoming Top Up TV Anytime, in which multiple start times compensate the viewer for the lack of true on-demand flexibility. But IPTV is still, at its core, a linear system.

Of course, any economic aspect has to bear in mind that, if there aren’t enough viewers, it becomes impractical to broadcast a linear stream to too few people — I can’t imagine too many advertisers going for that. And that’s where the real threat from non-linear video lies: good old competition for eyeballs — and if a linear channel can’t compete with that, then maybe it would deserve to die.

It’s a sad day for Coronation Street (Monday 7.30/8.30pm, ITV1), I say, a sad day! Everyone’s favourite butcher, Fred Elliott, walks down the aisle tonight, but he might not be walking back down as he ends up heading off to the great soap in the sky following a heart attack brought on by the stress of two women wanting his ample body. Granada has been very coy as to whether Fred sets his cap at his bride-to-be, Bev Unwin, or the scarlet woman, Audrey Roberts, so it’s best to tune in to see which ending the show favoured. Whatever the outcome, this is classic, epic Corrie, saying goodbye to much-loved character.

Following Graham Norton’s revelation that he once took drugs (no, really?), it might be worth tuning into Graham Norton’s Bigger Picture (Monday, 10.35pm, BBC1) to see if the wily scamp comes out with any pithy responses to his critics. Tonight’s guests are Dustin Hoffman and Joanna Lumley.

Finally for today, Life Begins (Monday, 9pm, ITV1) comes to a conclusion for this third series, and with rumours abound that Mike Bullen/Caroline Quentin don’t want to do any more, the big question is how will things be resolved? The show isn’t quite as good as it was, but it’s still head and shoulders above a lot of drama, and it would be shame not to see more of Quentin and Alexander Armstrong in two highly watchable roles.

After last week’s oversight on The Amazing Mrs Pritchard (Tuesday 9pm, BBC1) in the wake of our excitement over The Outsiders, we can whole-heartedly recommend this enjoyable bit of political fluff. It seems a bit silly for the newly elected PM to get cold feet when she realises how hard her job will be (well, duh!), but if she found it easy, what would be the point. Jane Horrocks’ turn here comes off as a little wispy, but the support is great (Janet McTeer, you rock!) and Mrs P passes an enjoyable hour.

Oh, and a couple of words on Trinny and Susannah Undress (Tuesday 8pm, ITV1). Couldn’t. Care. Less.

Finally caught up with the first episode of Lead Balloon, and am looking forward to this week’s immensely (Wednesday BBC4, 10.30pm). While Dee is essentially playing himself (or rather, his extended miserable stage persons) he does it very well, and you can’t help but like Rick Spleen, who this week is writing links for a DVD. There are lots of laugh out moments, and the support cast is uniformly brilliant. The first episode thoroughly deserved the distinction of securing BBC4’s highest ever rating for a comedy.

Oh, and just a couple of words on What Not To Wear (Thursday 8pm, BBC1). Couldn’t. Care. Less.

Although I do care about Extras (Thursday 9pm, BBC2), and this week’s could top all that came before, seeing Andy taking a role in a serious piece of theatre, directed by Ian McKellen. McKellen is always a good sport and will happily send himself up (we’ve all seen The Lord of the Rings), and with Mr Millman attempting to prove his acting credentials, the scope for some thesping tomfoolery is huge. Ricky, don’t let us down.

Shock of last week was catching the beginning of The Green, Green Grass (Friday 8.30pm, BBC1) and staying until the end. It felt confident and very sure of its identity, which is half the trick with a sit-com, and it has more than its fair share of good, solid one-liners. Nobody is more surprised than me by this turn of events. I’d just about dismissed the further adventures of Boycie and Marlene as a bit low-rent. Sometimes it shows how wrong you can be (and I still have my fingers crossed for Robin Hood).

Following The Green, Green Grass is the return of Have I Got News For You (Friday 9pm, BBC1), and you wonder when the show is going to run out of guest-presenters and just hire a regular for the gig (psst! Alexander Armstrong). Still, Gordon Ramsay should make a decent fist of the job, but expect the air to be blue with the bleeper!

I was sad to see the first episode of Not Going Out (Friday 9.30pm, BBC1) crash to a low rating as it wasn’t half bad, so I’m flagging it up here again. Perhaps a stronger lead-in from HIGNFY will help shore up the figures.

The latest advance in the user-generated content fad ‘revolution’ is on its way, as Fame TV has confirmed that it will launch next month on the Sky platform.

