Götterdämmerung

Okay, if it’s rude to point, it’s thoroughly bad form to nitpick when productions of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen appear on mainstream terrestrial TV every decade and a half. Whoever sweated blood to get Keith Warner’s Royal Opera House production of the whole 15-hour marathon on the box deserves a medal. But … if you stick it on TV, it had better be good. Read more

Comic Relief Night

Like smoking, photos of journalists speaking into a telephone, and speeded-up footage of trains running from London to Brighton, Lenny Henry is something you don’t see much on TV anymore. Read more

Blair: The Inside Story

Much as how an entire generation of people grew up under Mrs Thatcher, so an entire generation has grown wise under the present prime minister. Read more

“Chicken, noodles and… lemon curd?”

The 21st century MasterChef is the first cookery programme on television I’ve ever liked. It’s informal, competitive and doesn’t have Loyd Grossman sniffing near the saucepans. Read more

Identity theft?

I quite like the new BBC2 idents, but does anybody else think that they seem to have taken their lead from the impressive Channel 4 ones?

“I think something should go wrong with May’s air conditioning…”

I can already guess just how much sanctimonious, over-sensitive complaining will have hit the BBC Duty Log over the last 12 hours or so since the latest episode of Top Gear aired on BBC2. Read more

Party Animals

Programmes that purport to “lift the lid” on certain professions consider there is always something worth lifting the lid for. Read more

The Magic of Swan Lake

Tonight’s television was a bonanza for lovers of the extravagantly beautiful. Now there’s something rarely said about terrestrial TV, but it was (mostly) true. Read more

Ski Sunday

This may be one of the saddest confessions you have ever heard (no, really) but Ski Sunday changed my life. Read more

“A certain sense of normality”

And so my slight Louis Theroux thread continues. This weekend I watched a preview copy of his new documentary,Louis Theroux – Gambling in Las Vegas. It’s going to be on BBC2 sometime w/c 3 February. Read more

This Life + 10

Almost without exception the press hated this belated Christmas present from BBC2. The depth of their fervour was inversely proportional to the height of expectation the self-same newspapers had whipped up prior to the programme’s transmission. Most critics sounded as if they had been let down by the show, and wrote as if they had somehow been betrayed for previously speaking out so positively. Read more

It Started With Swap Shop

In 1996, the BBC’s Saturday morning kids shows were still hugely popular and prestigious programmes, watched by children and adults alike. Read more

“Remember, it’s 01 if you’re outside London”

It took a bloody age to get into the studio, but once I was there, it was great. Clapping eyes on the obligatory studio set recreation, and an audience clad in brightly coloured plastic hats… well, it was almost a religious experience.  Read more

Who’s a Hero two

Well in an update to my earlier post, it now appears that BBC2 are going to be screening Heroes next year. This of course is great news (although I wonder where they’ll schedule it), and having now watched the first nine episodes, I am still proclaiming this to be the best thing on telly in ages (albeit ep six is a bit dull).

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

This Life’s farewell tour

The Independent have a detailed report from the set of the new episode of This Life which they’re suggesting will be broadcast at Christmas time. Annoyingly, it’s very spoilery, and the kind of thing you’d want to save until you’ve seen the episode so that everything is a surprise - as I suggested here part of the fun of the episode will be discovering what has happened the gang since the mid-’90s. But if you cover up the first column, the second is a good discussion of the flavour of the new episode if not the details and why now seemed like the right time [via].

Suez: A Very British Crisis

Given our accelerating obsession with media and pop culture trivia, it’s conceivable that in 50 years time school history lessons will concentrate more on the succession of the Foxes than the ramifications of the Suez crisis. Read more

“No procedure anymore – it’s a fucking disgrace!”

That’s less than five minutes in to episode one of Torchwood.

Raymond Baxter: Gentleman and Broadcaster

Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be. I mean, for a start, there wasn’t a sign of Stuart Maconie on this compelling half-hour of TV that did exactly what the medium was meant to do when its subject Raymond Baxter and his mellifluous port-and-stilton baritone were royalty – ie. it informed, it amused and it entertained. Read more

Twowood

In fact - Mr Chris Orton - as per the confirmed TV schedules this lunchtime, Torchwood is not being simulcast on BBC1 and 3, it’s being repeated later in the week on BBC2 on Wednesday at 9pm, when two episodes will be going out back-to-back.

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