The TellyPort

Outnumbered

2011-09-11T17:02:00.002+01:00

9pm BBC One, Friday 9th September

Time’s up for the once commendably fresh family sitcom judging by this fourth series so far, with child stars Ramona Marquez and Daniel Roche at last too grown-up to make Karen and Ben’s artless flights of the imagination ring true. Where Outnumbered’s appeal once lay in the relentless tug-of-war between the weary rationalism of parents Sue (Claire Skinner) and Pete (Hugh Dennis) and their offspring’s exuberantly random streams of consciousness, both ten-year-old Marquez and Roche, eleven, now seem articulate, logical and self-aware. The line between precocious charm and irritating brattiness is starting to be crossed by both Karen and Ben and without their softening impact, the family’s dysfunctional sniping is laid rather barer than usual.

The passage of time has proved good news for Tyger Drew-Honey, though, who as older brother Jake has become a subtle actor with a great line in teenage cynicism. This week sees the family split by gender – an unsuccessful girls’ day out for Sue and Karen and housework for the boys, who have been put to the test by Sue after belittling her own efforts. It’s a slightly obvious concept with a predictable outcome, though there are moments – including a well-written dig at the middle-class cookbook, Ben’s unique take on vegetables, and Jake’s withering dismissal of the Romantic poets – to be enjoyed along the way. Karen’s burgeoning interest in fashion is overplayed, as is her commitment to getting the truth out of a shopping centre chugger (an albeit excellent Jacob Anderson), but one sweet moment of fatherly reassurance from Pete is an appropriately fleeting reminder of the show’s underlying but never overly conspicuous heart.

The Hour

2011-08-28T10:50:00.002+01:00

9pm BBC Two, Tuesday 23rd August

Don’t expect too many surprises as Abi Morgan’s half obscure, half over-stated spy thriller reaches its final part this week. Where The Shadow Line recently strained the nerves, The Hour strains the patience, with Bel (Romola Garai) and Hector’s (Dominic West) affair and the Soviet espionage intrigue both creaking obediently towards conclusions we might have predicted weeks ago. Even the identity of Freddie’s (Ben Whishaw) mystery studio guest is obvious from the start, though Jamie Payne seems to direct this mini-arc as though it’s a genuine puzzler. There is one shock in store, however, and it’s the realisation that watching Bel, Freddie, Hector and Isaac (Joshua McGuire) pull the threads of their pivotal Suez edition together under the hawk-eyed gaze of Angus McCain (Julian Rhind-Tutt) is, nevertheless, desperately tense.

The journalistic team are determined to defy restrictive broadcast regulations and give viewers a frank assessment of the latest military and political developments in Egypt, while Clarence (Anton Lesser) must try to rein in any whispers of anti-governmental dissent. With Bel now focused and frustrated by an impossible catch-22 – a truly impartial analysis could get the show shut down – Garai finally convinces as an authoritative producer with uncompromising principles. Whishaw’s blinking, nervy tenacity as Freddie continues to impress, as Freddie is once again warned off the Ruth Elms case and, later, when his fierce eloquence finds a larger audience. While the on-air scenes are increasingly thrilling, though, a magnificent post-show tirade from Clarence ensures that Lesser, without fuss, steals the episode.

Single-Handed

2011-07-24T10:57:00.002+01:00

9pm ITV1, Thursday 21st July

It’s a neat trick to subvert viewers’ expectations by serving dark secrets with your scenic Irish police drama. An even cleverer one, though, to do it again and again, panning the camera lovingly across the rural west of the country while delving ever deeper into its tragedies. As ITV’s Single-Handed begins its second series with a deft two-parter, sweeping vistas and big skies are used to make each new shock feel sharp and unwelcome.

Inoffensively handsome Garda Sergeant Jack Driscoll (Owen McDonnell) – himself part of the illusion – is investigating the death of an elderly recluse. Is a young delinquent found at the scene perpetrator or witness? Driscoll’s newfound cousin Brian (Matthew McNulty), meanwhile, is reunited with his long-absent father Sean (Stephen Rea), once a pupil at a local industrial school. Cosier dramas are also fond of a family saga, of course, so it is startling yet right to find that the pain here, when it comes, is unremitting and virtually bottomless.

Rea’s performance evokes not only past horrors but their long-term consequences, so that Sean seems to reach the present only through layers of psychological damage. The eerie stillness that recently defined The Shadow Line’s Gatehouse becomes instead a haunted silence, while Sean’s increasingly apparent distress and tiny flourishes of humour are as affecting as each other. There is nothing shapely or resolved about the drama here, and though the series continues, even Connemara’s lovely light can’t provide anything resembling a warm glow when the episode ends.

Secrets of the Pop Song

2011-07-11T21:43:00.002+01:00

9.45pm BBC Two, Saturday 9th July

It’s a slightly sub-par week for this series that began so rivetingly with a focused and productive co-writing experiment between Guy Chambers and Rufus Wainwright. This time, Chambers gets together with Mark Ronson and his rising star protégée Tawiah, and the trio’s laidback approach lacks Wainwright’s intimacy. The brief is a ‘breakthrough single’ for contemporary soul artist Tawiah, and while Ronson and Chambers jam manfully towards chart success, last week’s talking heads return to reflect on seminal pop hits. There’s nothing as enlightening as Neil Tennant’s brilliantly matter-of-fact analysis of the Pet Shop Boys’ ‘Rent’, which we were treated to in part one, and an ill-judged reliance on Jessie J continues: ‘For me, pop stands for popular’. The biggest laugh comes from a wry Boy George, musing on the role played by biscuits in the distribution of writing credits. While Chambers (gently likeable throughout), Ronson and their talented young collaborator seem pleased with their creation, viewers will probably feel that, like the episode, it never really hits its stride. Next week: an anthem for the Noisettes.

Stolen

2011-07-05T14:19:00.001+01:00

9pm BBC One, Sunday 3rd July

Genial DI Anthony Carter (Damian Lewis) is interviewing Rosemary (Gloria Oyewumi), a terrified young Nigerian girl recently trafficked into the UK and intercepted by police at the airport. So why is this father and obvious good-cop more detached than sympathetic, more impatient than sensitive? The slow, painful reveal of Lewis’s performance and of this one-off drama is that Rosemary represents one unremarkable battle in an ongoing war. Stephen Butchard writes eloquently and angrily about the trade in vulnerable children, weaving the stories of victims from Eastern Europe and Vietnam into that of Rosemary and her would-be ‘owners’.

Each tale contains moments that are difficult to watch, with handheld camerawork lending an awful immediacy to street scenes. Director Justin Chadwick also does a great job of portraying closed worlds protected by fear and violence, and the moral bankruptcy they hide. Public ignorance comes in for a hammering during one particularly sickening sequence featuring Vietnamese teenager Kim Pak (Huy Pham), and the climactic scenes positively zing with tension. Split screens keep all three storylines in motion, and at the heart of the investigation, Lewis finds a believable balance in Carter between outrage and clench-jawed resignation.

Bruce Springsteen: The Promise – The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town

2011-01-23T20:16:00.001Z

9pm BBC4, Saturday 15th January

As poignant a statement on artistic endeavour as you’ll find anywhere, this documentary looking back at Bruce Springsteen’s 1978 recording sessions makes compulsory viewing for two sets of people. Serious Boss aficionados will be beside themselves over Thom Zimny’s intimate monochrome studio footage and the attention given to Darkness on the Edge of Town’s musical mechanics. Springsteen skeptics, meanwhile, will never be able to cry ‘bombast’ again after hearing the man himself – wry, sage – speak with a touching humility about an intense and often frustrating period in his young career. It takes a certain kind of man to admit that ‘More than rich, and more than famous, and more than happy, I wanted to be great’ without sounding eminently punchable, but he, somehow, manages it.

Legal wrangling with manager Mike Appel hung over the Darkness sessions, while the success of Born to Run put pressure on Springsteen and his E Street Band to produce a worthy follow-up. With few personal responsibilities at the time, however, they were able to spend long days in the studio as the haunting but transcendentally hopeful spirit of Darkness began to emerge. A focused, driven perfectionist, Springsteen is seen agonising over song choices, alternative lyrics, drum sounds and Clarence Clemons’ earthy sax lines, recording countless tracks that never make it onto the finished release. Guitarist and right-hand man Steve van Zandt reflects with real awe and sadness on the taut commercial pop numbers that Springsteen wrote and ultimately rejected in favour of a leaner feel – but it’s not all hard work and heartache. Thirty-seven minutes in, the sight of these two musical comrades yelping their way through a ridiculous duet during a spot of downtime will make you smile for days.

The Bear Family and Me

2011-01-09T20:30:00.002Z

9pm BBC Two, Monday 3rd January

‘Who’s to say he’s not just a crackpot who’s been lucky for 40 years?’ wonders Gordon Buchanan near the start of this three-part documentary following a group of black bears in Minnesota. The man in question is controversial bear biologist Dr Lynn Rogers, and his jaw-dropping working methods would give pause to the most gung-ho of outdoor adventurers. Keen to reduce the levels of stress suffered by his wild research bears while fitting or replacing their radio collars, Rogers has developed a food conditioning system that enables him to approach or handle them without sedation in exchange for a reward of a few grapes. In theory this promises uniquely intimate footage for any wildlife film-maker willing to tag along – or indeed establish their own reward-based relationship with the bears – but in practice, witnessing the process in action is just nerve-shreddingly tense.

Arriving in Minnesota, Buchanan seems genuinely unsettled by the reality of the project, blanching at the height of a bear’s scratch marks on a tree and maintaining a healthy scepticism about Rogers’ improbable claims. His reservations come to the fore when he heads into the forest – alone, for minimum disturbance – to make contact with a bear for the first time. Filming his own reactions on a body-mounted camera as well as the tangled undergrowth ahead, Buchanan’s panicked eyes say it all: nothing about this situation seems right. Things get even more heart-in-mouth when he finally spots a bear; it’s a female, and she seems rattled enough by his proximity to take a few warning steps towards him. By the time Buchanan is feeding his first grapes to Lily and her cub Hope under Rogers’ watchful gaze, the whole project is starting to look more than a little surreal.

Incredibly, though, it’s not long before the Bear Family team are capturing just the sort of revealing behavioural footage they had hoped for. Lily is a first-time mother and touchingly awkward at times, while the endearing Hope shows off her tree-climbing skills. Their misty woodland territory looks spectacular on film, and there’s even an unplanned comedy moment when some boisterous yearling cubs decide to play with the hired camera equipment. But while the commentary talks affectionately of falling under the bears’ spell, onscreen the jittery tone never goes away. When Buchanan is finally given a warning nip in the thigh by a protective Lily, you can’t help but suspect that he is more shaken by the incident than surprised. The conclusion of this first episode is no less contentious, as Rogers has a difficult decision to make when Lily’s mothering instincts seem to falter, and the subsequent two parts, though hugely involving, pose significant questions about intervention. There is probably just – just – enough acknowledgement of these controversial areas to provide the series with a sense of ethical balance, and it’s a good thing too, as the magnificent photography shouldn’t be missed.

Just William

2010-12-31T17:18:00.001Z

12.30pm BBC One, Tuesday 28th December

Unruly of both hair and behaviour, short-trousered young William Brown is brought cheekily to life by Outnumbered’s Daniel Roche in these new 1950s-set adaptations of Richmal Crompton’s classic tales. From the moment we see William and his loyal pals Ginger, Henry and Douglas fleeing muddily through the woods after being caught trespassing, the scene is set for thirty minutes of boyish exuberance, complete with lush, leafy views, jaunty soundtrack and a genuinely invigorating sense of mischief. The supporting cast of adults is excellent, with Rebecca Front perfectly put-upon as William’s forbearing mother, and Harry Melling stealing several scenes as older brother Robert – here attempting to out-brood Marlon Brando in a desperate bid to get a girlfriend.

Girls are proving a particular mystery for William; never more so than when forced to play with his lisping new neighbour Violet Elizabeth Bott (Isabella Blake-Thomas). Roche is superbly reluctant when William finds himself ‘playing fairies’ on the Botts’ sweeping lawn under the watchful gaze of both children’s mothers, but Violet’s eagerness to join his gang leads eventually to a touching rapprochement of sorts. Four William stories are being broadcast this week, and their beguilingly wholesome charm makes a second mini-series an absolute must.

Doctor Who: A Christmas Carol

2010-12-30T22:01:00.001Z

6pm BBC One, Christmas Day

Furiously pouting Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) is forced into a supporting role for this festive morality tale, trapped on a plummeting space liner while on honeymoon with Rory (Arthur Darvill), and the result is arguably warmer and subtler without Gillan’s overegged bolshiness pulling focus. But while Amy and her fellow passengers are merely lives in need of saving here, their crippled vessel crucially brings the Doctor (Matt Smith) into contact with Scrooge-like Kazran Sardick (guest Michael Gambon). A wealthy moneylender, Sardick keeps Sardicktown’s ‘surplus population’ – including Katherine Jenkins’ Abigail – imprisoned in ice, so has no qualms about refusing a failing spaceship permission to land. The ensuing rescue mission sees the Doctor delving into Sardick’s past – and future – in search of anything which might persuade him to save the stricken travellers.

