Ruth Watson

Alex Polizzi

Having presented three series of The Hotel Inspector for Five, in 2007 Watson quit the channel and signed a two-year deal with C4. The first fruit of this new partnership was 2008′s Hotel Inspector-alike, Country House Rescue.

Now the channel has announced Watson is to front Hotel SOS in which she uses “her expertise to transform the efforts of new hoteliers as they embark on setting up on their own” according to a press release from the channel.

It continues…

Famed for her sharp eye and attention to detail when it comes to perfecting hotel experiences, Ruth is determined to open the eyes of the six couples who all feel that running a hotel or B&B will be a piece of cake. Determined to shape the novices into professional hoteliers, Ruth visits and assesses each project, and in an effort to improve their plans sends the proprietors to Hotel Bootcamp at some of the UK’s top hotels to learn how the best in the business have earned their reputation.

For Ruth, the principles of a good hotel stay are the same regardless how big or small the business: a warm welcome, absolute cleanliness and a comfortable bed…

But upon meeting the six projects and their owners she soon realises she has her work cut out. From a run down 32-bedroom hotel in Blackpool taken on by two brothers, to a couple wishing to create a boutique B&B in Margate with a property they purchased at the height of the property boom, the problems and battles Ruth faces seem insurmountable.

Can she convince the owners round to her way of thinking? And will their new business ventures be the success they hope for?

Meanwhile, The Hotel Inspector continues in fine form on Monday nights on Five, now fronted by Alex Polizzi.

Trisha Goddard

Here’s how the channel announced the news today…

The Trisha Goddard show will not return to Five after its current run finishes later in 2009, it was announced today, (FRI).

After more than four years of production for the channel, Five has taken the difficult decision to not renew the contract with production company Town House TV.

Dawn Airey, Five’s Chair and CEO said: “Trisha Goddard has been a tremendous asset to Five’s daytime schedule. I want to thank Trisha and the production team for their years of dedication and hard work.

“It is with great sadness and regret that we’ve come to this conclusion, but in the present economic climate, it feels like the right time to go our separate ways. We are currently reviewing all our business practices and contracts and need to focus our resources on the most commercially critical parts of the schedule.”

Trisha Goddard said: “I have enjoyed my time at Five but I look forward to exciting new challenges ahead.”

Lex Shrapnel and Shane Richie

The revived series, starring Shane Richie as Archie Daley (nephew of Arthur) and Lex Shrapnel in the title role, is due to hit screens in February. And singing that iconic theme tune – first made famous by the memorably named Dennis Waterman and the Dennis Waterman Band – are Glaswegian band, Attic Lights.

“We wanted to use the original theme tune to show that the roots of the new series are very much set in the original, but it needed to be updated for modern times,” commented series producer Sean O’Connor.  “Attic Lights are a fantastic new band, who have hit just the right note with the new theme.  Minder is one of the British comedy drama greats, and we want to satisfy fans of the early series, but have also added different elements this time round to excite new viewers.”

So, what do you think of the new theme? So good for you? Or so bad? Check it out here.

Every Friday the broadcaster sends out a PDF with forward-planning programme information to the listing magazines. And yesterday, said info was adorned with what appears to be a new logo for the channel.

Out with the old?

And in with the new?

The current “five” (above, left) debuted in September 2002, at a point when the network was busy disposing of some of the series that had most defined its first five years in existence. With Dawn Airey’s return imminent, does this new, upper-case effort mark another scheduling spruce-up? Or, er, just a snazzy new logo for its forward-planning documents?

Such a show is Behind Closed Doors, which offers a televisual look at buildings not normally seen on the tourist map; where free-ranging, burly, security guards roam, prowling the jungle to stop gazelle-like visitors viewing the open plains.

Five, in trying to pep up its daytime schedule, have succeeded in both finding a new star and an opportunistic programme with an endless source of interest. Charlie Luxton is our guide through this terrain, and he doffs his safari urbanite hat while swashbuckling through the barbed wire forest and concrete cancer jungle.

The show starts with triumphant music, and images of power and force, such as the Palace of Westminster and the Liver Building – icons from the days before MDF and soft furnishing. Glowing oak and shiny brass are the order of the day here.

Today’s episode first touches upon a modern housing estate in Dollis Hill, North London. During the war, a secret base for Winston Churchill’s cabinet was established on the site, and from 1940 to 1943 the place snaked its way into the community from the offspring of the old Bakerloo branch – the tree of government growing among suburbia. As we delve deeper,  Charlie’s childlike enthusiasm is apparent – like an evacuee from the old smoke visiting the country for the first time.

