Inside the Mind of Paul Gascoine

Following in the footsteps of Rod Hull and Bernard Manning, this little documentary strand has proven to be a worthwhile exercise for the casual viewer. Read more

Dead Ringers

Somehow, this show still seems to work best on the radio… Read more

Big Brother

They’re rather enjoying their innovations at Big Brother headquarters this year. Lots of chins have been stroked and as a result, lots of viewers (not to mention a handful of housemates) have been left a touch confused. Read more

Big Brother

Desperation or a masterly piece of innovation? The jury would appear to be still deliberating, and it’s perhaps a bit soon to decide conclusively upon the effect of the “housemate swap” which occurred in Big Brother at the very end of the fourth week, but there’s no doubt it has re-wagged the tongues. Read more

Big Brother

The basic idea for the Big Brother vehicle is simple. Take a number of disparate individuals, bung them in a house with hundreds of cameras poking their lenses into every orifice and corner, let them live their lives by a small set of rules and see who the public finds the most watchable. Read more

Big Brother

Sissy Rooney, a mouthy and moody fashion designer from Liverpool, has just been evicted to a muted, though not hostile, response from the crowds outside the Big Brother house. Such an indifferent reaction from the baying fanatics perched against the cordons is indicative of how little BB4, and those taking part, has caught on thus far. Read more

Comedy Connections

In contrast to the recent abysmal chop-suey of “favourite clips” and the vapid wittering-on of Dawn French that was The Sitcom Story, BBC1 continues its Monday night post-news comedy slot with the rather better Comedy Connections. Read more

Spooks

“One day England will become the House of Islam …” Read more

Six Feet Under

For an hour on Sunday nights, Channel 4 gives those viewers endlessly fascinated by the habits and lifestyles of an eclectic bunch of characters an hour of sheer people watching bliss. It starts when Big Brother ends. Read more

Strange

Strange is certainly an odd beast. I liked the pilot episode. Or at least I think that I liked the pilot episode… No, I did, I liked the pilot episode. Parts of it anyway. Read more

Sportscene

There are occasions when a sporting event transcends the mere confines of the playing surface within which it is occurring, when it takes on a life of its own and becomes something else entirely. Read more

Cambridge Spies

Does it matter if a drama purporting to tell a true story becomes nothing more than the writer’s romantic supposition of what really happened? Not to the BBC, it would seem, on the basis of their four-part series Cambridge Spies. Read more

The Sitcom Story

A few years ago you couldn’t pick up a paper without someone announcing that the TV sitcom was dead, and that there hadn’t been a decent one for years. Read more

State of Play

The BBC announcer advised that State of Play would contain “strong language and a violent opening,” and to prove the point a petty thief is shot in the head in the opening few seconds, whilst a small child looks on. The assassin then goes at it to gun down a motorcyclist who witnessed the incident. Read more

The Day Britain Stopped

It was just one small, almost insignificant event. But it began a chain reaction that would cause a tenuous, intricate system, permanently balanced on a knife-edge, to collapse with tremendous speed. Read more

Vote 2003

Rarely had David Dimbleby been faced by so much commotion during the first 15 minutes of a local election results programme. Seconds before coming on air, the out-of-the-hat resignation of Tory Trade Spokesman Crispin Blunt had handed him his very own breaking story. Read more

Gash

“So what about that SARS then, eh?” Well, that’s not quite how Armando Iannucci kicked off the first episode of Channel 4′s new late night topical revue, Gash, but it was as near as damn it. Read more

Double Take

In a recent interview to promote the series, Double Take creator Alison Jackson claimed the show dealt with “our fixation with celebrity and celebrity culture, and how we tend to believe in things through a set of images, rather than knowing the real situation… I’m interested in the fantasies we build up in our minds, and think are true.” Read more

The Murder Game

After a shaky start where not even the contestants seemed clear what kind of game show they’d strayed into, The Murder Game has settled down into a finely judged mix of modest excitement and carefully controlled conspiracy. Read more

Top of the Pops

No matter how many times the BBC might tell you otherwise, the sad fact is that Top of the Pops doesn’t matter as much as it used to. Read more

« Previous Page — Next Page »