Billing itself as “the UK’s first user-generated TV channel”, the channel’s content will be originated from the videos sent in by users:

Fame TV aims to broadcast all video submissions live on air within 15 minutes of the user submitting the content. Viewers are invited to send in their own music selection which will play as the backing soundtrack to their clip during broadcast.

The public will have full control over what they see on screen and can vote via SMS for the clips they want to view. If a piece they don’t like is playing, they can vote it off screen in a matter of seconds and choose the next clip to air.

Each viewer may have their own signature tag that appears on screen every time they interact by SMS or MMS, allowing them to build their own interactive broadcast community and communicate with others while watching.

One can only hope that their website improves pre-launch: it looks like it’s been put together by someone who’s never done any web development before. Menus don’t work if you don’t use Javascript; the menus themselves are in the wrong position on the page if you use Firefox; it’s impossible to link to individual pages. And don’t even get me started about the appalling ignorance about how to use apostrophes (a pet hate of mine).

I may be wrong, but this project seems to me to be carrying all the hallmarks of a rushed attempt to leap on a bandwagon by people who don’t understand the concepts involved (as the references to “the en vogue website MySpace” betray). There may well be some genuinely innovative features planned for the new channel, but they’re going to have to be implemented well if they’re to work at all, and the website as it stands doesn’t exactly encourage.

I’m sure all regular TV Today readers were either out partying, or safely tucked up in bed, in the early hours of Saturday morning. In which case, you’ll have missed a three and a half minute montage of BBC1’s ‘rhythm and movement’ idents commemorating their permanent retirement.

Thankfully, an enterprising soul has uploaded the clip to YouTube:

The new idents made their debut on Saturday morning. You can view them in the BBC’s own video player — but you may just find this YouTube version easier to use (why is that TV companies are the worst for making accessible video on the internet?)

I have to admit, I’m not blown away by the new idents. Each seems to take an age to get going, and while undeniably well crafted, they all seem to lack passion. One of the reasons why BBC1’s dancers were so distinctive was that they made an immediate impression. I can’t really see anybody spoofing the new sets in the way that, say, E4 did with the dancers.

Saturday evening’s television schedule is making me very nervous. The line-up on BBC1 and ITV1 from about 7pm has big-hitters written all over them, and the resulting battle will have shutters being closed and worried mothers ushering their children indoors.

Of course, the big launch of the weekend is the first episode of the all-new Robin Hood (Saturday 7.05pm, BBC1), cooler, hipper and faster than all the other outlaws to rob from the rich and give to… oh, you get the idea.

With the hype attached to this by Auntie (they want it to ape the success of Doctor Who), Robin Hood has a lot to live up to. Sadly, it doesn’t quite have the chops. This first episode has a bizarrely ponderous pace, where it should have been sprinting for the finish from the first frame. There’s a distinct lack of action to speak of (there is not one iota of rich robbing or poor giving), and you have to question how Robin, Earl of Locksley, looks barely old enough to shave let alone having fought in the Crusades.

Sorry.

I’m willing to give this more time to bed in, but I fear the kids will be turning off before the half hour is up. Jonas Armstrong looks pretty, but he doesn’t have the presence to carry off the most famous of folk heroes, ending up like an ineffectual Gallagher brother scally. Things improve when Keith Allen turns up as the Sheriff, and along with Sam Troughton as Much, seems to be the only one who “gets” what he’s doing. I’ll give it one more episode, because there’s obviously a lot of energy and effort going into this, and it’s not irrevocably terrible… The jury is out in Nottingham.

Following this, one of the Beeb’s strongest properties for years, Strictly Come Dancing (Saturday 7.05pm, BBC1) steps into the ring. It’s business as usual, with Bruce and Tess in their usual places, guiding a mix of the great and good through their two-steps. Although it’s going up directly against the mammoth power of The X Factor (Saturday 6.10pm/8.30pm), these two shows have co-existed successfully for years, so the ratings should split quite nicely.

As usual, Ant and Dec are ordering their usual takeaway (Saturday 7.15pm, ITV1), so there is a huge amount of choice to ease us into the next few months of dark autumn weekends.

Just to reiterate that I really, really, really want Robin Hood to do well, and to that end, Jonathan Ross’s World of Robin Hood (Sunday 4.10pm, BBC1) might go someway to explaining the character’s enduring appeal through clips of the many incarnations the fella in Lincoln green has taken.

Birth Night – Live (Sunday 8pm, Five). First live, televised natural birth. Erm… do you need to know anything else? They have a two-hour window to get this one in the can, so let’s hope Junior doesn’t decide to stop off for a cuppa on the way. Probably too much bodily fluids on screen for my liking, but still, where would we be without Five? Probably best not to answer that.