Gambon is terrifically embittered as the apparently heartless miser, while Jenkins is all sweetness and light in her first acting role. Steven Moffat’s writing is once again thoughtful and consistently witty, even if he sometimes fails to tug the heartstrings as convincingly as Russell T Davies, and Smith sparkles most during the funniest moments. ‘Finally, a lie too big’, the Doctor quips when his boast of mature responsibility defeats the psychic paper, and his advice to a lovelorn young chap in need of encouragement is a joy. The story is, of course, brought to a spectacularly Christmassy climax, though Moffat is so deft and literate that his haunting final line is in danger of undercutting emotional scenes of repentance and redemption, complete with swelling, string-heavy score. Look out, though, for a lovely touch mid-episode when the Doctor is briefly distracted by that most eccentric of festive accoutrements, a Christmas tree.

Peep Show

2010-12-27T17:56:00.004Z

10.05pm Channel 4, Christmas Eve

Christmas in a flatshare. Whose family traditions win? That’s the initial premise of this deliciously honest take on the awkward festive get-together, as Mark (David Mitchell) and Jeremy (Robert Webb) entertain Mark’s parents and sister on Christmas Day. Things start badly when Jeremy discovers that his own approach to stocking presents (expensive, thoughtful) isn’t shared by Mark (cheap, jokey, almost entirely random) – who still hasn’t forgiven him for creeping in to deliver said lavish gifts at five-thirty in the morning. Jeremy’s unswerving commitment to Christmas is both sweet and ruthlessly funny, particularly when his attempt at a joke is met with wild fury by a feverishly anxious Mark.

Inevitably, Dobby’s own family arrangements run into trouble and inevitably, Super Hans drops by with a special delivery for Jeremy - so both end up joining the ‘fun’. But Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong’s script barrels along so gleefully that the familiar scenario is transformed into a darkly cringey masterpiece of long-held resentments, character flaws and personal failings. Clive Merrison is genuinely scary as Mark’s breathtakingly rude dad Dan, and Isy Suttie squirms to great effect as the injured Dobby. What Bain and Armstrong capture best, though, is the perspectiveless hothouse of a Christmas curated by dysfunctional and nostalgic grown-ups. When Jeremy sheds tears over an undercooked turkey, you may know how he feels.

Accused: Liam’s Story

2010-12-09T23:10:00.003Z

9pm BBC One, Monday 6th December

Andy Serkis’s rumpled, disconsolate cabbie seems at first to be the sort of ordinary bloke for whom events are perpetually sliding out of control in uncompromising TV dramas like Jimmy McGovern’s Accused. After all, we meet him – as with all the series’s central characters – in court, charged with a serious crime and palely awaiting the jury’s verdict. The nightmarish finale to a sequence of small misguided decisions, you might think, if not a complete miscarriage of justice. But the mesmerising horror of Liam’s Story lies in the fact that his sense of what’s appropriate, let alone what’s right or wrong, is badly skewed from the start. Just seven minutes in, he breaks into the house of a recent fare, rifles through her belongings and begins to leer worryingly over her holiday snaps.

As Liam’s obsession with young estate agent Emma (Jodie Whittaker) grows, he gathers information about her personal life and uses it to create the illusion of a bond between them. Serkis has Liam hiding his deceptions behind unassuming body language and ingratiating chat; what makes his behaviour uniquely unsettling is how monstrously easy he finds it to lie. But the dripfeed of details about Liam’s own home life is as delicately judged as his progress across one moral boundary after another. A half-tender, half-bitter scene with Mia Smith as his daughter Katy stands out, as does an explosive showdown between Serkis and Neve McIntosh, playing his wheelchair-bound wife. As Liam’s hold on normality becomes increasingly strained you may end up watching through your fingers. The judge’s summing up will strike some as improbably sympathetic but the very last line – given to Liam himself – is a skilful blend of pathos and deeply twisted logic.

The Trip

2010-11-18T21:57:00.001Z

10pm BBC Two, Monday 15th November

‘Do you think we just have the same conversation in every restaurant?’ Rob Brydon wonders aloud this week as he and dining companion Steve Coogan begin another round of needling cross-table banter. It’s a brave line intended as a knowing wink to critics of this subtle and leisurely series, but it also highlights the semi-fictionalised pair’s inability to move beyond comedic one-upmanship. Finnicky, ultra-competitive Rob is gifted plenty of ammunition here; the Keswick house in which he and Steve are staying is a former home of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Rob is determined to draw (lengthy and unfavourable) parallels. The duo’s conversational ping-pong is unstoppable yet acutely self-aware, and one of this episode’s most delicious moments is Steve’s realisation that his sarcastic comparison between Rob and Al Pacino can only lead to one thing.

Midway through the series, though, its constant celebrity impressions are becoming somewhat problematic. So effective at first – few things can convey the strange, sad insecurity of middle-aged entertainers better than a mutual compulsion to impersonate Michael Caine – there is nowhere else to take them. Brydon’s famously extensive repertoire is beginning to look like cheap filler, especially as there are only so many exasperated faces Coogan can be expected to pull. Their claustrophobic exchanges are nicely balanced by some beautiful landscape shots, though – all frosted fields, rolling hills and golden autumn light. And one of this week’s closing scenes, in which Rob imagines accidentally turning Steve into a heroin addict, is unexpectedly sweet.

The Pillars of the Earth

2010-11-15T22:26:00.001Z

9pm Channel 4, Saturday 13th November

TV villains are rarely so gleefully evil or its heroes so blinkingly sweet as those of muddy medieval pantomime The Pillars of the Earth. Viewers are so busy cheering for wool entrepreneur Aliena, gifted sculptor Jack and diffident Prior Philip – or else booing and hissing over the barmy Hamleighs and their self-flagellating associate Waleran – that each hour-long instalment races by. The Machiavellian plots and political tussles are nigh-on impossible to follow, and the series has lost a little of its industrious energy with the murder during the last episode of Rufus Sewell’s Tom Builder, but the action is directed with enormous brio by Sergio Mimica-Gezzan. A 12th century stonemasonry saga may lack the gloss and glamour of its BBC cousin The Tudors, but it has every bit as much soapy watchability.

This week, Tom is movingly buried, King Stephen (Tony Curran) reclaims the throne, Regan and William Hamleigh (Sarah Parish and David Oakes) continue their depraved pursuit of power and Aliena (Hayley Atwell) faces losing everything. Her charmless suitor Alfred (Liam Garrigan) has a solution, and it would be fair to say that sensitive, fawn-eyed Jack (excellent Eddie Redmayne) isn’t keen on it. The drama builds to another shattering climax as the key players gather to celebrate the vaulting of the cathedral – though one particular sequence is marred by some ropey special effects – and next week’s finale holds the promise of struggle, suffering and an emotional reunion.

Spooks

2010-11-09T22:27:00.002Z

9pm BBC One, Monday 8th November

The best thing about Lucas North’s vertiginous descent from heroic Section Chief to desperate rogue agent has been the fact that it hasn’t felt like all that much of a surprise. Richard Armitage’s set jaw and steely gaze once convinced as the trademarks of nation-serving self-sacrifice; now they send shivers down the spine as Lucas/John sets his escape plan in motion with a condemned man’s fervour. As the series finale begins, he intensifies his pursuit of the mysterious Albany file and – with a terrifying surprise lunge into the team’s surveillance van – takes Ruth (wonderful Nicola Walker) as a bargaining chip.

It’s a neat and punchy way of tying the series’ most compelling plot strands – Lucas/John’s unsavoury past and Harry and Ruth’s fragile romance – together, as Harry (Peter Firth) is faced with a choice between saving his beloved and protecting a state secret. No-one does strained dignity like Firth, and his increasingly thwarted attempts to outstrategise his former colleague are gripping. The story ends badly for both, but not before we’ve enjoyed a twisty and eventful hour that answers the show’s critics in determined style.

One or two style quirks – Harry’s portentous pre-credits narration and Lucas/John’s irritating prison flashbacks – seem misjudged, and if the writers think Dmitri and Beth are capable of carrying the next series between them, the results may be unwatchable. My vote there goes to tech boy Tariq (Shazad Latif), who has done sterling work with some bizarre dialogue and deserves fresh air and exercise – especially as being good with computers and good with bombs were proved a few weeks ago to be the same thing at Thames House.

Corrie: The Road to Coronation Street

2010-09-22T11:11:00.001+01:00

9pm BBC4, Thursday 16th September

This warm, affectionate drama succeeds in turning an (albeit iconic) episode in television history into something that feels genuinely human, thanks to a uniformly strong cast and the dry humour of Daran Little’s script. Rising star David Dawson (Gracie, Secret Diary of a Call Girl) is all fey fragility and oddball charm as writer Tony Warren, who fights for the integrity of his unsentimental new Manchester soap opera in the face of executive scepticism at Granada. He finds an ally in Canadian-born producer Harry Elton (Christian McKay), and when their proposal is at last accepted after much behind-the-scenes wrangling, there’s a thrilling sense of significance about their achievement. Shaun Dooley is convincingly brisk and pragmatic as the soap’s director Derek Bennett, while a sparky ensemble, including Celia Imrie, Lynda Baron, Jessie Wallace as Pat Phoenix and James Roache playing father William, portray its cast. The heart of the production lies with Dawson, though, and the impassioned belief in the voices of Manchester’s backstreets that, as Warren, he so touchingly articulates.

First Light

2010-09-20T11:38:00.001+01:00

9pm BBC Two, Tuesday 14th September

There’s a moment in this intensely moving drama-documentary about the Second World War spitfire pilots of 92 Squadron that may be its single most powerful image. As the planes return to base from another routinely perilous operation, Station Adjutant ‘Mac’ looks skyward, hands clasped behind his back, silently counting on his fingers. This legendary squadron’s experiences during the Battle of Britain are encapsulated here; risk, huge loss, quiet dignity and unspoken affection. Based on the memoirs of 18-year-old pilot Geoffrey ‘Boy’ Wellum, the production tells his story with economy and visual flair, framing the drama with poignant narration from the now 89-year-old Wellum himself.

The sweeping landscapes around Biggin Hill are captured in rich, painterly colour, often saturated with sunlight, and Caleb Ranson’s script acknowledges the rush of adrenalin that intitially made solo flight a genuine thrill for Wellum (Sam Heughan) and his fellow airmen. But exhilaration inevitably turns to crippling combat fatigue as the war wears on and the unit’s losses mount. Director Matthew Whiteman subtly allows their grim routines to become ours too; the erasure of another name from the squadron’s chalkboard roster soon seems simultaneously unbearable and meaningless. Each evening of drink and ribald entertainment at the local pub underlines another absence, while a spell of home leave finds Wellum desperate to return to base. Crucially, too, Whiteman ensures that the mid-air combat sequences are dizzyingly scary.

The fresh-faced cast of relative unknowns are excellent, with Ben Aldridge making a particular impression as obscenely young Commanding Officer Brian Kingcome. Arrogant and supercilious at first, Aldridge gradually reveals a humane and dignified natural leader who cares deeply about the men for whose lives he is responsible. It’s a beautifully nuanced, complex performance, and in many ways a further tribute to the heroic achievements honoured by the entire production.

Grandma's House

2010-09-18T12:29:00.001+01:00

10pm BBC Two, Monday 13th September

Simon Amstell and Dan Swimer’s superlative family sitcom has been cheekily self-referential (Amstell plays himself as a comedy quiz host) and undeniably bold (his family do not come out of it well), but as the series closes there’s a charming traditionalism about the way its loose ends are gathered together. It’s the day of the wedding for Tanya (Rebecca Front) and Clive (James Smith), but the bride-to-be is hunched in a cardigan on her mother’s sofa. Last minute nerves, or a moment of epiphany? While Tanya plays for time, her relatives assemble around her, with Amstell and Swimer’s dialogue touching casually on Simon’s stalled career, his lovelorn pursuit of actor Ben Theodore, Grandpa’s cancer and Adam’s ongoing schooling crisis. It’s a neat and satisfying structural trick, with each plot strand given onward development instead of total resolution.

This final episode also offers us not one but two masterful entrances from Smith as horrid Clive, and more of the beautifully interwoven cross-talk that has become a trademark of the series. The flappy uncertainty of Grandma (Linda Bassett) as the wedding hovers between impending and cancelled is instantly familiar, while Simon’s brittle putdowns only just disguise the awkward vulnerability beneath. (Those concerned about the quality of Amstell’s performance might look to the scene in which Simon unpicks Auntie Liz’s apparent invitation to open a school’s media wing; his flat underplaying seems weary, withering and right.) But as the credits roll, the real poignancy remains the death earlier this year of Geoffrey Hutchings – Grandpa – whose absence will be conspicuous should Grandma’s House return.

Derren Brown: Hero at 30,000 Feet

2010-09-12T23:23:00.002+01:00

10pm Channel 4, Wednesday 8th September

Sometimes, psychological experiments produce unlikely results. Take this one, for instance. A passive, unmotivated nervous flyer is helped, with the aid of hypnotism and mind games, to become a go-getting achiever capable of taking the controls of a passenger aircraft at 30,000 feet and piloting it to safety. Remarkable stuff. Sometimes, the results are a little more predictable. Check this one out. A popular TV illusionist respected for his wit, scepticism and probing intelligence fails to engage the nation with a preachily presented self-help course for one.

