Brooker’s game

Endemol has released details about Charlie Brooker’s Gameswipe. Read more

Game on for Brooker

Zeppotron has released details for the upcoming Charlie Brooker’s Gameswipe. Read more

POKE peek

10 PRINT “As much as OTT is looking forward to Snytax Era Read more

Gatiss and Brown for Christmas

Mark Gatiss is joining forces with Derren Brown to create a BBC4 Christmas ghost story. Read more

Only Connect

Victoria Coren looks incongruous sitting behind a desk Read more

Rags to riches

The Curse of Steptoe is the first in BBC4′s The Curse of Comedy season. And I’ve just finished watching it on preview disc. It’s wonderful – Jason Isaacs (Harry H Corbett) and Phil Davis (Wilfrid Brambell) nail their roles. There’s a moment early on when the two actors are in a read-through for the pilot episode. Corbett is working “off book” and giving it the full-on “you dirty old man” accent. Brambell is still reading from the script, and uncomfortable at the prospect of turning on his “‘Arold!” performance. But then Corbett gets in his face so much, it’s as though he can’t help it. Suddenly he switches on the sneer, and Phil Davis is old man Steptoe. It’s great. Read more

Right to reply

Well, Merry Christmas everyone. Read more

Great news for all readers

I’ve got a vested interest in BBC4′s upcoming Comics Britannia, having written a modest history of British comics which, dear reader, is still available to purchase here, and recently compiled the imminent Look-in: The Best of the Seventies. And, in fact, I met the show’s producer Alastair Laurence a few months back, wherein he generously allowed me to bend his ear for an hour with thoughts about what should go into the season of programmes. Read more

Who was that fat-necked, balding, smug twat in the 1980s?

And so to the 1980s. As I waited for my cab home having filmed my contributions to the ’70s episode, the production team were generous about my efforts. “Have you done this before?”. “Sort of”. Read more

Who was that fat-necked, balding, smug twat?

Yes, indeed, who was that fat-necked, balding, smug twat on BBC4′s Children’s TV on Trial – 1970s flapping his arms around like a nutter? Yes, okay, it was me. And I did it for the money. Read more

Dropped Clangers

Apparently, tonight’s edition of Children’s TV on Trial, which covers the ’70s, will include a clip from the rare Clangers episode “Vote for Froglet”. Read more

Hyde 2612 – no return

Well 2612 was just a room number and not “too sick, want to” as I thought for about 10 minutes during last night’s final installment of Life On Mars. Hopefully I have an OTT Review forthcoming, but in the meantime scratching round the Internet today I have been surprised to see there is no real consensus on actually what happened in the end. Read more

Hyde 2612 – slight return

After some internet snooping it transpires that “Hyde 2612” – the telephone number that may prove crucial in unlocking the mystery surrounding Life on Mars is actually, the telephone number for a San Francisco Barbers from 1903, specifically “Serpa & Content, Barbers, 419 Larkin.Hyde 2612″. Read more

Hyde 2612

I’ve been watching the previews discs for the first two episodes of Life on Mars series two. It’s back on BBC1 on Tuesday, with a screening of next week’s terrestrial ep following on BBC4. Read more

The Cult of… Adam Adamant Lives!

I’ve been trying to dig up the past. For some reason, Gerald Harper, the star of BBC1′s Adam Adamant Lives! was referred to in my family as “Old Lemonade-Bottle Shoulders”; after a few years nobody could remember why. Read more

Fear of Fanny

You know how it is. You’re gorbing down chocolate Hobnobs at three in the afternoon while watching Pocoyo, or maybe just blasted to the gills on G&T, and the phone rings. Read more

Like a…

Matthew’s comments on Lead Balloon are, at least for me, a sobering demonstration of how not everyone can agree on the quality of a programme. He’s correct in saying that it has had generally favourable reviews, although this is what I wrote on my own blog the night of the first episode, after banging my head against a table trying to come up with something longer: Read more

Dee-vine

The first two episodes of Lead Balloon on BBC4 have been nothing but a joy. Read more

Lawson the listener

There is a fashion currently to scorn Mark Lawson over the sporadic set of elongated interviews he is doing for BBC4, but frankly, I think each one I’ve seen has been brilliant. Read more

Reader, I Married Him

One of the criticisms of the documentaries that accompanied the BBC’s Big Read event was that, in places, the autobiography of the celebrity advocates overshadowed the books they were championing. Read more

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