Who’s a Hero now?

Not sure if this is confirmed or not yet, but it would appear that Christopher Eccleston is to join the cast of NBC’s new Lost beater - Heroes. If this news is true, then you have to conclude that it’s going to be a real waste if Heroes ends up on the Sci-Fi channel (which is supposedly bringing it to UK screens next year). After all, with repeats of The Tomorrow People and Quatermass excepted, the Sci-Fi channel has remained one of the last ports of call on most people’s remote controls. Read more

Torchwouldn’t do that in real life

Watching the third episode of Torchwood, things were rolling along quite merrily for me until the moment when Gwen decides to take that week’s alien gizmo home. For some reason I couldn’t get past this point – the same thing had happened during episode one. Read more

Nigel Kneale, RIP

OTT was very sad to learn of the death of one of television’s true greats – Nigel Kneale. Three years ago this month, we were lucky enough to run an interview with the man himself, and I was particularly lucky in that it was me putting the questions to him. All of this came about when our friends at BBC4′s Timeshift contacted us to let us know they had a documentary on his life and times in the works. Being the impudent souls we are, we harassed Timeshift‘s Tom Ware into agreeing to take part in an interview with us. But in the course of our finagling, Tom let it be known Kneale himself might even spare us a few minutes for a chat over the telephone. Read more

Cracker

As Jimmy McGovern himself attests Cracker‘s always been about big issues: rape, racism and miscarriages of justice, and although the subject of pensions had provoked his ire enough to warrant the full Cracker treatment, he knew it just wasn’t the kind of story that would draw Fitz back from his largely reformed life in Australia. Read more

This is your golden day

With news that ITV are bringing back Mr and Mrs (one hopes that this time they will at least do it straight rather than try and post-modernise it ala the ill-fated Julian Clary relaunch), I am left scratching my head as to when these TV execs will finally get round to relaunching The Golden Shot. This was without a doubt the highlight of Ant and Dec’s Gameshow Marathon, and was to my mind the most obvious contender out of all the shows featured for a new series. Read more

Doctor Who

So was there a dry eye in your house? Read more

Footballers’ ex-Wives

So ITV has announced it’s cancelling Footballer’s Wives and this correspondent for one, won’t be sad to see it go. Happily, in recent years some of the more voluble self-satisfied “guilty pleasure” rumblings from columnists has died down, but surely this was the most irritatingly covered television programmes in recent years? Read more

The Apprentice

In a quiet episode, it was apt that it was the quiet man who finally got the chop. Read more

When is the end of your schtick, Vic?

There has been heated debate on internet forums this week regarding the BBC3 programme When Comedy Changed Forever. This one-off, 60 minuter put forward the thesis that modern television comedy owes an enormous debt to Vic Reeves Big Night Out. Taking this assumption as its intellectual starting point, the rest of the programme was then bolted round the idea, and presented to us via some ugly graphics that were meant to denote the different ages of TV comedy as distinct geographical locations. The upshot was – a clip of Ben Elton being obsequious to Geoffery Archer on an episode of Wogan aside – there wasn’t really much of interest in the programme and its whole point came across a little spurious. Read more

“I had, I had”

Having watched Our Friends in the North again over the New Year, a suspicion that had been growing since Christmas time was finally confirmed; namely, that Christopher Eccleston isn’t actually that good an actor, is he? Admittedly, he does a nice line in passionate anger, but he can’t do the small things, like eat a packet of crisps, with any conviction. Read more

“Jodie, Jodie, just listen to him, listen to him”

I know I am swimming against the tide here, but I actually think this year’s Celebrity Big Brother is turning into an interesting exercise and a worthwhile (if at times very difficult) viewing experience. Read more

“Are you ready to make a full disclosure?”

After waiting about eight years, today in WH Smith – quite by surprise – I stumbled across a DVD release of the 1997 BBC drama Holding On. Read more

2005

Too much of anything is bad for you, as Stephen Fry once thundered, because that’s precisely what too much means: a quantity which is excessive. Too much water would be bad for you, because it would be too much. Fact. Read more

Doctor Who

So “The Christmas Invasion” then. Perhaps the only episode of Doctor Who in the last 20 or so years not designed to stand up to the rigours of the home video (let alone DVD recorder with hard drive) age – and that’s possibly as it should be. Read more

“My special listening device”

So in five minutes time it’ll be the third edition of Space Cadets, and really what has happened over the preceding 120 minutes? Read more

“I see… well I see something”

Last night was perhaps the best line-up of programmes we’ve ever had on BBC4 (stuff about old telly notwithstanding). Read more

Is it genius? Is it Suffolk

Surely the biggest problem with Space Cadets is not the fact that it is a hoax, but rather that it will be Johnny Vaughan’s smug chops revealing the truth to the bogus astronauts (should any of them remain untwigged)? Read more

Afterlife

Broadcasting a drama serial which deals with issues of psychology and paranormal in primetime Saturday night deserves brownie points. Read more

Doctor Who

If you still required irrefutable evidence that the programme you had been watching for the last 13 weeks was indeed Doctor Who, then there it was as the ninth Doctor breathed his last and turned into Doctor number 10. Read more

2004

A hefty dose of press coverage levelling the charge that British television had slumped into crisis saw out 2004, with frenzied headlines, thick black borders and doom-laden think pieces a-plenty. But had things really become that bad? Had we been wrong to enjoy most of what we watched on telly the past 12 months? Read more

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