Party Animals

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

Grandstand

Sometimes you get what TS Eliot meant. Grandstand, one of the most venerable sports shows in world TV, ended not with a bang but with the most whimperingly whimpery whimper imaginable. 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

The Trial of Tony Blair

Here is a true story. A friend of mine stood against Tony Blair as a prospective parliamentary Labour candidate in the early 1980s. He quit in the final round, because Tony was, in his judgement “better looking” and more “electable”. My friend, now a mental health professional, also judged him to be “mad as fuck”. 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

The Secret Millionaire

It’s a rare production company that chooses to atone for past failings by making another TV series. RDF Media, however, has decided to make up for Wife Swap with The Secret Millionaire, a disconcertingly similar show that somehow manages to be the exact opposite of its flawed predecessor. Read more

The Sarah Jane Adventures

It’s the law. It’s Doctor Who-related, so we have to fret about it. It must be the subject of fevered expectation. 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

Doctor Who

If you like your Doctor Who in the breezy style then “The Runaway Bride” was for you. 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

MacIntyre’s Underworld

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. Read more

Entourage

By rights, Entourage should be, and is, a difficult show to promote to friends, family and well wishers. Read more

Dating the Enemy

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

Countdown

By the look on Des’ face, you’d have thought someone had died. But no, it was just Countdown‘s 24th birthday, and as usual our man was doing his best to grace the occasion with a crisply-executed ill-suited response. Read more

Man to Man with Dean Learner

You wake up screaming and drenched in sweat. No, darling, don’t worry, go back to sleep. It’s all right … it wasn’t really you who commissioned Man to Man With Dean Learner. Read more

Your Money or Your Wife

Despite claims by some that Britain has become a nanny state, what we are in fact living under is a dominatrix dictatorship. 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

Torchwood

In the same way big screen versions of stage musicals used to have professional vocalists “singing” the parts of the lead actors, so it might be advisable to have professional scribes employed to “write” the scripts of Russell T Davies. Read more

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