The problems with Derren Brown’s latest format range from the integral to the irritating. The endless bits of mental programming undergone by unwitting volunteer Matt – generally a nocturnal visit from Brown with some ‘inspiring’ advice about fulfilling his potential, followed by a daytime challenge – seem repetitive and patronising. With so many setpieces to fit in, including a crocodile in a field, a staged armed robbery and an odd routine in a policeman’s house, there’s no time for explanation, leaving the viewer feeling excluded. At the same time, they’re all instantly successful, making Matt’s big airborne finale look like an unnecessary formality. (Anyone who isn’t bored by the lack of suspense will be simply incredulous; this unfortunately looks more fake than any of Brown’s previous stunts).

Along the way, a script peppered with self-improvement clichés and art direction that favours the blooming flower school of metaphor will whet the appetite of Brown’s fans for the bit where he undercuts it all with a spot of mischievous cynicism. He doesn’t. For a performer whose televisual reputation has thus far been founded on astute editorial judgement, it’s worrying.

Roger and Val Have Just Got In

2010-09-08T13:04:00.001+01:00

10pm BBC Two, Friday 3rd September

Just when we’d all stopped expecting – or even wanting - the magnificent Roger and Val... to be funny, writers Beth and Emma Kilcoyne deliver this sparkily comic script centred around a misdirected e-mail. The accidental but disastrous Reply All may be a comedy cliché in some circles but here it’s made fresh again, thanks to the creators’ wryly underwritten dialogue and grippingly real performances. As Roger, Alfred Molina delivers a watch-through-your-fingers confession to wife Val (Dawn French) regarding his catastrophic mistake. When Val is at last allowed to see the offending message – a humiliatingly pompous self-help exercise intended for a friend – French’s straight-faced ‘I don’t think people will have kept reading this, Roger’ is immaculately judged.

But experience has shown us that this couple, still mourning a child lost eighteen years earlier, use their petty crises as release valves for a deeper pain. Astonishingly, the Kilcoynes don’t switch focus from Roger’s e-mail and Val’s ingenious get-out plan until the final five minutes, when the recent death of Roger’s father stirs up old memories once again. Their coping mechanism collapses in seconds, exposing the disjointed emotional bric-a-brac of grief. The pair seem to reach a point of no return with terrifying speed, and viewers invested in the pair’s hugely touching relationship – a blend of desperate fragility and easy warmth – are left hanging. The series’ skill in teasing out the momentous drama of ordinary lives is currently unmatched, and the week-long wait until the final episode will be an anxious one for fans.

Sherlock: unbroadcast pilot

2010-09-03T11:47:00.002+01:00

Anyone with an interest in the mechanics of TV drama and an hour to spare will have oodles of fun watching this previously unscreened Sherlock pilot, included on the series’ DVD release. It’s a rare and revealing treat to see what now looks like a rough draft for TV’s summer sensation, complete with tonal inconsistencies, costuming missteps and a noticeably lower budget. A 60-minute attempt at the opening story - A Study in Pink – that so caught the nation’s attention, it feels airless and rushed, with neither the burgeoning friendship between Sherlock Holmes (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Dr John Watson (Martin Freeman) nor the central serial killer storyline given the room to really intrigue.

The visual pizzazz that film director Paul McGuigan brought to the series is absent, meaning that this Sherlock could pass for virtually anything set in 21st century London. With no onscreen text, jittery time-lapse cityscapes or blanched colour palette to establish a signature style, there may have been a solid hit here, but certainly no critical smash. Cumberbatch’s performance sometimes seems at odds with Steven Moffat’s script, too; while Moffat tries to establish an austere, hyper-intelligent loner, Cumberbatch practically twinkles. There’s no definingly dandyish hair or classic slimfit suit; this Sherlock solves crime in jeans, placing him somewhere between holidaying MP and supply teacher on the scale of ill-advised denim. The iconic sharp-cut coat is present, but now looks like a slightly unlikely indulgence.

Some things work magnificently, including a masterful piece of drunk acting and a neat turning of the tables when hubris leads Sherlock into trouble. That coolly dramatic face-off between our sleuthing hero and the murderous cabbie is brought inside 221B Baker Street; initially chilling, but also lacking the broadcast version’s sense of climax – particularly given the firelit glow and chintzier furnishings here. What emerges overwhelmingly from the comparison is a sense of the difference between good and great television, and of enormous relief at creative potential fulfilled.

Who Do You Think You Are?

2010-08-26T23:11:00.003+01:00

9pm BBC One, Monday 23rd August

Is anyone else thoroughly enjoying the current trend among Who Do You... participants for wisecracking joviality? Earlier this series, Ruperts Everett and Penry-Jones both proved marvellous company as they reacted to their unfolding family histories with genuine interest, warm wit and - at last - a sense of perspective. While Everett watched his genealogical journey slide towards Ealing comedy with the arrival of a previously undiscovered aunt, the improbable findings of tonight’s well-bred thesp - Alexander Armstrong - are almost the stuff of farce.

The story of Armstrong’s aristocratic lineage begins with his mother’s family, the McCauslands - mere landed gentry - but soon turns up a Duke (it’s that kind of episode). En route, we read a letter received by Armstrong’s direct ancestor Charles Boughton from his elder brother Edward, breaking the ‘wonderful news’ of their titled cousin’s demise. When it emerges that physicians thought the unfortunate baronet might have been murdered, Armstrong looks worried. ‘Did anyone see this letter?’ he asks in mock-alarm.

One of many crisp, autumnal drives through rolling English countryside takes the actor to the home of the current Duke of Beaufort, Gloucestershire’s Badminton House. Or rather, to a layby from which we have to peer at this majestic piece of architecture through near-impenetrable mist, as the present occupants have refused permission to film on the property. (They may feel particularly silly when they see Armstrong gazing wistfully across fields of sheep, murmuring, ‘Gosh, it’s quite tantalising. You just get, er...a sense of it’.)

The tale really takes flight with our subject’s ten times great-grandfather Edward Somerset, sixth Earl and second Marquess of Worcester and a man beset by bad luck of extraordinary proportions. His military leadership during the Civil War having proven flawed at the very least, a secret mission to Ireland goes spectacularly awry, while a later passion for science has a bizarre and gruesome postscript. Armstrong remains incredulous, sympathetic and gently amused throughout.

Grandma's House

2010-08-19T09:27:00.001+01:00

10pm BBC Two, Monday 16th August

As Missouri roots-rockers The Bottle Rockets once declared (on their critically acclaimed 2006 release ZOYSIA, if you’re interested), ‘Where I’m from’s not where I’m from...anymore’. Quite. It’s exactly this impossible tug between worlds that Simon Amstell and Dan Swimer’s often deceptively funny sitcom inhabits, with Amstell playing a version of himself who’s ill at ease with but nonetheless tied to his bickering East London-Jewish family. Last week ‘Simon’ announced to his unimpressed mother Tanya (Rebecca Front) his decision to leave Never Mind the Buzzcocks – the series relishes its self-referentiality – and this time he arrives with an expensive gift that isn’t received as well as he’d hoped.

Reviewers have made much of Amstell’s supposed ‘bad acting’, but to anyone familiar with the quirks of the cross-generational, small-to-medium sized family gathering, his awkwardness is impeccably judged. Every time ‘Simon’ slumps into a saggy armchair, tucks a skinny jean-clad leg beneath him and responds to another round of questions with simultaneous apathy and infuriation, you’ll either be blandly amused or chilled by his accuracy. Amstell and Swimer have an uncanny ear for the rhythms of familial conversation, and Auntie Liz (Samantha Spiro), Grandma (Linda Bassett), Grandpa (the late Geoffrey Hutchings) and excruciating stepdad-to-be Clive (James Smith) feel real and alive whether debating the ‘top 4’ racist insults or remembering the time Cheryl Baker was spotted at the outlet village.

Smith hints at genuine darkness beneath the monstrous Clive’s domineering pomposity, and, despite excellent comic timing, Amstell lends surprising soul and sadness to the role of too-often-absent son. There is affection here, underlying the constant tetchiness and point-scoring, but it’s miscommunicated and misunderstood.

Sherlock

2010-08-09T22:43:00.002+01:00

9pm BBC One, Sunday 8th August

Sherlock Holmes (Benedict Cumberbatch) is bored. And it’s electrifying. He stalks around 221B Baker Street in pyjamas and a silk dressing gown, shooting bullets into the wall and sharp ripostes at the bewildered Watson (Martin Freeman). His next case can’t come soon enough – even if Cumberbatch himself seems to be having a grand time already – so when his next adversary explodes onto the scene, the chase is on. This time it’s a bomber who goes to extreme lengths to get Holmes’s attention and sets deductive puzzles which the sleuth must solve against the clock. Thus begins a frenetic cat-and-mouse game in which Holmes grows more certain of the bomber’s identity with every passing minute.

Mark Gatiss’s script is so good – fast, economical and dripping in wit – that it’s easy to miss something crucial, or just plain brilliant, on a first viewing. The series has been a fine tribute to Arthur Conan Doyle’s creation, and Gatiss defers elegantly and generously to Conan Doyle’s writing at a crucial moment this week. One particular scene in a planetarium also reflects Gatiss’s enthusiasm for classic horror, blending sound and visuals to striking effect under Paul McGuigan’s direction. Freeman continues to give real solidity and quiet strength to the character of Watson, but it is Cumberbatch’s sly half-smile, sublime tailoring, restless eyes and overpowering intellectual impatience as Holmes that set the tone.

When Holmes and his notorious criminal counterpart at last come face to face – a spectacular stand-off at a swimming pool which entirely justifies the recent hype from co-creator Steven Moffat – the stage is reset instantly. There’s no ‘big name’ reveal, but fresh-faced Andrew Scott offers dangerous charisma and thrilling unpredictability. This finale could have succeeded too well, with its multiple plot-lines, iconic villain, gorgeous London cityscapes and sheer sweeping scale threatening to render any follow-up an instant disappointment, but Scott’s magnetic performance promises huge things to come.

Roger and Val Have Just Got In

2010-08-07T19:20:00.000+01:00

10pm BBC Two, Friday 6th August

On the strength of this first episode, two-handed domestic drama Roger and Val... is so breathtakingly well-observed it makes you forget within minutes that Dawn French and Alfred Molina are acting at all. Set during the first half hour after the eponymous husband and wife return from work, the mouthwatering script explores, by means of the hunt for a hoover guarantee, the tiny neuroses, tensions, hang-ups and worries of an exceptionally ordinary couple in their ‘50s. French and Molina traverse Beth and Emma Kilcoyne’s dialogue with the purpose and grace of Olympic swimmers and we never doubt their easy familiarity for a moment. The series perhaps lacks a little warmth at this stage but is so stirringly real and honest – Val’s ludicrous vision of her geriatric self finally throwing hoarded gas bills onto a bonfire is played for more than an easy laugh – that it’s impossible not to come away in awe of its creators’ talents.

Would I Lie To You?

2010-08-07T13:05:00.002+01:00

10.35pm BBC One, Friday 6th August

This convivial game of deception has always benefitted from the simple fact that embellishing ridiculous stories invariably makes them funnier, whether or not they happen to be true. There’s a case in point early in this week’s near-hysterical edition of the panel show when Kevin Bridges asks opposing captain David Mitchell and guests Stephen Mangan and Keeley Hawes to decide if he once accidentally bought a horse in Bulgaria. It’s a comedy tour de force, and by the time it has emerged that he thought he was hiring it for a baffling ‘twenty-five minutes’ and that it may in fact have been a ‘counterfeit horse’, fellow guest Professor Brian Cox isn’t the only one helplessly wiping away tears. ‘I don’t think it’s true and I’m on your team’, Cox splutters. Elsewhere, Mitchell gets decent comic mileage out of the possibility that his bedroom door has had no handle for the past two years, and the game Hawes giggles a lot.

Rev

2010-08-05T21:33:00.001+01:00

10pm BBC Two, Monday 2nd August

Here’s a treat for anyone who has particularly enjoyed the Reverend Adam Smallbone’s fleeting prayers of quiet frustration in recent weeks, delivered in voiceover by the excellent Tom Hollander. Beneath the Rev’s perpetually genial exterior, something of a crisis of faith has been brewing, and it comes to a head this week when he finds himself awarded a score of -1 on an irreverent sermon-rating website. Sulky and demoralised, Smallbone heads for the sofa, where he smokes and drinks his way through seven episodes of Farmer Wants a Wife in an endearingly small act of rebellion. The dramatic climax of the episode, though, comes with a fund-raising Vicars and Tarts party that the smitten vicar has invited church school headmistress Ellie (Lucy Liemann) to hold at St Saviour’s.

The performances of Hollander and Olivia Colman as the supportive Alex are beautifully observed, whether Smallbone is shooting his wife a quick glance of gratitude and love under fraught circumstances or, later, drunkenly testing her admirable patience. And when the Reverend confesses to Colin (Steve Evets) that he feels like ‘a remnant of an illusion that people used to believe in’, his angry, heartfelt vulnerability evokes a cross between a tired, petulant toddler and a small furry animal. Writer James Wood has found a neat metaphor for Smallbone’s self-doubt in the over-zealous police officers who keep popping up to ask him for identification, and confidently blends bad dancing with existential despair in the party scenes. This is the episode that Wood has been promising to give us ever since this subtly penned gem began six weeks ago, combining joyously silly comedy and desperate soul-searching in a formula that’s really rather reminiscent of life itself.

