MasterChef Goes Large (Monday 6.30pm, BBC2)
Fantastic! One of the finest guiltiest pleasures on telly is back for its usual mammoth run of vicarious culinary entertainment. John Torode and Gregg Wallace aren’t so much good cop/bad cop in their often harsh judging, more bad cop, badder cop. Wallace is like Gollum on acid and Torode is a dead ringer for Dr Fox, but both are searingly entertaining, as is the show as a whole. Pity the poor cooks who are really thrown in at the deep end from the word go this time round. A special programme on the progress of last year’s finalists follows.
Life on Mars (Monday/Tuesday 10.30pm, BBC4)
Another chance to see the best TV show of 2006 before the second series kicks off next month. The return of Gene Hunt (aka the Gene Genie) – we can’t wait!
Five Days (Tuesday-Thursday 9pm, BBC1) (pictured)
Top drama from the BBC that has more than shades of those slick, tricksy dramas from across the pond in the 24/Murder One kind of mould. The five part series follows, much as it says on the tin, the five days of an investigation into the disappearance of a woman. But why is it being shown Tuesday-Thursday and not the more obvious Monday-Friday that the format of the series would fit so seamlessly? Thanks BBC for the bizarre scheduling. Let’s hope the audience don’t forget to come back next week, eh?
You Don’t Know You’re Born (Tuesday 9pm, ITV1)
Basically it’s Who Do You Think You Are? in all but name, just with a more ITV bias to its subjects, starting this week with Coronation Street’s Anne Kirkbride. The twist is that once the family tree has been explored a bit, our fearless subject tries their hand at some of the jobs the ancestors would have got down to. So, Anne Kirkbride. Ploughing a field. Too much like the ratings-grabber on the other side to be truly successful.
Battlestar Galactica (Tuesday 9pm, Sky One)
Best. Sci-fi. Series. On. The. Box.
Coronation Street (Wednesday, 7.30pm, ITV1)
Pick a day, any day for Corrie this week, and you’ll find drama and delights aplenty, mostly involving Tracy Barlow. Kate Ford keeps taking this once-maligned character to new heights of outrageous manipulation, but now Tracy’s brought down a peg or two as she spends her 30th birthday in the slammer. It’s all leading up to Charlie’s funeral on Friday, and that should be a doozy!
Skins (Thursday 10pm, E4)
It’s fast, it’s funny, it’s shocking, it’s sweary and it’s full of nudity. Well, what did you expect from the producers of Shameless in this drama about a group of wild teenagers. The revelation here is Nicholas Hoult as our main character, Tony. He’s the young lad who buddied up with Hugh Grant in About a Boy, and while good in that, he’s grown up into a stunning young actor. One to watch.
Man Stroke Woman (Thursday 10.30pm, BBC3)
Wash away the taste of the woeful Tittybangbang with the return of the best comedy sketch show of the recently harvested crop. This clever mix of running sight gags, wordplay and just very good line and length sketch writing puts it head and shoulders above the rest. It helps that the cast are superb, helped along by the always-welcome presence of Nick Frost at its centre.
Oh my good grief! Are you watching the same TV as me? Skins is absolutely, utterly, beyond comprhension, truly terrible! Everything about it is wrong... the writing, the acting, the pacing, the editing (which may have a bearing on why the actors timing seems so wrong... so I may have to give them the benefit of the doubt), the direction! It is stereotyical and predictable to say the least, but more than that it is lazy, on all accounts! I know that the actors are young and (perhaps) inexperienced but I don' t think that that is the problem.
And as for Man Stroke Woman... I haven't so much as raised a smirk! I think highly of most of the actors, but that is not enough for me to forgive this atrocity. The writing is poor, the jokes predictable, unfunny and smug. And this leads me to the acting. I have never watched a show that is so smug and self aware of their (apparent) humour. The gestures, voice inflections, hand gestures and 'mugging' are a very very poor man's Chandler Bing (and for that reason, horribly outdated!) If I have to watch one more over-exaggerated bewildered face coupled with an overused 'let me interupt you' or 'no, no, no,no let me explain myself' hand gesture repsonding to an idiotic lame 'what do you mean this is crazy, I am clearly normal and it is you who is deranged' punchline...then I will have to end it all in a blaze of glory during a blustery night in Vladivostock... that is the only way out.