After a quick sabbatical back to the modern world, we are then whisked away to Manchester to peruse its town hall, which has been featured in many a TV programme, such as Sherlock Holmes and The Forsyte Saga. It’s only when Charlie gets into the innards of the building his exuberance shines again, staring in awe at the vastness which appears before him. The Great Hall calls him to venture ever onward.

Finally, he arrives at the masterpiece of the clock tower. “The Victorians thought they could control anything they wanted… Even time,” Charlie comments.

It is a shame that during this episode they try to do too much, making the programme feel squashed like St Paul’s in modern day London. Nonetheless, Charlie Luxton – like Dan Cruickshank and Jeremy Clarkson before him – is a modern day orator with a focus on entertaining and outspoken views. Surely he’ll soon make the jump to prime time and, along the way, conquer the mountains of buildings our country bounds up with life.

Alex Polizzi

The series returns this Thursday at 8pm – but with a significant change. Original inspector Ruth Watson has checked out – she’s off to C4 for a series about failing country homes. Thus we usher in Alex Polizzi, daughter of hotelier Olga Polizzi, and granddaughter of Lord Forte, of the legendary Trust House hotel chain.

And all of that is good, but is Alex fit to take over from Ruth? Having watched a preview disc of this week’s opener – in which she visits what’s purportedly the oldest hotel in Wales – I’m happy to say she is. Less shrill than Ruth, and at times more empathetic (rolling up her sleeves and helping an over-worked hotelier clear down after breakfast), she’s perhaps even more sure of herself than her predecessor. And – here comes that cliche – she doesn’t mince her words. “I like you as people,” she informs this week’s struggling owners, “but I have to tell you, you offend every hoteling instinct that I have. I’m horrified at your arrogance in thinking that you can do this with so little knowledge. Because if this was my hotel, I promise you, I would have a fucking nervous breakdown.”

A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to have a chat with Alex.

“I’m very straightforward,’ she said, “And a bit more hands on than Ruth. I like rolling up my sleeves and mucking in.”

She continued: “I try and bear in mind that however crap I think some of the hoteliers in the show are, this is their livelihood they’ve got on the line. So I do try to be sympathetic – but I have had to deal with some complete loons! I tell them that openly to their faces, so it’s not like I’m saying anything behind their backs.”

And she sums up her role in the programme quite succinctly. “Sometimes I do feel like I’m quite a big hammer, brought in to straighten a pathetic nail.” Nail it, she does.

American TV does this in a way few contemporary British shows can. Its comedy series have an almost blissful disposability and weightlessness that, unlike their UK counterparts, don’t involve shoddy production, dishevelled plotting or lazy characterisation.

Quite the reverse, in fact. Shows about nothing will often have everything going for them. Seinfeld was one; Frasier another. Curb Your Enthusiasm and Scrubs are continuing the pattern. There’s almost a history in the States for comedies that marry cleverness with buoyancy, which don’t presume to do anything but entertain, yet respect the viewer enough to do so with spark and professionalism.

Watching a decent US sitcom is akin to cleansing your palate of any grit and stodge built up from a diet of too much overblown, underdone home-grown television. The ideal show arrives, does it business then takes its leave. It has the courtesy to, if not always make you laugh, then at least carry itself with style. You switch off having felt flattered, not lectured. And you know you’ll be back for more.

30 Rock, excitingly, looks like being the latest of its kind to tick all these boxes. Set behind the scenes of a fictional Friday night live variety show, it shares a near-identical premise with Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Indeed, both series debuted in America at almost exactly the same time. But that, fortunately, is where the comparisons end.

For there is no earnest proselytising or clever-clever wordplay or tedious self-analysis here. Neither are there torturous attempts to both celebrate and denigrate the television industry simultaneously. Rather, 30 Rock – named after the address of NBC, 30 Rockefeller Plaza – spins stories, boasts plausible characters and knows how to tell a good joke. It satirises the minutiae of American showbusiness in such an open-minded way as to seem enlightening to the most parochial of Britons. Plus it’s half the running time of Studio 60. And has twice as many laughs.

To convince the viewer of all this in just one episode is no mean feat. But to do so in the pilot episode alone – well, that deserves an even bigger doff of the hat. And a particularly recalcitrant British bowler to boot.