After last week’s The Outsiders (no, that can of worms has been firmly placed at the back of the TV Today pantry next to the shelf marked ‘Rupert Grint’), another errant son of Walford strikes out with a new project. What We Did on Our Holiday (Sunday 9pm, ITV1) stars Shane Richie as Nick Taylor, taking his family, including ailing father Jim (Roger Lloyd Pack) on holiday to Malta. Richie fares better than Nigel Harman with this, and by picking a role so different to Alfie Moon, reminds a receptive audience that he’s actually a half-decent performer. What We Did on Our Holiday is by no means perfect, and suffers the usual pitfalls of some ITV drama, but neither is it terrible and worth it to see what else Mr R can do.

Christian O’Connell?!

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

I’ll have a vowel, and a consonant please Carol. What do they spell? NO!

Speaking of postcards [see blog below] those of you heading abroad for tours, shoots or shows, with a little time on your hands and a little cash in your pocket should take a look at the new series of Discovery Travel and Living show Mr & Mrs Smith, which is made by the people who do BBC3’s House of Tiny Tearaways Outline Productions.

Even if you are just taggin on an extra few days holiday after working or looking for a fun break, the programme leads you on a merry tour of some seriously lovely places to stay that are just bit different - so you’ll have a better story to tell than if you opt for the nearest multi-national chain, but without sacrificing the creature comforts.

In fact, even if you’re not heading oversees, just tune in for something a little bit more edgy, slick and easy on the eye than The Holiday Programme.

Now don’t say I told you but listen very carefully to tonight’s episode of Extras [Thursday October 5] and you might just hear something a little different to the usual theme for the ending credits. Not only does Chris Martin star in the show, he also sings the song Cat Stevens Tea for the Tillerman, but straing you ears even harder and you might just hear the dulcet tones of a pint-sized pop princess. Answers on a virtual postcard please…

In an attempt to erase the memory of The Outsiders (and yes, that is my last word on the subject), last night I watched five episodes from the seventh season of The West Wing straight through. After what could possibly have been one of the worst pieces of television in recent history, it was good to be reminded of what television production is capable of at its very best.

I love The West Wing, I have done with a passion for the last 8 years, hooked in from President Jed Bartlett’s first entrance at the end of episode one (and I challenge anybody to find a better first entrance for a TV character). The five episodes I watched last night mark the beginning of the end for this love affair, leaving me with five episodes remaining in the tip-top DVD box set.

But, my viewing of The West Wing is the first TV show that I’ve consumed in an increasingly common model of viewing. I can’t recall seeing an episode on transmission, whether Sky One (who premiered the first season in the UK), Channel 4, E4 or More 4. I first saw the series suspended in a metal tube over the Atlantic, and from there I sought out time-shifted recordings of season one from friends, and the remainder I have watched exclusively on DVD.

It seems we’ve arrived in an era where appointment TV, certainly in terms of drama, is a thing of the past. So many times I have tried to keep up with something, and then one missed episode leads to a shrug of the shoulders and the mantra: “Oh well, it’ll be out on DVD in a couple of months…”. In a world where I pay a TV licence fee, it seems odd that I’ll shell out 50 quid every six months or so to enjoy a show in its entirety if I forget to set the video. Such is life.

As for The West Wing, it seems fitting that as I come to the end of a truly rewarding television viewing experience, original series creator, Aaron Sorkin, is garnering positive word on his new NBC series, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Could it be that I have found a new love affair to fill the gap left by The West Wing?

You can find The West Wing Season 7 right here.

You know, it’s not long since ex-EastEnders hardman Nigel Harman told The Stage: “How can I put this politely? You’re not always guaranteed a good script at EastEnders. I’ve watched a couple of people deliver lines that were so spectacularly bad, so spectacularly well, it’s bowled me over.” One can only wonder what was running through his mind while filming last night’s The Outsiders, which contained some of the worst dialogue committed to videotape. Still, by some miracle, overnight viewing figures indicate it averaged slightly more viewers than BBC1’s offering, The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard.

Created by Mersey Television, best known for soaps Brookside, Hollyoaks and Grange Hill, The Outsiders was about a mysterious organisation that worked for the highest bidder, be it the British Government or the Vatican. Its operatives assume a series of false identities to achieve their goal — each of which are ridiculously paper thin. It’s quite appropriate really, as The Outsiders was quite clearly trying — and failing — to disguise itself as a British version of ABC’s Alias. Obscure religious, quasi-sci-fi McGuffin? Check. Organisation led by a mysterious seemingly-benevolent-but-menacing father figure? Check. Operative with flowing brown hair who has to spout meaningless technobabble in an attempt to sound like she knows what she’s talking about? Check. Black co-star who disappears for most of the episode? Check. (Colin Salmon, what were you thinking?)