Sherlock

2010-07-26T15:33:00.001+01:00

9pm BBC One, Sunday 25th July

There isn’t a whiff of compromise about this gloriously slick, witty and intelligent detective drama, which slams a giant of Victorian fiction into the 21st century as though he had belonged there always. Writers Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss begin their trilogy of contemporary Sherlock Holmes mysteries by teasing from an unwieldy Arthur Conan Doyle original (‘A Study in Scarlet’) a compelling case of apparent serial suicide, within which their Holmes (a magnetic Benedict Cumberbatch) first meets his Watson (Martin Freeman). It’s breathlessly paced – at times literally so, when Holmes and Watson race Spooks-style through the streets of London in pursuit of a suspicious taxi – and keeps even Doyle aficionados guessing by twisting away from its source deftly and often.

Director Paul McGuigan lingers over Cumberbatch’s pale, angular features and peculiarly feline eyes as searchingly as Holmes reading a crime scene, and his performance is more than subtle enough to bear the scrutiny. We get the intensity of a hyper-developed mind and its deep fear of boredom, reasoning powers that frequently outrun speech, and a dry, abstract humour removed from normal human interaction. Freeman is a weary but sympathetic Dr Watson, an army medic traumatised from recent service in Afghanistan and now bemused by the intellectual whirlwind reorganising his life, while Gatiss himself performs a typically suave and enigmatic supporting role.

The series’ co-creators have embraced the technology available to their modern sleuth and made him not only gadget-savvy, but astute enough to realise the full information-gathering potential of the internet and mobile communication. Holmes is taunting the police by text message even before we meet him in person, his words appearing onscreen in a surprisingly effective stylistic quirk – though this is a mite less convincing later when the words begin to represent his unarticulated observations. Features such as David Arnold and Michael Price’s lively score and McGuigan’s penchant for stylish silhouetting quality-stamp this production from the start; Sunday nights on BBC One have acquired a new and inspiring sense of purpose.

Friday Night with Jonathan Ross

2010-07-24T19:56:00.003+01:00

10.35pm BBC One, Friday 16th July

‘It’s like when you’re in hospital and all your favourite relatives turn up at your bedside’, quips Ross, scanning the green room during this final episode of his weekend-heralding chat show. It’s a generous way to describe a fairly unremarkable line-up, but guest quality has been deteriorating since Ross’ departure from the BBC was decided in January. He does at least exhibit an obvious genuine enthusiasm for the work of martial arts screen icon Jackie Chan – by far the evening’s most entertaining interviewee, and a man with a seemingly limitless number of hair-raising stunt anecdotes – and Roxy Music, who solidly deliver two of their classics. Mickey Rourke is a less than thrilling raconteur, despite his impressive reinvention, and David Beckham takes far too long to relax his way from mumbled platitudes on England’s World Cup performance to a confession about rendering the Taj Mahal in Lego.

But inevitably, this night cannot be about its guests, despite Ross’s brisk and business-like stance on both his BBC One and BBC Radio 2 shows in recent weeks. Setting aside the unresolvably divisive reasons for the non-renewal of his BBC contract, here is a broadcaster who has long made – and continues to make – a valuable and distinctive contribution to mainstream entertainment in the UK. Ironically, for an oft-termed ‘motormouth’, part of Ross’ problem when his salary and unsavoury antics with Russell Brand began hitting headlines was that so many of his screen skills are non-verbal, and thus unquotable. In soundbites, he risks becoming a lascivious preener who leers over female guests, pals up with male ones and brazenly steals interview time from both. It’s easy to overlook – deliberately or otherwise – the self-deprecation in Ross’ knowing twinkle that constantly defuses his across-the-desk flirtations, or the sincere and wide-ranging passion for culture that ensures the show is ultimately its interviewees, not its host. ‘A lot of things in life...you don’t get a second chance’, Rourke muses unthinkingly during his spot on the sofa. ‘Don’t tell me that this evening, for goodness’ sake’, Ross mischievously shoots back. Whatever the future holds with ITV, his ten-year tenure on Friday nights was unique, and will be missed.

Living with Brucie

2010-07-16T14:01:00.002+01:00

9pm Channel 4, Wednesday 14th July

This Louis Theroux-style documentary following enduring entertainer Bruce Forsyth at home and at work is both more revealing than its star could have anticipated, and less so than we might have hoped. Whether relaxing in Puerto Rico with wife Wilnelia Merced, 31 years his junior, or at home in Surrey preparing to host Have I Got News For You, Forsyth’s unfamiliarity with the fly-on-the-wall format leads to some extraordinary scenes. Planning a day on the golf course, he begins to address his chat about bottled water and sun lotion directly to camera, and instantly repeats a ‘fluffed’ line. Film-maker David Nath wisely lets his subject’s instincts lead the way here, even when he tries to direct the action – ‘Have another little look at the sea!’

While the controlling personality beneath Forsyth’s showbiz razzle-dazzle emerges in almost every frame, Merced remains relaxed and gracious; a contrast revealed most sharply during an awkward exchange with golf course security. Nath brings up the subject of the couple’s relationship and age gap on several occasions, but beyond establishing that Forsyth is a romantic, that Merced keeps his extended family together and that her mother presented him with an exercise guide when the pair married, there’s little emotional revelation. Both are understandably reluctant to talk seriously about the future.

The programme’s main problem is that while the often domineering nature of Forsyth’s professional persona could not be made clearer, he proves such an inveterate performer that gaining access to anything more truthful seems impossible. In fact, Nath’s one error may be to step back too far and allow Forsyth’s public face to take control completely; you feel that Theroux himself would have produced a few probing questions capable of shifting the balance of power. But nevertheless, the finished product will no doubt come as a surprise to its central couple, with Forsyth in particular expecting a much more flattering edit.

That Mitchell and Webb Look

2010-07-14T15:14:00.001+01:00

9pm BBC Two, Tuesday 13th July

As their sketch show returns, David Mitchell and Robert Webb distinguish themselves once again as one of the most literate and self-aware double acts around. Beginning with a snidely ironic disclaimer from a BBC studio, in which they apologise for their ‘deeply inappropriate’ comedy creation, the pair go on to imagine what might have happened the first time Caesar tried referring to himself in the third person, and what ambitious cosmetics developers get up to behind ‘Monsieur Garnier’s’ back. A silly Sign Zone spoof escalates brilliantly, becoming an in-jokey tour de force as Webb explores the very worst that mime training has to offer, and there’s a neat cameo from Keeley Hawes in a particularly surreal flight of fancy.

There are one or two returning gags; the laborious Hennimore set-up is back, and still no funnier, while there seems more mileage left in the post-apocalyptic game show - ‘You’re the weakest, so you go first’. (Other sketches seem more surprisingly familiar: The League of Gentlemen are surely owed at least a debt of inspiration for the rowing couple who pause only to coo over their baby, and the well-meaning actor who repeatedly gabbles lines in a consonant-free drawl). But the duo’s piece de resistance this week is a jubilant triumph of intellectualism that simultaneously flatters their audience and provides big laughs. If you’ve ever drunk an ‘expresso’, look out.

Rev

2010-07-01T18:09:00.001+01:00

10pm BBC Two, Monday 28th June

That the role of the Reverend Adam Smallbone, fraught inner-city vicar, was created for Tom Hollander is obvious from the start of this six-part comedy. Puppyish and slightly hopeless here, Hollander is hugely endearing as a man apparently locked in a perpetual struggle to do the right thing. Barring a couple of broadly-drawn neighbourhood eccentrics, Rev has little in common with its most obvious predecessor The Vicar of Dibley, and James Wood’s lovely airy script offers subtle, everyday comedy in place of punchlines. Getting dropped off on a roundabout isn’t the funniest thing that could happen to an east London clergyman, but Hollander’s hangdog resignation as he gazes out across the traffic gets just the right laugh.

This week, a typically weaselly Simon McBurney as the domineering archdeacon is determined to pin Smallbone down on the tricky subject of congregation size. But no sooner are the depleted pews unexpectedly filled with new faces than the vicar identifies them as parents trying to get their children into the C of E school. Among them is Alexander Armstrong, oozing effortlessly across the screen as an oily local MP who just might be able to solve the church’s latest fund-raising problem. Olivia Colman’s role as the Rev’s sensible wife seems thus far rather flimsy, but with charm in spades and a relaxed pace, the series inspires confidence.

Doctor Who: The Big Bang

2010-06-28T19:21:00.001+01:00

6.05pm BBC One, Saturday 26th June

‘You’re being completely ridiculous’, says River Song (Alex Kingston) to the Doctor (Matt Smith) at one point in this concluding part of Steven Moffat’s bewildering series finale. Something which, clearly, no-one dared say to Moffat himself while he was planning the most ruinously over-ambitious storyline since the show’s revival in 2005. Last week saw Amy (Karen Gillan) slain by auton-Rory after an emotional reunion, River trapped in an exploding Tardis, the Doctor locked inside the Pandorica by an alien alliance and the universe itself on the brink of total destruction. That’s a pre-credits teaser, though, in comparison with the bafflingly dense and show-offy plotting that follows it this week. A family sci-fi drama becomes an earnest Hollywood movie about time travel, and Russell T. Davies’ lightness of touch has never been more acutely missed.

That said, Smith turns in an extraordinary performance; touching, witty and deeply sincere – and if we’re just too confused to be moved by some key farewells, the fault lies elsewhere. He’s breezily mischievous when the Doctor indulges in a spot of time vortex manipulation, zipping back and forth across the centuries in the execution of his masterplan: ‘Cheap and nasty way to travel. I’m trying to give it up’. Moffat’s dialogue doesn’t go the same way as his story-telling, mercifully, and it’s as fast, inventive and memorable as ever. By the closing scenes, though, one particularly unwieldy character who looked to have been dispatched for the greater good has made a permanent return, and is anyone else tiring of the rather stagey Kingston’s unrelentingly ‘significant’ remarks as River Song? Brace yourself for more of the same.

When Romeo Met Juliet

2010-06-15T18:11:00.001+01:00

8.45pm BBC Two, Saturday 12th June

The Coventry teenagers who have been rehearsing Shakespeare’s best-loved tragedy for the past eight weeks are now days away from their big night, and even the most laidback among them are getting jittery. Moving into the small but still daunting space of the city’s Belgrade Theatre for final run-throughs, the cast get to grips with the set, fret over costume changes and struggle to project their lines beyond the stalls. One member of the group causes concern when he fails to turn up for either the technical or dress rehearsal, and director Paul Roseby looks a worried man by the time he assembles the young thesps for last-minute notes.

Acting mentors Adrian Lester and Lolita Chakrabati continue to do sterling work, settling nerves and firing the teens’ enthusiasm whenever they start to flag. And don’t miss the chance to see top fight co-ordinator Terry King marshalling the warring Montagues and Capulets in a fascinating combat class. Beth (Juliet) even gets some handy pointers on stabbing herself with the necessary conviction. The series’ largely unsuccessful attempt to introduce real-life conflict by bringing together pupils from an inner city comprehensive and a suburban Catholic school takes a back seat to small, quiet moments of revelation. When Camillo (Benvolio) realises the play’s lasting relevance after weeks spent wrestling frustratedly with his lines, it makes you want to cheer.

Happily, we see plenty of excerpts from the performance itself, while backstage the atmosphere buzzes with adrenalin and an overwhelming sense of triumph. The audience – both inside the theatre and outside watching the action on a big screen – seem rapt, amused by the 1980s-set production’s deft wit and riveted by its spiralling tragedy. When the cast eventually pile jubilantly back into the wings after their curtain calls, their pride is palpable – though a spot of praise for the Bard himself from laconic Glody (Romeo) leaves the strongest impression.

Doctor Who: Vincent and the Doctor

2010-06-07T11:27:00.002+01:00

6.40pm BBC One, Saturday 5th June

Rom-com supremo Richard Curtis was surely the perfect choice to bring warmth and wit back to the excellent current Who series after the tragic events of last week. The Doctor (Matt Smith), now sweetly protective of oblivious Amy (Karen Gillan) has been treating her to a spot of globe-trotting, but at Paris’s Musee d’Orsay he sees something lurking in a corner of Van Gogh’s ‘The Church at Auvers’ that needs immediate attention. Landing the Tardis in Provence in the year 1890, the Doctor and Amy seek out the struggling and unappreciated artist (Tony Curran) in the hope of learning more about the mysterious creature he is about to commit to canvas.

Curran is laudably convincing as the creative genius racked with self-doubt, who nonetheless takes a shine to the Doctor’s flame-haired young companion. There’s plenty of fun to be had as the visitors squeal in horror at the sight of Vincent using his paintings as coasters, or try to tempt him with a display of sunflowers. Smith relishes Curtis’ mischievous script in a scene that has his well-travelled Time Lord reminiscing about a fruitless meeting with Picasso – ‘Now concentrate. It’s one eye either side of the face’ – and listen out for the line that cheekily sidesteps the issue of Curran’s Scottish accent.

Beneath the irreverent humour, though, runs a deep poignancy; both the Doctor and Amy are aware of their new friend’s eventual fate. The fact that the episode is packed with images of remarkable and fleeting beauty serves to sharpen this bittersweetness, and even the resolution of the week’s alien-hunting plotline is unusually touching. Unfortunately, Curtis has gone at least one step too sentimental by the time the credits roll, and an angst-ridden ballad on the soundtrack sticks out horribly. But final moments aside, this is a charming adventure in which the Doctor seizes the chance to offer a fellow visionary a window on his world.