The magic seemed to work from the very start. Cameras swooping down the streets of New York, arcane 1950s-esque Americana music playing, a distinctly normal-looking woman arguing about queue etiquette by a hot dog stand, a hubbub of pedants taking sides over who was right or wrong … Sure, it may well have been brainstormed and rewritten and amended and edited by a battery of producers over a matter of months, even years, but it worked. You were sold, instantly.

The woman in question turned out to be Liz Lemon, head writer on The Girlie Show, NBC’s weekend curtain raiser and your average (to an Englishman’s eyes) satirical revue. As her day continued, Liz – hugely likeable, unashamedly knowing and dependably harassed – was shown dealing with self-obsessed stars, self-promoting writers and self-motivated superiors. In short, a building entirely stocked up with sitcom gold.

Central to her extraordinary world was a supremely ordinary crisis: the arrival of a new boss. A deeply familiar comic scenario, yes; but one handled here with champion freshness and spirit.

The sparring between Liz, played by the show’s creator and main writer Tina Fey, and her new overlord, Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin), was the episode’s all-important backbone. He wanted to “retool” The Girlie Show around a wise-talking black comic he’d met on a plane. She was horrified. He observed she had “the boldness of a much younger woman”. She refused to don his choice of clothing, claiming it made her look like “the President of the Philippines”. He ordered her to have lunch with his new choice of star. She ended up sidetracked into visiting a ludicrously stereotyped strip club populated by ludicrously stereotyped black punters and desperately giving money to the female performers “for computer classes”.

Somehow everyone made it back to the studio in time for transmission. Jack’s protégé, Tracy Jordan, inevitably ended up stealing the show. The audience went wild. The rest of the cast fumed. Liz threw a plastic bottle at Jack. The stage was set for a showdown … and the credits rolled.

Baldwin was splendid as the husky-voiced, melodramatic, second-guessing schmooze. This role should see him good for a few years. Tracy Morgan as Tracy Jordan appears to be making a decent enough job of parodying a parody: normally something to be avoided at all costs. And Tina Fey is simply a revelation. It’s such a relief to watch an American sitcom and not find a leading lady who is sassy, blousy, the stooge or just thick.

It was unsubtle. It was, at times, crude. It wasn’t an even ride to the end. Yet even before 30 Rock was over you knew this was a programme you were happy to be with. Better still, you knew there were another 20 episodes queued up behind it, waiting to be with you in return.

Which is an obvious statement, perhaps, but curiously reassuring. It comes back to the way American television flatters you in a manner quite unlike anything produced here. Rarely do quantity and quality enjoy parity this side of the Atlantic. Over there, it’s a given. It might mean two-dozen episodes of unremitting schlock. It might mean two-dozen episodes of unrelenting gold. But you get your fill either way. And in the case of 30 Rock, that’s a reason for unconfined joy.

“Protestors are not backing down on their stance against the controversial Californication TV series, with dozens of demonstrators still gathering for weekly vigils. Demonstrators have been gathering outside Channel 10’s Sydney studios every Monday night, when the program is broadcast to a massive audience around Australia. Last night, protesters held candles outside the studios while saying prayers and singing hymns for anyone watching the show.”

So, we’ve got Britain’s Extraordinary Ten-Year-Olds (“Three amazing children who’ve triumphed over adversity”); a special edition of The Wright Stuff celebrating the channel (that’s a bit more like it!); Gordon Brown Meets the Ten-Year-Olds (the Chancellor of the Exchequer quizzed by kids); The Ten Demandments (10-year-old Abby swaps places with her parents in a one-off reality-type thing) and I Blame the Spice Girls (Liza Tarbuck chairing a one-off comedy panel show, looking back over the last decade).

I’m not sure what’s happened to five, from the modern and mainstream, to the football and fucking, to awards at the Edinburgh Television Festival, to … irrelevance. In the last few years, it feels like the channel’s just given up, particularly now none of its programmes are aggressively promoted (even something like the Eddie Izzard drama Kitchen was allowed to slip quietly into the schedules). 

So, what would be the essential five programmes from its first decade? Family Affairs, The Mole, Bring Me The Head of Light Entertainment, How Not to Decorate, The House Doctor, Jail Break and, er, Touch the Truck. Am I missing anything?

As anyone who’s seen shirtless Newcastle supporters on a winter evening at St James’ Park will testify, Geordie men are made of hardy stock.

But the macho bravado of Toon Army members pales in comparison to the actions of Geordie underworld veteran Paddy Conroy, the first figure profiled in MacIntyre’s Underworld.