Yet despite risible plot, trite script and wooden acting from all concerned (Harman in particular), The Outsiders still got more bums on sofas than The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard — an average of 4.7 million compared to Mrs. P’s 4.3m. Now, a small portion of the difference may be down to TV Today’s inexcusable oversight in not recommending the BBC1 drama in Monday’s Square Eyes, for which we’re naturally heartily sorry (but still, we did warn you then about The Outsiders’ “ham-fisted ineptitude on display in every facet of production”, so it’s your own fault if you tuned in).

Horrocks’ turn as a supermarket manager who stands as an independent MP in her own constituency, only to see the values she espouses sweep the nation to the point where her Purple Alliance actually wins the General Election, was as fantastical as Harman’s vehicle — but, despite that, maintained an air of believability throughout. Thanks to a combination of Sally Wainwright’s cracking dialogue, and sincere, grounded performances from the entire cast, The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard invited us to suspend just enough disbelief to be carried along by the story. Compare that with The Outsiders’ approach, which starts off with, ‘if you’ll believe that, you’ll believe anything’, and then proceed to test the theory to destruction.

Ratings-wise, there is consolation: during its 90 minutes, The Outsiders viewers hemorrhaged, from 5.1 million in the first 15 minutes to 3.8 million in its final quarter hour. In contrast, while Mrs. Pritchard started with fewer viewers, its numbers rose throughout the episode, reaching its peak in its closing 15 minutes at 4.4 million viewers.

With five more episodes to go, Mrs. Pritchard can hope to build upon that audience. One can only hope that The Outsiders doesn’t get the same opportunity.

After his fantastic turn last night on Celebrity Wife Swap, John McCririck’s services may be needed again by Channel 4 to give a run down of odds on who will succeed Des Lynam as the host of Countdown.

Personally, I’m a little flummoxed over the hoo-ha surrounding the appointment of Lynam’s successor. When Des took over, there was a certain trepidation. Richard Whitely was an original, a rare television one-off, and the prospect of replacing him naturally made people nervous. Now that Des has done the difficult bit and proved that Dictionary Corner won’t be condemned for some time, the identity of the presenter is neither here not there. The show will survive because it’s good.

And now we have talk of Carol Vorderman moving into the big chair, which would be folly, clearly. I know I just said that the identity of the presenter is a secondary concern, but there are some things that are sacrosanct. My one condition on the new presenter is that they have to be housewife crumpet, while also possessing a certain cache of cool with the disaffected youth who are home at 3.15pm of an afternoon. But then, Countdown not being on at 4pm still feels… wrong.

If you fancy a flutter on who will take over the hottest job in TV, the even money is on Eamonn Holmes, who certainly as that spry twinkle to carry the job off successfully, but might have a touch too much insincere smarm.

The current front-runners in the book being offered by Betfair as of 2pm today are:

Eamonn Holmes

Carol Vorderman

Noel Edmonds

Gyles Brandreth

Tom O’Connor

Tim Rice

Angus Deayton

Paul Merton

Philip Schofield

Trevor McDonald

Des O’Connor

Terry Wogan

TV Today’s money favours Terry Wogan, but that would involve gambling, which this esteemed portal would never encourage. Obviously.

Channel 4 has said:

“We are keen to hear from everyone who is interested.”

which just sounds like an invitation for silly season. I’d love to see Jade Goody’s interview for that one.

Actually, I think I’ll put a bet on John McCririck and the Booby to take over! Are there any other Countdown contenders out there we’d like to see in the hot seat?

Ever since I was a child I’ve always rather loved Sunday evenings at this time of year, curled up on the sofa in the snug warm watching one classic or another adapted for television in a whirl of fine costumery and heaving bosoms, while outside the nights draw in and a blustery autumn starts to bite. With this in mind, you could argue that I’m predisposed to waxing lyrical about the BBC’s latest adaptation of Jane Eyre but I really feel – and I do think anyone who has seen it would agree – the show has been remarkably well done, intelligent and beautifully stylised. This is a cut above the usual fare.

The nature of the narrative means there is little room for the celebrity cameos that have become the mode in recent times, a fact which demands that bit more from the lead performers, because for the most part the focus is on them. Luckily Ruth Wilson (despite looking so like a puzzled duck) and Toby Stephens shine in this production.