Pulse

2010-06-05T14:59:00.001+01:00

9pm BBC3, Thursday 3rd June

Mystery and menace run through this intriguing hospital drama by Paul Cornell (Doctor Who, Robin Hood) as BBC3 begins a short season of brand new pilots. Little Dorrit star Claire Foy is sympathetic as damaged junior doctor Hannah, but we quickly follow her into a frightening world of medical cover-ups and widespread conspiracy. Stephen Campbell Moore plays a senior medic with his own sinister agenda – hinted at in some grippingly intense and bloody surgical scenes – while Hannah’s fellow trainees try to go about the business of patient care. It’s impossible to know who to trust, and the strong cast, including Ben Miles, Gregg Chillin, Arsher Ali and Emily Beecham, aren’t giving much away.

The action is stylishly directed, creating a frequently nightmarish tension with extreme close-ups, swooshy camerawork and sharp, clever editing. Some of the later plot twists will make you gasp, and the arguably sensationalist ending should nevertheless strengthen the case for a commission. Cornell drops clues about the future with sly confidence, while holding back more than enough to leave horror and drama fans longing for a much-deserved full series.

You Have Been Watching

2010-04-20T12:49:00.002+01:00

10pm Channel 4, Thursday 15th April

With one less than convincing series under its belt, Charlie Brooker’s telly-themed panel show has returned for a second go. And thank heavens for it, because it’s bolder, wittier and infinitely more fun this time around. David Baddiel, Liza Tarbuck and Kevin Bridges keep the joke rate up nicely for the opening episode, and it’s a great relief to see Brooker bringing a sharper blend of bile and banter to the role of quizmaster this year. His searingly acidic Screenwipe persona is never far away – particularly when assessing The Delicious Miss Dahl during a cookery round – but a surface gloss of good humour makes the whole experience feel a little more relaxed.

There’s a neat blend of populism and controversy in the first TV Club feature of the series: Doctor Who, starring divisive new casting choice Matt Smith. (‘A friendly Easter Island statue in a bowtie’ according to our back-on-form host). A lively discussion ensues, while a notably increased clip quota suggests that the series is benefitting from greater investment all round. The aforementioned food show segment then provides some of Brooker’s best lines, but also leads into a MasterChef-spoofing improv game which could and should have been cut long before it reached the studio.

The final key item once again situates You Have Been Watching as the altogether more risqué cousin of Harry Hill’s TV Burp with a look at Bravo’s sex-and-spears gorefest Spartacus: Blood and Sand. Inexplicably, no-one points out that the graphic footage clearly shows John Hannah executing his own career, but Baddiel offers a perceptive take on how the laughable Roman romp ever got commissioned in the first place. On the strength of this confident comeback, there’s no excuse for missing the rest of YHBW’s run while it continues to serve TV and comedy fans so generously.

Mad Men

2010-04-16T23:20:00.002+01:00

10pm BBC4, Wednesday 14th April

As Mad Men’s fans have long appreciated, there’s one advantage to slow-burning, minutely observed drama that trumps all others: the potential energy of restraint. In this American dream-land of secrets, lies and immaculate tailoring, a raised voice or a charged glance goes off like a bomb. And so it is in this thrilling series finale, as the growing personal and professional tensions surrounding ad man Don Draper (Jon Hamm) finally build into simultaneous crises. Wife Betty (January Jones) declares her intention to obtain a divorce in terms that even Don can’t ignore any longer, and the Sterling Cooper company comes up for sale, forcing its chief players to make critical decisions about their future.

Both situations trigger flashbacks to rural Depression-era America as our self-made hero is painfully reminded of a deprived and brutal childhood. Revealing as these scenes are, the real jolt comes from returning to the action in 1960s Manhattan with an even keener sense of the pressure that’s building behind Don’s flawless mask of inscrutability. Hamm achieves the seemingly impossible task of hinting at things that his character isn’t outwardly showing - to anyone. The show’s writers are also brave enough to explore Don’s capacity for misogyny and malice in a chilling nocturnal confrontation, while Draper children Sally (Kiernan Shipka) and Bobby bring a devastating poignancy to the scene in which their parents break the news of their separation.

The episode’s lighter moments come from the dazzlingly bold plan formulated by Don, Bert Cooper (Robert Morse) and Roger Sterling (John Slattery) to ensure they emerge from the company troubles with careers and prospects intact. As they approach their colleagues one by one and pitch their proposal, there’s a building sense of palpable excitement about the possibility of beginning a truly new era. The Sterling Cooper workforce may be a deeply dysfunctional ensemble of flawed and complex people, but you’ll be praying that the ‘old gang’ gets back together nevertheless.

Wonders of the Solar System

2010-04-06T17:25:00.001+01:00

9pm BBC Two, Easter Sunday

It has to be said I didn’t particularly warm to rock-star-scientist-Brian-Cox at first, despite the fact that folk with taste have been dribbling on about him for months, if not years. A brief glimpse at 2009’s Godless Christmas melange of comedy and rationalism didn’t seem enough to go on, and my high hopes for this latest series were somewhat crushed when Cox started over-enunciating his narration like a man teaching English as a second language.

But a lingering suspicion that I’d judged too soon was confirmed when he proved a sharp and wittily self-deprecating guest on Jonathan Ross’s sofa. Revisiting Wonders, it was suddenly clear that, idiosyncratic delivery aside, Cox turns the prospect of primetime astrophysics into a reality that’s nothing short of thrilling. This is a scientific discovery as filmed for MTV, elegiac indie-pop soundtracking our photogenic frontman atop a rocky outcrop at sunset.

In this final episode of the series, Cox explores the feasibility of life elsewhere in the solar system; specifically, on Mars and Europa, a moon of Jupiter. He journeys two kilometres down to the bottom of the Sea of Cortez to observe an ‘alien’ deep sea ecosystem, visits the Scablands region in the north-west USA and makes some unlikely discoveries in a toxic Mexican cave. His accessible blend of sound science and intelligent speculation (rooted in these comparable landscapes) brings alive current theories about the possibility of water, and thus primitive organisms, worlds away from Earth.

Don’t miss the end; the programme and the series close with the most uplifting five minutes of television you’re likely to see all week, as Cox eloquently celebrates the planet we know better than any other. And reminds us why, whatever the answer, the question of whether or not we are alone in the universe so urgently needs to be asked.

Doctor Who: The Eleventh Hour

2010-04-04T16:41:00.001+01:00

6.20pm BBC One, Easter Saturday

How does controversial new Doctor Matt Smith fare in his first adventure? Frankly, he’s an embarrassment. He’s so expressive, charming and deftly witty that he shows up all manner of problems elsewhere, from over-elaborate story and contrivedly eccentric dialogue – ‘Can I have an apple? All I can think of is apples!’ – to an apparently endless slapstick montage in a kitchen. The man’s a liability – so totally at ease that he wins your confidence even before he’s properly earned it and leaves you picking holes in a series opener that itself seems slightly nervous and overworked.

One thing that devotees of the Tennant era are going to have to get over is the immediately upbeat tone. The 10th Doctor might have been distraught over his regeneration but ‘new face, new attitude’ seems to be the approach here, and when Doctor no. 11 crash-lands in a small red-haired girl’s garden he’s all curiosity and excitement. It’s a brave move but has presumably the intended distancing effect; Smith is able to dash around – and there is a lot of dashing – saving the day without hauling the emotional baggage of five years behind him.

Talented child actress Caitlin Blackwood plays unfazed but lonely young Amelia Pond, who has started hearing voices through a crack in her bedroom wall. The Doctor’s quest to solve this riddle begins with an escaped interplanetary prisoner and takes him, via a couple of Girl in the Fireplace-style errors of judgement, to a hospital’s coma ward, a village green and ultimately a fun rooftop showdown that further underlines Smith’s right to his new role.

The grown-up ‘Amy’ Pond (Karen Gillan) is a shade too Nancy Drew at this stage – her ‘surprise’ face is prettily telegenic but not quite believable – while events get heaped on top of each other in place of genuinely breathless action. And, alarmingly, there’s no sense of real peril at all – this is one of the lightest Who romps yet. Smith himself dominates, firing off writer and showrunner Steven Moffat’s better quips with plummy panache and perfect comic timing. Hear that? It’s the sound of a nation sighing with relief.

Tropic of Cancer

2010-03-28T14:52:00.002+01:00

8pm BBC Two, Sunday 21st March

As this informative travelogue progresses, it’s fascinating to watch little-known regions of the world being brought into the spotlight simply by virtue of lying on the latitudinal line in question. This week, intrepid presenter Simon Reeve begins his journey in Western Sahara, an arid area of North Africa with a fraught and complex recent history of occupation and civil war. It’s in places like this that the deceptively laidback Reeve’s journalistic background comes to the fore; after hearing the resident Moroccans’ side of the story, he embarks on a tense night-time mission to meet up with independence activists.

In Mauritania, he and the crew have a hairy experience driving through heavily land-mined desert when their new driver asks for clarification of the route. Later, a light-hearted analysis of female beauty with guide Hamdi is offset by the revelation that the country’s young women are sometimes force-fed to improve their marriage prospects. The journey also takes in one of the longest trains in the world, camel trading in the Algerian city of Tamanrasset and the astonishing Libyan Al Kufra project, an enormous pipeline set to distribute water from lakes beneath the Sahara.

The voiceover may be heavy on political and historical detail, but Reeve is such an engaging presence onscreen - clever but genial, with a hint of Louis Theroux's faux-naivety - that it’s his boundless curiosity which makes the strongest impression. And, pleasingly, the programme makers leave room for marvelling at the region’s striking, sun-blanched landscapes and huge skies. I defy anyone to watch the team go off-roading across Libya’s stunning sand dunes without wanting to join them.

Rhod Gilbert’s Work Experience

2010-03-20T19:21:00.002Z

10pm BBC Two, Wednesday 17th March

‘I am going to mop the floor now. Who’s excited?’ deadpans Welsh comedian Rhod Gilbert midway through this good-natured parenting challenge. He’s a long way away from the Hammersmith Apollo and his ambivalent audience are one-year-old Megan and three-year-old Gwennie, but Gilbert’s dry, sardonic wit is undoubtedly what makes the show work so well. The series which last week saw him enter the unglamorous world of refuse collection now has our have-a-go presenter becoming ‘mum’ for 24 hours to the seven junior members of the Phillips family in the Vale of Glamorgan, and it’s a non-stop merry-go-round of school runs, meals and housework.

The premise, set out at the start of the programme, seems a little passé – do stand-up comics really still get people telling them they have a tough job? Gilbert’s determination to show us all that stay-at-home parents have a harder time is clearly doomed to instant success, but that’s not the point. The real magic is in seeing how joyously natural Gilbert proves to be with kids, despite having none of his own, while his relentlessly sarcastic voiceover shoots down anything resembling sentimentality. The pint-sized star of the show is the perpetually toddling Megan, largely silent except for anguished screams whenever she comes anywhere near a car seat, but engaged with by Gilbert in impossibly sweet faux-conversations that could make inanimate objects feel vaguely broody.

The sheer number of children involved makes everything more complicated, and it seems that at least one of them needs transporting somewhere roughly every half an hour. But Gilbert’s essential rapport with them chalks him up several successes, including a family pizza-making session, apparently hours of cleaning - and a car singalong rendition of Motorhead’s Ace of Spades. Of course, real mum Steph is never far away, and has to intervene when Megan gets grouchy at the supermarket, or wakes in the night. The obvious necessity of having her on hand makes Gilbert’s conclusion that he can only do some of the things mums do, and can’t actually ‘be’ a mum, seem a little lacking in insight. But he is likeable company throughout, and lends a potentially formulaic concept enormous charm.

Eddie Izzard: Marathon Man

2010-03-09T22:17:00.001Z

10.30pm BBC3, Thursday 4th March

There’s something about the concept of long-distance running that renders it virtually meaningless unless you can actually see it happening. Faced with the news that someone has run between two places miles apart, most people adopt a vague imaginative shorthand that consists of alternating a generic illustrated sportsperson frozen in mid-stride with the relevant section of the AA road atlas. Like one of those spinning toys with a bird on one side and a cage on the other, Faceless Athlete gets superimposed onto Route Map in our mind’s eye, gliding effortlessly towards the finish line untroubled by, say, weather, or a state of health.

Consequently, all of us who were briefly impressed by Eddie Izzard’s 43 marathons in 51 days for Sport Relief last year are currently having our minds blown by this three-part series that captures (almost) every excruciating step of his achievement. Suddenly, a protracted slog around the UK becomes the superhuman feat of endurance through torrential rain, near-incessant pain, blistered feet, exhaustion and inexperience it was. And at the end of this week’s episode, precisely why the middle-aged comedian with no running background decided to even attempt it remains a glorious mystery.

Izzard is almost gleeful about revealing his lack of preparation to sports consultant Dr Mike Loosemore when he undergoes an assessment four weeks before the planned – but as yet unpublicised - start of his challenge. With 47 years behind him, pre-existing leg injuries and flat feet, his chances of success would seem minute if not for the extraordinary Izzard self-belief that’s more fearlessness than arrogance. We join him as he completes a less-than-encouraging practice run with trainer and former Olympian Professor Greg Whyte and then, all of a sudden, he’s tweeting news of the project to his Twitter followers and setting off at a lope from Trafalgar Square.

