TV OD

I've watched far too much tv this week, but it has been raining a lot - that's my excuse anyway!

Out with the old......
It's the last ever Friday Night With Jonathan Ross. Yeehah! Or Boooo? I stopped watching Ross regularly quite a while before the Russell Brand fiasco, which prompted an hilarious over reaction from the Daily Mail reading section of our sceptred isle - I mean nobody died ffs! My problem with Ross over his later years at the BBC was his refusal to act anything like his age, and his constant "I'm down with the kidz, look how cool I am" persona began to really grate. The man is now 49, and the enforced humility that came as a result of Russellgate was no bad thing and I hope he now realises that a soon to be 50 year old man cannot pretend he's 28 forever.
Over the years he has provided some good entertainment and no doubt will continue to do so. I won't wish him good luck, as he's had it all his working life. He did at least acknowledge that in his obviously unscripted and surprisingly humble farewell speech last night.
I hear he's off to ITV, and one wonders how his new show will differ from the increasingly tired chat show formula - we'll see.


...and in with the old......
The return of that old surreal chestnut Shooting Stars which well outstayed its welcome first time round is greeted with some trepidation by yours truly. When it started in 1993 (can't quite believe it was that long ago) it was like a bizarre thing from a parallel universe, like a collision between Charlie Chaplin and Spike Milligan on the set of Monty Python. By the time it finished 4 years later it was a tired old hag of a programme.
I've just watched the first episode of the new series and it made me laugh more than anything else I've watched this week including That Mitchell & Webb Look, which a couple of sketches apart, was a tad predictable. Team captain Jack Dee, called by Vic Reeves as having a "face like a needless comment" and "...like a scalded sea cadet" amongst other things plays up to his usual glum persona, and Ulrikakakaka is, well, Ulrikakakaka, still game for the required amount of sexually orientated mickey taking. There's a brilliant pisstake of Kerry Katona's Iceland ads, where at "Coldland" you can avail yourself of "sticky discs" topped with "hydrogenised tomato flavoured dust", "sticky potato pistols" and other delights.
Not sure about George Daws' replacement Angelos, but he might grow on me.
All the usual sketches remain - The Dove From Above, True or False ("T or F - nobody has ever slept with Dragon's Den panel member Deborah Meaden? False, it's just that she eats them all afterwards"), and the ritual humiliation for the winning team's nominee for the prize round. This time Hairy Biker Simon King is spanked by Bob Mortimer with an exhaust manifold.
So, nothing much different but it's still raises more laughs than the more conventional sketch shows which are all suffering from the law of diminishing returns at the moment. 3.5 out of 5!

More holes than Blackburn, Lancashire
Unusually for me I watched (or attempted to) a four part police drama shown over four consecutive days with B this week. BBC1 show "Silence" had a rather good premise - a troubled and completely deaf teenager witnesses a murder and struggles to come to terms with what she has seen.
Firstly I do not like this new trend of showing dramas over consecutive nights - do tv planners think we have now got such a low boredom threshold that we cannot retain information for more than 24 hours?
Now to the show itself. The first episode was not too bad to start with, showing us that Amelia (Genevieve Barr) is living with her adored uncle police inspector Jim (Douglas Henshall) and family. She witnesses the murder, but doesn't tell anyone for ages until she eventually tells her uncle. Ok, plausible so far. But then, he doesn't tell anyone either, and spends the rest of the first episode and most of the second trying to solve the case on his own.
The plot then meanders into dodgy drug deals and police corruption. There's a sub plot involving Jim's kids who are TEENAGERS who do DRUGS and get DRUNK and are soooo irritatingly self obssesed. When they get set up in a drugs bust by the corrupt coppers Jim is after you are supposed to feel sympathy but I let out an inner cheer! Serves the little bastards right.
By now there are so many holes in the main plot to do with ethics, standards, concealing evidence, etc, etc, that I lost interest. I won't even mention Amelia's unbelievably clueless and spineless parents! The third episode was on, but I found myself reading a book most of the way through it. Either Henshaw is not a very good actor or the script was so bad he over compensated BY SHOUTING ALL THE TIME. The lovely Dervla Kirwan was completely wasted in her role as a dippy-hippy mother. The only actor to come out with any credit was Genevieve Barr who was most convincing.
It was so poor I couldn't pluck up the resolve to watch the final episode. No doubt Amelia was either kidnapped or shot at (likely both), probably being rescued at the last minute by Jimbo, who was no doubt SHOUTING while crying!
All in all a waste of three hours - would have been four if I had stuck with it!