Out on license from an 11-year jail sentence for torture, kidnapping and escape, Conroy’s conditional release is complicated by a rival gangland family taking out a contract on his life. His re-appearance at a time of turf warfare between rival outfits threatens to worsen the fragile balance of power, due to his stated aim to re-establish his profile and reputation within the criminal fraternity.

Although now middle-aged and resembling a leaner Geoffrey Hughes, his eye patch (worn due to his eye haemorrhaging as a result of prison staff delaying necessary treatment for cataracts – or so he alleges) is a permanent reminder of the brigandish nature of his lifestyle.

The show starts with Paddy playing daddy to his two sons, Buster, 11, and Jack, 1. Long-suffering wife of 30 years Maureen also features in this homely sequence. However, as the couple recount the tale of how they met, it’s further evidence of the roughness of their environment. Conroy used to mug Maureen and steal her pocket money; unsurprisingly, she didn’t fancy a date with him when he asked. But Paddy wouldn’t take no for an answer and one day, in his own words, he “grabbed her by the hair and took her home … You think I’m jokin’, don’t ya!”.

Maureen’s expression indicated he wasn’t.

Conroy’s father ran a criminal enterprise in which Paddy served his apprenticeship and would later inherit. This provides some insight into his almost nostalgic view of historic criminality. Of his youth he states that “the villain was just a part of life in those days, especially from the more deprived areas. It wasn’t considered a bad thing unless you did bad villainy, immoral things”. Conroy makes a distinction between “gangsters” and villains. To him, a villain is just a product of his environment and upbringing, whereas “a gangster lives in a world of his own, an imaginary world”.

Conroy denies MacIntrye’s contention he might be perceived as a dangerous man (“I don’t think so – if you don’t have problems with me. But if you come attack us, then I’ll be a dangerous man”), and understands the current underworld difficulties as resulting from the new breed – those operating outside accepted criminal codes: “There’s loads of families from our sort of background who are good people, but you get families who are villains with no morals and not fit to walk this fookin’ Earth!”

Paddy considers himself a protector in the local community, and it says much for his standing (or, perhaps, the fear he inspired) that when he was jailed for violence against the police in the 1980s, thousands of people demonstrated on the streets for his release. Right-hand man Bullock even went to the extreme of climbing to the top of the Tyne Bridge to protest, but only managed four hours because “it was cold – freezing, proper freezing”. Conroy chides Bullock for not staying up there longer, although the latter defends himself by saying, “Well, it wasn’t planned properly. Next time I’ll take a sleeping bag and a flask!”

But despite Conroy’s bravado and criminal heritage, he’s clearly feeling the pressure of the license conditions and the price on his head. He wears a bullet proof vest in public, and his associates constantly monitor his surroundings. When the security lapses, as happens when Conroy returns from a night at the track, he starts to panic. After shouting, “Where the fook are ya?” repeatedly into his phone, he skulks in the lobby until his driver turns up, greeting him with, “Cunt! You cunt!”, before berating him further off mic.

Unable to retaliate in the way he had before his sentence, Conroy employs various means to deal with the tension, such as escaping to his country getaway 30 miles outside Newcastle. On his allotment he grows vegetables, and to MacIntyre’s surprise is particularly proud of the trophies he’s won for his prize leeks.

But even in his hideaway he has to be careful of his activities. As an example, his lifetime ban from using firearms means even a spot of rabbit hunting would result in an infringement of his license terms.

As Bullock, MacIntyre and Conroy chat in a shed, two associates bring in a couple of rabbits they’ve shot, and Bullock guts them by the riverbank. The shots of his handiwork are intercut with MacIntyre asking Paddy if he’s religious (he’s not) and whether he thinks he’s going to heaven (he does). To those who reckon he’s going to hell he retorts, “They can think what they like – it’s between me and the big fella!”

Conroy also uses other methods to relax, having smoked cannabis since he was 16. The green-fingered approach he uses on his leeks also applies to his cannabinoids (“Better to grow your own. See that: it’s fookin’ organic!”).

But the cannabis and leeks are insufficient to keep his ferocity in check. When his family plot in the local cemetery was desecrated in 1994 by a rival gang, his inability to tolerate any affront to his reputation or control his anger led to him committing the acts that resulted in his 11-year sentence.

Billy Collier, a criminal who worked for a rival family, was allegedly heard boasting in a local pub he’d been paid £5,000 to dig up the grave, chop parts of the body up and put them through Conroy’s window. After that, it was only a matter of time before Paddy and his henchmen exacted their revenge.