He’s not what you’d call focused and cheerfully breaks for a Calippo beside a lake near Staines, or to take snaps of roadside milestones. In Devizes, a customised ice cream van appears to help the fund-raising effort, while a gaggle of curious children on bicycles briefly follow in Izzard’s wake. But as the miles take their toll physically and psychologically, the mood changes and we are allowed flashes of knowing self-analysis. Hearing a man discuss his mother’s untimely death and its lasting impact between gasping breaths on the road to his family home in Wales makes for powerful and unnervingly direct viewing. This may only be the first instalment but I feel inadequate already; watch Izzard refusing to walk, rather than run, up a shudderingly steep hill in the Brecon Beacons and you may want to cry.

Being Human

2010-03-06T19:42:00.001Z

9pm BBC3, Sunday 28th February

Last week’s thrilling penultimate episode was breathless, bloody and heart-in-mouth tense, but writer/creator Toby Whithouse knows better than to simply end the series with more of the same. Fireworks over, the pace slows here as we join werewolves George (Russell Tovey) and Nina (Sinead Keenan) in the grim industrial ‘facility’ that promises to cure them. Annie (Lenora Crichlow) has come along for the ride, her reasons kept to herself for now, and Mitchell...hasn’t. Yet. As events begin to unfold, what exactly Mitchell (Aidan Turner) is doing becomes a question of some considerable concern.

In an hour of stark, efficient drama enhanced by the coldly angular lines and spooky blue/greys of the research centre’s functional interior, George begins to question his hosts’ intentions and at last learns of the momentous decision made by Annie last week. There are some beautifully underplayed scenes between George and the more trusting Nina as they are torn between the impulses of fear and desperation, while a lonely and distracted Annie is briefly cheered by the presence of sympathetic psychic Hennessey (a likeably quirky Adrian Schiller).

Director Charles Martin sets the lighting to ‘occasional’ – the research building is poorly wired, apparently, but it seems rather convenient and obvious, and the constant flickering and black-outs leave Nina dispensing optimism in rooms that would scream ‘run’ to anyone else. They do provide an atmospheric backdrop to the gruesome murders that start taking place in the facility’s quieter corners, though, which eventually alert Kemp (Donald Sumpter) and his cronies to the fact that they may have an uninvited guest.

Whithouse shows his consistent attention to detail throughout – there’s a clever passing nod to werewolf Tully from the first series - and the taut script is packed with highlights including an epic central confrontation between two characters with blood on their hands. The climactic scenes are terrifying and dominated by a huge loss, with Turner, Tovey and Crichlow on remarkable form. The character of religious nut Kemp has become a mite cartoonish during recent weeks and there’s no let-up here, while you may feel that the episode manages to ‘end’ at least three times over, but the set-up for the confirmed third series is tantalising.

The Secret Diary of a Call Girl

2010-03-02T23:18:00.003Z

10pm ITV2, Thursday 25th February

The fun and frothy comedy-drama keeps things moving nicely in this latest episode, wisely identifying that pacy beats racy when it comes to primetime prostitution. After a slight mis-step last week, the show’s winning combination of sharp humour, sweet sentiment and soapy angst is back, as Belle/Hannah (an assured Billie Piper) embarks on a date with enigmatic publisher Duncan (James D’Arcy).

First, though, client-of-the-week is a role play enthusiast who has Belle joining him in a meticulously planned Bond fantasy. Her worries about forgetting the script prove unfounded and he congratulates her on giving ‘500 per cent!’ to the performance like an am-dram troupe leader directing the village panto. It’s a funny and understated nod to the frequent peculiarities of Belle’s profession – particularly when he suggests the set-up for their next appointment.

Back in the real world, a frosty Ben (Iddo Goldberg) has no qualms about letting his feelings about Belle’s burgeoning romance with Duncan show when they drop in to the bar, while the disarmingly direct Byron (David Dawson) attempts to engage them in chummy small talk. The subsequent deftly drawn scenes follow Belle and Duncan as they go to the opera, play a surprisingly endearing game of spot-the-escort in the foyer and ultimately bail out in favour of a quiet drink – when an unexpected encounter sees things turn sour.

Piper and D’Arcy are consistently subtle but sparky in their sketching of Belle and Duncan’s complex, layered relationship, aided by Lucy Prebble’s wonderfully economical script. Look out for their awkward coded conversation when Belle spots a familiar face in a crowd. Worth mentioning too here is Dawson who briefly turns aristocratic young charmer Byron into a spineless adolescent. Bad news for his whirlwind fiancée Bambi...

Being Human

2010-02-27T19:03:00.002Z

9pm BBC3, Sunday 21st February

This devastating penultimate episode of series two will probably make you want to rush round to 1 Windsor Terrace with a comforting stew, telling its occupants with as much conviction as you can muster that everything’s going to be alright. The irony, however, is that there’d be no-one home; with relations between the supernatural housemates fracturing, each now facing his or her own personal hell, the familiar pink house has been abandoned – possibly forever – by the time the credits roll.

Far from merely laying the groundwork for a dramatic finale, writer Toby Whithouse provides more visceral, nerve-shredding shocks here than we’ve seen in the series so far, masterfully bringing the storylines of George (Russell Tovey), Mitchell (Aidan Turner) and Annie (Lenora Crichlow) to crisis point. While George struggles to deal with the return of Nina (Sinead Keenan), a visit from creepy priest Kemp (Donald Sumpter) and the most nightmarish school parents’ evening ever, Mitchell joins forces with the unhinged Daisy (Amy Manson) to exact retribution for last week’s explosion, and a weary Annie takes a very big step indeed.

A pre-titles flashback sequence set in 1941 brings us the first meeting between Ivan (a suave and self-possessed Paul Rhys) and Daisy, here a young widow whose ambitions look to have been dashed by unexpected single motherhood. It’s a lovely send-off for Rhys, whose towering performance has made even Ivan’s briefest scenes crackle with intensity during the past seven weeks. Back in the present day, Daisy and Mitchell – one hungrily vengeful, the other almost numb – set out to discover the identity of the funeral parlour bombers as only they can. News of doctor Lucy’s betrayal seems to trip a switch for Mitchell, and the vamps’ swift act of retaliation is bloody, brutal and horrifying.

While Whithouse bravely tests our loyalty to one member of the BH trio, the others have rarely been so vulnerable. Keen to play happy families with Sam (Lucy Gaskell), George slips up and finds himself trapped in the most appallingly mistimed transformation imaginable. Tovey’s stunningly physical performance conveys a combination of extreme pain and absolute terror – filmed in dizzying hand-held close-up - to create one of the stand-out sequences of the series. Crichlow, meanwhile, continues to reveal more of the fear, emptiness and deep sorrow that lie beneath Annie’s flappy mother hen facade, and amid the plot fireworks elsewhere, her approach to Kemp for help of the most final kind is beautifully moving.

The knowledge that the BBC’s Being Human HQ will soon be moving to Cardiff lends poignancy and truth to Whithouse’s understated line ‘We’re not coming back here again, are we?’. There’s also an essential and unsustainable ‘wrongness’ about the image of Mitchell, black-eyed and desperate at the kitchen table, and caught every bit as neatly between man and monster as George on full moon night, that we are presented with during the episode’s final minutes. Once again, Being Human shows just how much can be achieved by a drama series that’s unafraid of change.

Natural World: The Wild Places of Essex

2010-02-15T17:32:00.001Z

8pm BBC Two, Wednesday 10th February

In an age when our finest watch-and-gawp nature documentaries are focused on producing the sharpest, most dazzling images possible, a poetic little treat like this stands out for daring to invest equally in the words that accompany them. Presenter Robert Macfarlane is on a mission to upturn the stereotypical idea of Essex as the nation’s rubbish heap, and the programme succeeds in combining breathtaking footage of wild Essex with his achingly lovely musings on the magnetism of natural spaces.

Look out for rust-stained seals photographed in gorgeous, elegiac slo-mo, and the circling flock of knot that turn in flight and ‘ping’ (Macfarlane’s perfectly-chosen word) into focus as the light catches their feathers. There’s a beautiful barn owl sequence, an inspiring look at the regeneration of the once-neglected Rainham Marshes – now home to a thriving water vole population – and a visit to the surreal and spectacularly dilapidated ‘seaside shanty town’ Jaywick. Most tingle-inducingly of all, Macfarlane spends a night star-gazing on the Dengie peninsula – the darkest place in Essex – and his thoughts on the sense of ‘inverse vertigo’ it engenders will stay with you for weeks.

While the wonderfully lyrical narration quotes Gerard Manley Hopkins, the soundtrack briefly segues into the altogether earthier 'Billericay Dickie' by Essex-born Ian Dury for a section on badgers. The whole conceit is ludicrously well-produced, and its attention to detail immaculate. Devoid of 21st century television’s pervasive sense of urgency, Macfarlane concludes by simply throwing his ideas about wilderness, infinity and escape out into the ether and leaving them there. A spellbinding hour.

Being Human

2010-01-27T22:51:00.002Z

9pm BBC3, Sunday 24th January

The supernatural drama series continues to raise the stakes as its second series continues, and this week’s fleeting moments of domestic comedy between werewolf George (Russell Tovey) and ghost Annie (Lenora Crichlow) have never been more crucial. Their vampire housemate Mitchell (Aidan Turner) is becoming increasingly absent, spending his time brooding darkly beside a selection of Bristol landmarks as his bloodthirsty fellow vamps run riot in the post-Herrick power vacuum. While a reluctant Mitchell becomes inexorably drawn into re-establishing ‘the system’ – a network of human collaborators skilled in covering up evidence of vampire activity – George and Annie form a match-making double act intent on reuniting lovelorn publican Hugh (Nathan Wright) and his rueful ex Kirsty (Lauren O’Neil). It’s a potentially clunky mix of fantasy horror and cute rom-com, but by confronting this problem head-on with scenes in which George and Annie berate the distant Mitchell for not pulling his weight at home, writer Lucy Catherine holds on to a kind of realism throughout.

We begin with a flashback to 1665 in which a ramshackle community living in Bristol’s underground cave network are found guilty of ‘witchcraft’ and punished accordingly – and messily. Back in the present day, a young couple are found – one dead, one seriously injured – displaying what hospital cleaner Mitchell recognises as the signs of vampire attack. Forced to act by this potentially catastrophic flagrancy, Mitchell orders a meeting of his blood-sucking brethren at an abandoned church; a fabulously urban-Gothic scene in which Turner shows real command and charisma. When he reminds the insubordinate audience before him that ‘My name is John Mitchell and I’ve killed more people than you’ve met’, a preposterous line becomes almost – almost – believable. His suggestion that they should all renounce blood rather than risk discovery, however, does not go down well. The provocative Daisy (Amy Manson) is quick to remind him that his fellow vampires helped him to successfully go clean, and her demand to know whether they should all be asked to act against their nature for the sake of their persecutors puts Mitchell’s plan in serious jeopardy.

Back at the house, and worlds away in tone, Annie is considering the issues of tea and grocery shopping while George quietly pines for the departed Nina. When George breaks the news to Hugh in a deftly and surprisingly comic scene that the newly invisible Annie has ‘gone’, Annie is prompted to try to do some good in the world before her time in limbo runs out. The ensuing sequence of backfiring attempts to remind Kirsty of her former feelings for Hugh provides a welcome counterpoint to Mitchell’s bigger and bloodier battle, and by the time Annie tries to initiate a spot of in-house bonding her idea seems, rightly, laughable. The series has also been showing its confidence more and more often in stunning wide-angle location shots and this episode is no exception, with some gorgeous panoramic estuary views as Mitchell begins to blackmail Herrick’s former allies into submission. The pace accelerates as his network of enablers swings into action once again, but one familiar face is set on tearing up Mitchell’s brand new rule book – with chilling consequences. It’s such an eventful journey that no viewer will be anticipating – or even ready for – the gasp-inducing final seconds.

Wallander

2010-01-19T23:04:00.001Z

9pm BBC One, Sunday 17th January

There’s nothing like the stark geometry and lovely glacial theme song of Wallander’s opening title sequence to herald 90 minutes of superior crime drama. This final episode in the current three-part run not only delivers a gripping whodunnit and landscape photography to die for, but provides the detective’s growing state of emotional crisis with a devastating pay-off. By the time Kenneth Branagh’s titular Swede emerges at the other end of a particularly hard psychological battering, you’ll feel pretty bruised yourself – and in awe of Branagh’s spectacular gift of empathy.

The story begins with a gruesome murder in which a spiked trap is rigged for an unwitting birdwatcher. Soon afterwards, a local florist disappears and is found strangled in woodland, initiating a search for the connection between the two men. Wallander’s own contribution to the investigation is affected, though, by an especially personal loss – the news of which leaves him blindsided. Branagh’s performance is immaculately judged as the detective stumbles through the usual absurd and incongruous responses to grief, sits abstracted in meetings and loses track of himself mid-sentence.

Some will no doubt argue that all he really needs is a less annoying ringtone and colleagues who offer more than the icy faux-concern of ambitious young Martinsson (Tom Hiddleston). But the co-ordinates are set to existential angst and Wallander sinks further during a deliciously revealing funeral scene. Meanwhile, a possible link between the dead men emerges – and when a third victim is discovered, the race is soon on to save the murderer’s next intended target. The nerve-shredding climax at Ystad rail station, bringing together with harrowing effect Wallander’s personal and professional responsibilities, is testament to director Aisling Walsh’s story-telling and a magnificently nuanced central performance.