I’ve always thought of Jane Eyre, with its sometime reputation as a favourite among melancholic girls in late adolescence, as having pretty limited appeal, but for the past two weeks the silver fox, his exceptionally handsome kitten Bear, and I have settled down to watch the show like a bizarre but lovely nuclear family.

And I have to say I think the boys enjoy it just as much as I do (okay Bear mostly uses the time to sleep across us in his rather regal fashion, as if we only exist for his comfort, but he seems to appreciate the overall experience). The point I think is that the in the past four years its seems the folks over at the Beeb have managed to breathe new life into the period production genre, and so far, into each classic it tackles.

As I exclusively revealed earlier this year, Little Dorrit is the next literary classic in the pipeline, but word is the Beeb have big plans to do something a little different to the world of fairy stories too. For the full story and more from my column pick up a copy of The Stage on Thursday [October 5].

Who wants to bet on the success of the new series of Wife Swap (Monday 9pm, C4), launching with a dream of a celebrity teaming of Big Brother bully victim John McCririck and Edwina Currie? Certainly, the odds being offered on many tears before bedtime will be very good, and one can’t think of a more mismatched pair than the betting man’s betting man and racy Mrs Currie (just look at her list of conquests). While the best material comes from the McCririck household, Mrs M, otherwise known as “the Booby” may provide some surprises as she tends to the whims of the burly Mr Currie…

Of course, this week is all geared around a great TV event – Nigel Harman’s ITV debut in the supposedly knowing and quirky action pilot The Outsiders (Tuesday 9pm, ITV1). You can just hear the knives being sharpened by eager reviewers, keen to put the knife into Walford’s errant son, but Nigel Harman is the least of The Outsiders’ worries. He’s fairly woeful, naturally, as the reluctant secret agent who is pulled back in to work for the shadowy Minus 12 organisation, but that’s nothing compared to the ham-fisted ineptitude on display in every facet of production.

Producer of The Outsiders, Bill Boyes, opines in last week’s Radio Times that:

“we’re reinventing a British genre”

referring to the likes of The Persuaders or The Avengers. Those shows had style and wit, The Outsiders has less style and wit than Bernard Manning with piles.

I’d recommend staying for the mind-boggling seduction scene, which lasts for about 10 minutes and possesses some terrible dialogue anchored around how lobsters mate. In the 60s, when secret agents resigned, they got banged up in mysterious villages and kep prisoner. In 2006, they move to Cornwall and open a restaurant. I could pen an entire book on the many reasons why The Outsiders should never have seen the light of day, but that would be too easy. Spare a thought for Harman’s leading lady, Anna Madeley – she, at least, deserves much, much better than this tosh.

As an alternative to The Outsiders, check out The Unit (Tuesday 10pm, Bravo), starring 24’s Dennis Haysbert in a David Mamet scripted drama about a crack Special Forces unit. There, you see? It’s all going to be all right.

A curious oddity starring Jack Dee surfaces in the form of Lead Balloon (Wednesday 10.30pm BBC4). Dee, who serves as co-writer, plays a world-weary stand-up comic who manoeuvres his way through the world, always thwarted by the limitations of his own neuroses and misunderstanding. I’ve always thought Dee to be a fine actor (and his stand-up still manages to raise a chuckle), so it’s good to see him striking out into new territory. Naturally, the comparisons with Curb Your Enthusiasm are inevitable, but that might not be such a bad thing.

Last week’s Extras (Thursday 9pm BBC2) had me doubled over in laughter – it’ll take some effort to beat the sight of Diana Rigg with a condom dangling off her face – and this series has got better as it goes. Although I can’t get too excited at the prospect of Chris Martin popping up, it’s the prospect of Andy’s trip to the Baftas that will doubtless bear the fruit of comedy gold. With That Mitchell and Webb Look (Thursday 9.30pm, BBC2) following Gervais and friends, BBC2 is a consistent friend on Thursday nights.

Not Going Out (Friday 9.30pm, BBC1) brings another contender into the ring in the fight to revive the fortunes of the common or garden sitcom. Lee Mack teams up with Andrew Collins to write this very promising looking piece, with Mack taking the central role of slacker Lee. He can’t hold down a job, and his relationship with his foxy American flatmate, Kate, might be heading into unfamiliar territory (nudge-nudge, wink-wink). I have a good feeling about this – Collins has more experience as a writer than you might think, having served stints on the soaps and as writer of Grass – and Mack has a likeable everyman touch. One to watch. Erm… hopefully.