While the pain felt by Conroy is understandable – with him unable to hold back tears as he recounts the story – the retaliation he had planned for those alleged to be responsible is chilling, issuing his threat head-on to the camera: “I would have killed the whole family. All their loved ones. I would have murdered every single one of them if any of them had done that to my family”.

Within days, with only the digging up the grave part of the alleged plan carried out, Collier was kidnapped at gunpoint from a local shop and tortured. He was abandoned in a warehouse by his attackers after having his teeth pulled out with pliers. Conroy denies being behind the amateur dentistry (“I just beat him up. Hit him with a stick, pool cues, hit him with a gas bottle. He got a beating but not a great beating”), but admits to driving him 400 yards and leaving him at the location where his teeth would be torn out.

Conroy was arrested, but managed to escape en route to court, and was on the run overseas before being caught by Interpol. Security was much tougher on his return: to be on the safe side, a 17 vehicle convoy, aeroplane, helicopter, snipers and a gunboat made sure he kept his court appearance.

However, his holidays in the sun did nothing to moderate his temperament, and Conroy cracked under pressure in court, attacking the prosecuting lawyer. As a result he was dragged out past the jury by four prison officers, which, as Conroy concedes, “didn’t help” his innocent plea. He was found guilty on all charges and sentenced to 11 years, although Maureen continues to accept Paddy’s version of the attack on Billy Collier.

Conroy struggles to process the changes made in the Newcastle landscape in the decade of his incarceration, and also finds unfamiliar the spectacle of a new godfather (John Henry Sayers) controlling his former patch (“They say they run Newcastle, but no one fookin rules me”). With the old-skool underworld against him, Paddy is forced to make new alliances with local Triad gangs (the “new breed” which he had earlier railed against), and not without reason. A confrontation with 14 members of the Sayers gang led to Paddy having to endure a severe beating, in the knowledge that to fight back could have resulted in his death, and to involve the police (strictly against his criminal code) would have meant he’d contravened his license conditions.

The ongoing feuds and precarious situation cause Paddy to worry about his eldest son Buster, (“One day you will be the bossman”) and that he’ll inherit the internecine feuds in the same way he did from his own father. Buster is only now realising the extent of his father’s criminal lifestyle. His copy of Zoo magazine shows a pixellated snapshot of dad alongside a cover feature on “Britain’s deadliest gangs” (“Meet the men who run YOUR manor”). This side of his father he finds hard to understand, with the additional implications of what it means for his own future.

One reason for Buster’s concern over his family’s criminal heritage may be the example of his cousin Dylan, who at 22 has already been jailed four times. Despite Paddy’s assertion that he’s a “good lad in general, just bored”, Dylan is back in jail within four days of being released from his latest sentence after brandishing two sawn-off shotguns.

Yet despite having a clear understanding of the reality of prison life (“Everyone in there is depressed – whole prisons suffer from depression”), Paddy risks his license conditions being invoked after an unnecessary run-in with the police. During a raid on his sister’s house he allows himself to be drawn into a verbal confrontation with an officer and is charged with a public order offence. Unwilling to face court proceedings, Conroy goes on the run again, despite the knowledge he risks a heavier sentence as a consequence. However, this proves to be unnecessary, and somewhat farcical, as his 72-day period in hiding turns out to be just to avoid a £130 penalty charge, which is sent through the post to him after he avoided the initial court date.

Despite this good fortune, and the end of his license period meaning Conroy is a free man once again, he’s unable to shake off past events – particularly the feud with the Sayles family. Conroy interrupts his cooking of a celebratory family dinner to launch into an uninterrupted four-minute tirade, unintelligible in parts and incoherent in others, where he tries to piece together what may have been slights on his reputation and the intentions of his rivals (his perceptions and thought processes clearly affected by his cannabis use), leaving no doubt he’ll retaliate at some point, “and it’s coming fookin’ shortly, believe you me”. His rant culminates in him shouting, “Get that on your fookin’ documentary!”, before resuming his preparation of the family meal.

At this point, just by giving its subject enough rope, the profile allows the true nature of Conroy to emerge, demonstrating that any performance by an actor of a “gangster” role can never fully convey the menace of intent that an authentic criminal has. Despite certain sequences that humanised him (sequences with his family and on his allotment) and a refusal by MacIntyre to allow a caricature to develop – as would be likely in a Zoo feature – Conroy’s inherent brutality continually re-surfaces. His own need to distinguish between his own criminal acts and those of “gangsters” suggests that to some degree he is fully aware of the nature of his lifestyle and its implications, the essence of which it was essential MacIntyre captured in his “fookin’ documentary”.