Snow Watch

2010-01-18T21:37:00.002Z

8pm BBC Two, Wednesday 13th January

Determined to offer some snow-based broadcasting that doesn’t centre on travel chaos, the Spring Watch and Autumn Watch team have produced this impromptu one-off special looking at the effect of the recent freezing weather on Britain’s wildlife. It feels a touch thrown together, but pleasingly so, with presenters Chris Packham and Kate Humble reprising their lively and bantering partnership at ‘Watch HQ in Bristol. It’s also refreshing to hear people marvelling over beautifully frosted scenery after weeks of transport grumbles and increasing national boredom with all things sub-zero.

Packham is as puppyish and fact-filled as ever, revealing the reason why – and I have actually wondered this – it is often possible to walk through woodland in winter and see barely any birds at all. (It’s to do with energy-conserving ‘mixed species’ feeding flocks). We also get another of his gloriously geeky ‘Science with Chris’ segments, this one wheeling out some terrifying terminology to account for the fact that birds don’t stick to frozen branches or melt surface ice. Martin Hughes-Games peers out from behind his own hair for long enough to remind us all not to drive deer to exhaustion by chasing after them – thank heavens he got the word out in time – and to celebrate the winter migrant sightings that have been recently reported in many suburban gardens.

Comedy highlight of the show is an honour that could be bestowed nowhere but on Simon King’s brown hare impersonation, part of a lengthy but illuminating section on animal tracking in snow. You’ll start off scoffing at the need for instruction – how hard can it be? – but wait ‘til he charts the progress of a hunting fox in microscopic detail. There’s some striking seasonal footage, too; it’s hard not to be envious of the conservation team filmed feeding a veritable flock of red kites in Wales, though Spring Watch and Autumn Watch regular Gordon Buchanan gets unusually short shrift with just a few minutes on the Isle of Mull. The core presenters round things up efficiently back in the studio with a pleasingly rational round-table chat; climate and weather are different things, they point out, and these conditions are dramatic but short-term. Ultimately, you can’t stop Spring.

Doctor Who: The End of Time, Part 2

2010-01-05T23:45:00.002Z

6.40pm BBC One, New Year’s Day

Was it inevitable that the second half of David Tennant’s farewell spectacular would be slightly disappointing? With so much to achieve – a suitably dazzling climax, the tidying of loose ends, a dignified send-off and, finally, regeneration – even Russell T Davies was always going to struggle. But while, plot-wise, Part Two is messy, over-written and lacks the coherence of its predecessor, Davies hits the spot so reliably during the episode’s moments of emotional drama that its failings become quite forgivable.

John Simm’s joyously deranged Master drives the action at first, dizzy with the thrill of successfully turning the world’s population into multiple incarnations of himself. There’s a great, sparky scene between the Master and the fearless Wilf (Bernard Cribbins), which becomes something quite spine-tingling when the Doctor offers his power-crazed nemesis one final chance to change. Tennant and Simm share a remarkable ability to project their otherness through a tangibly human form, and their complex relationship probably should have remained at the heart of this Doctor’s final outing.

They share the stage, however, with the remaining Time Lords – led by Timothy Dalton as Rassilon – who are set on escaping the Time War via a link forged by the Master and initiated by the drumbeat signal implanted in his mind. At least, that is what emerges from a repeat play; little of the ‘sci-’ can be extricated from this puzzling ‘-fi’ on first viewing. Unappealing characters decked out in the now dated apparel of past Who, the Time Lords push the episode towards melodrama, and by the time Gallifrey itself materialises in the sky, it’s all become a bit embarrassing.

We could probably also have done without the comedy at this stage; a slapstick rescue attempt suggests Davies felt obliged to briefly leaven the mood, while an airborne chase/shoot-out scene seems too long. But the best moments – and there are many – quietly underscore the sense of desperate loss felt by the Doctor as the end of his life approaches, including a scene of real stillness between Tennant and Cribbins as the Doctor and Wilf bond over the bittersweetness of survival. And the punch-in-the-stomach shock of realisation as the Doctor discovers exactly how the long foretold prophecy of his death will be fulfilled is as stark and savage as his railing anger when the fatal time comes.

Any accusations of sentimentality can surely only be levelled at the closing few minutes, when the Doctor revisits past companions and allies before he changes forever. Martha (Freema Agyeman) and Mickey (Noel Clarke) may be unnecessarily married, but the other encounters - Sarah-Jane (Elizabeth Sladen), Captain Jack (John Barrowman), Donna (Catherine Tate), an especially touching Billie Piper as the young Rose - are deftly written and a worthy reward for viewers who have been part of this world for the past four years. And if you’re feeling strangely fragile by the Doctor’s final ‘I don’t want to go’, Matt Smith’s potentially misjudged first appearance – chipper and chirpy and terribly, deliberately new – may not help.

The Day of the Triffids; The Turn of the Screw

2010-01-03T20:27:00.003Z

9pm BBC One, Monday 28th/Tuesday 29th December; 9pm BBC Two, Wednesday 30th December

Keen to pursue a serious acting career, Eddie Izzard – playing darkly mysterious opportunist Torrence – should probably have steered well clear of The Day of the Triffids. A contemporary retelling of the classic 1951 giant plant melodrama, it creaks along under the weight of some awkward environmentalism and an implausible yet snoringly dull romance between leads Bill Masen (Dougray Scott) and Jo Playton (Joely Richardson). Izzard’s unfortunate choice is nevertheless his loss and our gain, as he consistently outperforms his co-stars to create a charismatic and inscrutable central villain. It’s not enough, though, and between writer Patrick Harbinson’s leaden dialogue, trite narration from Bill and some nauseating sentimentality featuring two orphaned children, unsuspecting viewers will surely fall by the wayside with the inevitability of triffid victims. The leafy killers don’t even prove particularly scary, and the overdone sound effects can’t distract from their clumsy, lumbering gait and general air of bewilderment.

Where Triffids long outstays its welcome at a wearying three hours, fellow BBC One dramatisation The Turn of the Screw offers a taut, tense 90 minutes of classic creepiness as the spooky Henry James favourite is transplanted to the 1920s. Michelle Dockery is convincingly naïve as young governess Ann who, infatuated with her prospective employer, takes on the job of educating his thoroughly odd young niece and nephew. Her arrival at the orphans’ gloomy country home – all echoey corridors, dour staff and flickering candlelight – does not bode well, and the scares start before she’s even unpacked. Child stars Eva Sayer and Josef Lindsay are outstanding as the apparently saintly siblings whose increasingly weird behaviour leads Ann to suspect that they are in touch with otherworldly forces; Lindsay in particular has a truly unnerving screen presence. As events begin to slide out of control, even the most cynical will struggle to resist the thrilling momentum of a ghost story masterfully told.

Hamlet

2010-01-03T20:24:00.001Z

5.05pm BBC Two, Boxing Day

That half of BBC Two’s Boxing Day evening schedule should be taken up with a Shakespeare play of over three hours’ duration says something significant about the popularity of its star performer. David Tennant rejoins the RSC – the company to which he belonged years before Doctor Who assured him household name status and widespread adulation – for a TV adaptation of the production which attracted such critical acclaim during 2008. For any would-be theatre-goers disappointed when Tennant was forced to pull out of the London run due to injury, it’s a chance to find out what they missed. For them and everyone else, it’s a gripping and elegantly staged treat.

This contemporary Elsinore, with its CCTV surveillance system, two-way mirrors and choking atmosphere of mistrust, serves as an effective backdrop to Hamlet’s deep psychological crisis. While Who fans will recognise something of the Doctor’s restless energy and wit in what is often a dazzlingly physical performance, Tennant’s to-camera soliloquies burn with quiet intensity. An artfully directed ‘To be, or not to be’, a dim light barely picking Hamlet out of the shadows, is hypnotic. There’s a regrettable lack of chemistry with Mariah Gale’s rather lacklustre Ophelia, but Edward Bennett – Tennant’s impressive London replacement – makes a strong, sincere Laertes. The whole cast, however, succeed in making a sometimes opaque text sparklingly clear in meaning: possibly this production’s finest achievement.

Doctor Who: The End of Time, Part 1

2010-01-03T20:19:00.002Z

6pm BBC One, Christmas Day

We’re halfway through the tenth Doctor’s two-part swansong and one thing is clear: Russell T. Davies has written the unforgettable Tennant era to a close the only way he knows how. With the best episode yet. Or, if that seems like hyperbolic nonsense, the darkest, grittiest and most spectacularly cinematic episode yet. Either way, it’s very, very good.

The Doctor is now heart-wrenchingly aware that the prophecy of his own demise – first uttered during 2008’s Planet of the Ood - is about to be fulfilled. When he first appears here, it’s with new tales of intergalactic adventure, told with something like his usual bonhomie, but a troubling encounter with the Ood soon exposes the fear that lies beneath. The Master (John Simm) - last seen on a funeral pyre after dying in the Doctor’s arms – is returning, but according to the Ood, something even more catastrophic may be following close behind.

So begins a thrillingly tense, desperately sad, wonderfully grimy hour of edge-of-seat entertainment. It would be patronising and inaccurate to call Simm a revelation as this mercurial, uncontrollable new Master, who has gained solid form thanks to a shady billionaire, but his mania and lust for power leave former incarnation Harry Saxon in the shade. It’s a transfixing, utterly unselfconscious performance guaranteed to leave a lasting impression on kids and grown-ups alike, never more powerfully than during a magnificent set-piece confrontation with the Doctor on a patch of desolate industrial wasteland.

There are tears, too, and few actors who could deliver them with Tennant’s devastating realism, as the Doctor watches oblivious former companion Donna (Catherine Tate) through a café window with Donna’s granddad Wilf (an effortless Bernard Cribbins). For a second, regret mixes with naked dread to conjure a Doctor we barely recognise, and the effect is chilling. A few fleeting moments of humour prevent things getting too maudlin – Wilf walks away with comedy line of the episode, and his army of intrepid pensioners (led by June Whitfield as Minnie) are a neat distraction – but Davies doesn’t let us forget ourselves for long.

As the week-long gap between Parts One and Two looms, we hurtle towards the most tantalising of cliffhangers, in which Donna threatens to remember her life with the Doctor, billionaire Joshua Naismith (David Harewood) reveals his plans for the Master, and the Master in turn reveals his own jaw-dropping plans for the planet. Plus, there’s a final twist that will cause sharp intakes of breath across the country. After 60 minutes, the Who team have their audience exactly where they want them.

Victoria Wood’s Midlife Christmas

2010-01-03T17:33:00.002Z

9pm BBC One, Christmas Eve

In a festive special that genuinely feels like a Christmas treat, Victoria Wood makes a welcome return to her spiritual home, the sketch show. Leading the running gags is a brilliantly observed costume drama spoof entitled Lark Pies to Cranchesterford, in which 19th century teens stitch text-speak messages to each other and get their hair straightened by mallet. It starts silly and gets sillier, but the visual jokes alone are priceless; look out for the opportunistic painter cashing in on the popularity of a strangely familiar outdoor attraction.

Wood also brings back the character of actress Bo Beaumont, once Acorn Antiques’ Mrs Overall and now, in a series of almost painfully accurate TV industry skits, would-be reality show star. Jason Watkins plays it heroically straight as the filmmaker documenting Beaumont’s attempt at a comeback, while Julie Walters effortlessly reprises her role as the failed thespian now failing in a wide variety of other arenas, including Strictly Come Dancing, Who Do You Think You Are? and Dancing on Ice. Guests Anton du Beke, Delia Smith and Torvill and Dean play their parts with aplomb.

There’s less mileage in Wood’s rather predictable sporting creation The Midlife Olympics, in which events such as Ladies’ Outdoor Reversing, Men’s Pedalo and Married Couple Self-Assembly seem likely to raise little more than a titter. But punctuating the running scenarios are some choice single-scene efforts, featuring Reece Shearsmith as a vicar offering his congregation an unusual metaphor for the wisdom of God, and The Apprentice’s Margaret Mountford and Nick Hewer as never seen before. Wood closes gleefully with a deft rewrite of an old favourite, and leaves audiences once again in awe of a unique comic talent.

Merlin

2009-12-23T18:33:00.003Z

5.45pm BBC One, Saturday 19th December

This spectacular, high-drama finale might not progress things quite as far as fans would like, but there is crucial and palpable character development as the series signs off. Following the Great Dragon’s release last week, the result of a desperate bargain made by Merlin (Colin Morgan) himself, Camelot is – literally – under fire from its former prisoner. The gripping opening scenes plunge us straight into the chaos behind the castle’s walls as residents struggle to treat the injured and extinguish the flames, while Arthur (Bradley James) and his knights launch a crossbow counter-attack from the battlements.

What distinguishes this episode from past CGI romps, though, is Merlin’s discovery that the last surviving Dragonlord – the only person who can master the Dragon and save the kingdom – is his unknown father. The decision to play out a moving, bittersweet coming-of-age plotline alongside the most fearsome battle scenes yet is a brave one, and absolutely the right move for the climax of this sometimes predictable second series. As in the tear-jerking druid romance of several weeks ago, Morgan’s reactions are remarkable, conveying here a raw and dizzying mix of confusion, distress and curiosity.

As Merlin and Arthur ride for Dragonlord Balinor’s cave hideout, charged with enlisting his help, there is – amid several typically gratuitous instances of princely shirtlessness – a promising sense that the pair are at last reaching a new level of understanding. There is certainly more than the usual vague, piecemeal progression of Arthur’s character from royal idiot to future king, and when he responds to Uther’s fatherly ‘My concern is for you’, with a simple ‘Mine is for Camelot’, it’s almost spine-tingling.

