It started with a kiss… sort of

Something’s just occurred to me during the current Arthur ‘n’ Martha storyline in Coronation Street. Why didn’t the kiss outside the nightclub really happen? Read more

If you can’t stand the heat, etc, etc

This is exciting. Just issued by ITV… Read more

Lloyd the invisible

Coronation Street has just experienced its own equivalent of the infamous and much-reported time in Crossroads when a character went out to get a spanner and never came back. The character in question this time is Lloyd Mullaney, played by one-time Red Dwarf star Craig Charles.  Read more

Primeval

Primeval isn’t really my kind of telefantasy. By that I probably mean it’s not Doctor Who. Read more

Hocus-pocus, diplodocus

So there’s this “renowned evolutionary scientist”, Nick Cutter, and some years ago his wife – Helen – disappeared while exploring reports of a strange, giant beast in the Forest of Dean. Now it transpires she stepped through what everyone’s seemingly calling an “anomaly” and found herself transported back in time to prehistoric Earth. Is she still alive? Well, when Nick makes the same journey, he recovers her camera (we know it’s her’s, it has her initials on it – and then Nick says it is). Returning to the present day, said snaps are developed to reveal… two shots of glamour-Helen pouting at the camera, showing off the prehistoric hills behind her. Read more

Staying awake through Lewis

On Wednesday I was at the press screening for the first of three new Lewis episodes, which begin their run on ITV1 mid February. Now, my problem is I’ve always found Morse deeply soporific. I even invested in a box set of the whole lot a year or so back, but failing to get through a single episode while remaining conscious, I ended up flogging it at a loss on ebay. I was poorer in the pocket, but richer in waking hours. Read more

Aces

I rather liked Pokerface and, in fact, I was the one who wrote in OTT’s 2006 in Review: “If it had aired every seven days there would have been more space for the public to discuss strategy, theorise on potential outcomes and quite possibly work up a word-of-mouth frenzy about the programme.” Read more

“It’s terminal…”

Or maybe that should be “interminable”. I adore Coronation Street and always have, but in the run-up to Christmas we have two of the most unattractive and realism-lacking storylines in progress. Read more

Vanessa’s Real Lives

Whereas some might consider Vanessa Feltz’s new daytime show to be exploitationist, could it actually be a forum for challenging and re-evaluating societal norms? Read more

Norks at 10

Ironic, Media Monkey-style sight of the day: Neil “Ray Von” Fitzmaurice – the star of ITV1′s upcoming anti-cellphone polemic Mobile - texting away while waiting for journos to join his table at the post ITV1 Winter Season launch Q&A. Read more

Dating the Enemy

Being honest, did we ever want the Blind Date couples to live happily ever after? Read more

Some ordinary Joe

The Stage is reporting Kudos, the independent production company behind, Spooks, Hustle and Life On Mars has  been commissioned by ITV1 to create a new drama.  Read more

Children of the Valley

144. The number at the end of the times table, the merciless grid emblazoned on countless classroom walls for so many years, and no doubt in those of the Pantglas Junior School in Aberfan, South Wales, whose obliteration by a colliery slagheap landslide 40 years ago this week has been shamefully all but overlooked by TV. Read more

Prime Suspect

Bad weather follows Jane Tennison everywhere. Like the Douglas Adams character who blunders through a soggy existence unaware of his real status as a Rain God, and for whom precipitation was but a lumpen fact of existence, so Tennison has served her time in a near-continual downpour of dirty rain. Read more

Drop dead Fred

“Be happy; I say, be happy.” The last words, as they turned out, of Frederick Handel Elliott, master butcher of Weatherfield, publican to the masses and one of Coronation Street‘s finest entertainers. And now he’s dead. Read more

The Outsiders

It’s possible for a show to be doing all the right things, yet be let down by one element so badly, that watching it becomes akin to having a kidney removed by over-enthusiastic gibbons. 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

Natal attraction

Contrast the two storylines in our main soaps right now involving the aftermath of childbirth. Read more

I Smack and I’m Proud

Are the chattering classes no longer a bunch of spankers? Or are they astute enough to recognise an ITV1 producer’s man-trap when they see one? Read more

Loose Women

Despite the best efforts of the government to conceal the true casualty figures, British soldiers are struggling to cope with the ferocity of Taliban attacks in Afghanistan. Luckily, I have a cunning plan with which to undermine the fighting ability of those shock troops. Read more

« Previous Page — Next Page »