The episode belongs to Merlin and his newfound father (John Lynch), though, and there are some clever moments of interruption and hopeless frustration when Merlin finds the courage to reveal his identity. The scene in which, beside a woodland campfire, the boy wizard can barely speak for joy at hearing Balinor’s ‘Goodnight, son’ is magical, while what is to come will break your heart.

There is arguably an opportunity missed during the final minutes, and what might have been a delicious cliffhanger is rejected in favour of misplaced glory for Arthur and Merlin’s usual covert heroism. But the wheels of change are in motion – for Morgana too, who looks to have joined the dark side despite being absent this week – and the show surely cannot survive a third run without some tangible advancement through the rich legends of its source.

Buzzcocks – the Doctor Who Special

2009-12-20T15:51:00.002Z

10pm BBC Two, Wednesday 16th December

This promotional dream of a BBC crossover show could so easily have proved a forced and irritating Christmas gimmick, but thanks to host David Tennant’s festive good cheer and some game guests, it’s actually great fun. Of the regulars, Noel Fielding enters into the spirit with more gusto, and his chalk-and-cheese comedy banter with star of the evening Bernard Cribbins is sublime. (Let us hope that his offer of a writing partnership is entirely serious). Cribbins’ fellow Who alumnus Catherine Tate spends the evening collapsing in hysterics at every instance of her own ignorance – funnier than it sounds – and tells a quite typical anecdote about failing to recognise Coldplay’s Chris Martin. On hand to help proceedings along are first an Ood, and later Fulham Brass Band; Fielding comments gleefully that ‘I did an interview for a Dali documentary today and it wasn’t half as weird as this’. If token musos Jo Whiley and Jamie Cullum seem uncomfortable throughout it’s not surprising, and the show could have happily gone on without them.

Live at the Apollo

2009-12-10T15:23:00.001Z

9.30pm BBC One, Friday 4th December

The latest series of Live at the Apollo gets off to a strong start with this double bill between Mancunian everyman Jason Manford and superstar-du-jour Michael McIntyre. Manford is a relaxed host, and builds his own set around stand-up staples such as the North/South divide, computer games and fatherhood. It’s hardly revolutionary, but his appeal lies in an approachable blokeyness and recognisable, warmly funny comments on the pitfalls of ordinary life. His thoughts on initiating conversation in London go down well, as does a cautionary tale about taking Football Manager a shade too seriously. He also handles the potentially awkward ‘celebrity audience member’ section of the show with aplomb, imagining the challenge facing any man attempting to chat up The Real Hustle’s Jessica Clement.

The comedy hit rate does increase discernably, though, when McIntyre takes to the stage. It’s a treat to hear all-new material at last, especially when it’s as energetic and cannily observed as this. A line about pausing live TV leads to a spot-on impersonation of a paused VHS tape, and a recent trip to Curry’s prompts a perfect mime of in-store hoovering and a note on contrasting vacuum techniques. McIntyre also regales us with a creative re-envisioning of Dragon’s Den and a wickedly funny analysis of how SignZone fails to cope with wildlife documentaries. But despite the plentiful laughs throughout, the best is yet to come as McIntyre heads into a spectacular food-based finale. You may never look at wine lists, waiters, bread rolls, post-dessert coffee, salt and pepper or your spice collection in quite the same way again once he has barrelled hilariously through the lot.

Margot

2009-12-09T18:40:00.002Z

9pm BBC4, Monday 30th November

BBC4’s fascinating ‘Women We Loved’ season comes to a triumphant close with a dramatised look at the personal and professional life of ballet icon Margot Fonteyn. Anne-Marie Duff stars as the fading ballerina facing demotion and ultimately retirement, whose career is suddenly rejuvenated by a late-blooming partnership with Russian firebrand and instant celebrity Rudolf Nureyev (Michiel Huisman). Away from the stage, we also observe the decline of Fonteyn’s marriage to Panamanian diplomat ‘Tito’ Arias (a bizarrely-accented but still convincing Con O’Neill), and the strands of her increasingly fraught lifestyle are cleverly interwoven by director Otto Bathurst.

Duff perfectly captures the insecurity of an ageing star whose career seems to be slipping from her grasp, as well as the unaccustomed giddiness later brought on by the attentions of her charismatic new dance partner. Huisman rises to the challenge of portraying the famously intense Nureyev and, while his may be a softer presence onscreen, he is vibrant, flirtatious and often impetuously child-like. The dance sequences themselves could have been problematic, but dance directors the Ballet Boyz (former Royal Ballet alumni Michael Nunn and William Trevitt) have balanced some highly impressive upper body work from Duff and Huisman with steps from professional doubles to create seamless routines.

Equally effective is Bathurst’s decision to punctuate the drama regularly with interview scenes, in which Fonteyn perches stiffly on a sofa to answer pointed questions from the press about her personal life. In many ways, her answers are immaterial; what compels us most strongly is the increasing emptiness of her glamorous, lipsticked smile to camera. O’Neill, too, is a master of suppressed feeling, and the scene in which he responds to news of Fonteyn and Nureyev’s latest specially choreographed ballet seethes with barely concealed bitterness.

The final act of Fonteyn’s story is as improbable and melodramatic as anything she portrayed in dance, and Bathurst’s direction powerfully underlines the cruel timing of her virtually estranged husband’s shooting and subsequent paralysis. O’Neill is remarkable as the paralysed and thwarted Arias – and a word is also needed here for an excellent Derek Jacobi as Fonteyn’s world-weary confidant Frederick Ashton – but the final moments belong to Duff. When she vows, her voice cracking, to fund Arias’ ongoing treatment for ‘as long as I can put one foot in front of another’, the sense of entrapment is heart-breaking.

Doctor Who: The Waters of Mars

2009-11-26T12:00:00.001Z

7pm BBC One, Sunday 15th November

It’s no use pretending; the end of a Who era is fast approaching, and writer Russell T. Davies tackles the Tenth Doctor’s (David Tennant) imminent demise head-on in this second of the year’s specials. Since April’s high-spirited desert adventure Planet of the Dead, the landscape has changed both physically and emotionally as the Doctor finds himself on the surface of Mars in 2059, all too aware that his luck is running out.

Luck is in short supply, too, for the inhabitants of Bowie Base One, Mars’ first human settlement. No sooner has the Doctor met Captain Adelaide Brooke (an elegant, glacial Lindsay Duncan) and her crew, he realises that he has arrived at the base on the day they die – an incident he is forced to recognise as a fixed point in time. The events that will bring about this catastrophe then slowly begin to unfold, as, one at a time, the galactic pioneers are infected with something very nasty indeed that’s lurking in the water supply.

The effects work here is some of the best we’ve seen yet, as the ailing humans morph into empty-eyed mutants with cracked skin and wet, gaping mouths. The decision to slacken the focus on these transformations and play them out in the background of other scenes might sound lazy, but it’s a clever trick that only amplifies the horror of what is not quite visible.

It would be misleading, however, to suggest the episode belongs to anything but Tennant’s increasingly troubled Time Lord, charting an unstoppable course from initial bravado through twitchy, unaccustomed indecision and towards a terrible climactic reckoning with the rules of the universe. The ticking of the Doctor’s own personal timebomb and a growing feeling of powerlessness have awakened something terrifying within him, and Tennant portrays his desperate need for control so convincingly that we are left wondering only why it hasn’t surfaced before.

Duncan supplies sterling support as Adelaide, the woman ‘with starlight in her soul’. She brings a real sense of wonder to the moment in which she reveals to the Doctor that beneath her steely ambition lies a simple child’s dream, and the pair’s final confrontation crackles with her contempt for the man now declaring himself ‘Time Lord victorious’. Her shocking actions during the final minutes at last shake our hero from his delusion, and the drama ends on a note of self-recrimination mixed with genuine fear. As he heads back into the Tardis and towards pastures unknown, the backward glance the Doctor throws over his shoulder seems new and unfamiliar.

Russell Howard’s Good News

2009-11-15T22:49:00.001Z

10.30pm BBC Three, Thursday 12th November

You’d have been forgiven for approaching this new topical comedy series with extreme caution, as its potentially nauseating premise involves taking an uplifting look at the week’s most quirkily chucklesome news stories. Hard-hitting satire is simply not in its vocabulary, and neither are the self-conscious shock tactics of its distant TV relative Russell Brand’s Ponderland. The result could have been either bland or smug, or both, and the fact that this show is neither is testament to the pin-sharp comedian that lies behind Russell Howard’s chipper, laidback screen persona. While the items come from the lighter end of the news bulletins, Howard’s observations on all things ludicrous don’t miss a trick – and his enthusiasm for the bizarre-but-true seems entirely and winningly genuine.

This week, he raises an incredulous eyebrow at subjects ranging from Boris Johnson the crime-fighting hero to the purpose of prayer on your daily commute. There’s an excellent take on the commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, based around the organisers’ peculiarly literal approach to symbolism, which leads neatly into footage of a recent bad day at work for one particular fork lift truck driver. This, in turn, provides a handy segue for a gem of a German workplace safety video which truly needs no commentary at all. It’s fast, slickly edited easy viewing, ideal for BBC3 audiences but with the potential to travel, and Howard’s irrepressible, puppyish energy is infectious.

The only tweak that might be useful if the series returns is the removal of the brief intercut sketches that fail to generate any extra laughs and risk undermining the rhythm of the show. They’re mercifully short, but Howard is not a natural sketch actor and a bit of basic onstage mime might serve the same purpose more effectively. What absolutely must not change, though, is the straight, no-jokes treatment of each show’s final item; an inspiring story of triumph against adversity or simple human goodness. Howard has the tact and sincerity to not only pull this off but to make it feel important, and that truly is worth celebrating.

Twitter feed

2009-11-13T11:55:00.003Z

Delighted to report that a complete absence of technical know-how has not prevented The TellyPort's new Twitter feed from now appearing just over there (points right).

Enjoy!

Merlin

2009-11-10T15:56:00.001Z

5.40pm BBC One, Saturday 7th November

It's no wonder that the inhabitants of Camelot - Merlin (Colin Morgan) and Gaius (Richard Wilson) in particular - will volunteer so happily to die for each other. They've clearly noticed, as we all have, that under no circumstances will they ever be called upon to actually die. It's not that I'm suggesting the family teatime drama should up the body count; rather that its plot developments should centre around something other than transparently empty threats or meaningless gestures. This second series is slowly becoming irredeemably formulaic, and even the performances of its likeable young leads may not be enough to sustain the fun factor for much longer.

This week features a suitably hammy cameo from guest star Charles Dance, who plays the Witchfinder, a mysterious figure enlisted by Uther to rid Camelot of magic once and for all. Naturally, Merlin and Morgana (Katie McGrath) are worried, particularly when the Witchfinder seems to take a peculiar interest in them both. The tone is intentionally far darker than the recent Uther-marries-troll romp starring a fearless Sarah Parish, and the Witchfinder proves pleasingly not to be everything he seems. But the show's writers struggle to accommodate all their central characters in a single storyline - oddly something which seemed to be achieved more often in series one - and here Gwen (Angel Coulby), Arthur (Bradley James) and, in fact, Morgana get shoddy treatment from the script.

Centrestage, meanwhile, are Merlin and his mentor, who are soon engaged in the traditional race to execution when the Witchfinder seizes an enchanted amulet in Gaius' workroom. Merlin, already under suspicion, seems doomed, before Gaius leaps to his aid and declares himself the amulet's owner. This is rather more successful than expected, and Morgana seals the deal when she unwittingly implies that Gaius has been the engineer of her recent troubling dreams. Not to be outdone, Merlin pays a visit to the dragon and begins an investigation of his own…you get the picture. It's just disappointing; does a writing team that has previously shown itself hugely audience-savvy really believe that charades like this can continue to hold our attention?

Spooks

2009-11-10T12:36:00.000Z

9pm BBC One, Wednesday 4th November

Spooks’ traditionally laissez-faire attitude to its characters’ lifespans is generally a commendable thing, lending it a genuine and welcome tension. Not, however, when the character in question is Harry Pearce (Peter Firth), kidnapped at the end of the last series. The MI5 patriarch must never, ever leave. This is something that fans of the show have long known, and ensures that sighs of relief are still echoing around the country long after this impressive series eight opener has ended.

The suspicion that Harry isn’t actually going anywhere doesn’t mean, however, that the episode lacks drama. At Thames House, the task of uncovering the identity and location of Harry’s abductors proves a tricky one for Lucas (Richard Armitage), Ros (Hermione Norris), Jo (Miranda Raison) and perpetually unsung techie hero Malcolm (Hugh Simon). And there are strange goings-on in Cyprus, too, heralding the return of the much-missed Ruth (Nicola Walker) – now married and stepmum to her husband’s young son.

This is where the script really takes off, as while the Grid’s finest are busy unravelling the cover-up surrounding a plot to smuggle uranium into Iraq, Firth and Walker are acting their hearts out as the dignified almost-lovers now reunited and imprisoned together in horrifying circumstances. There’s an agonisingly delicate, layered scene between the pair in which Harry questions Ruth about her new life and new husband, and the moment where he cuts short his captor’s grubby speculation with a single line practically had me cheering aloud.

But a happy ending seems destined to elude them for some time to come, as the decisions Harry is forced to make in the name of national security have shocking repercussions for his fellow hostage. Will she return to the fold and take up Harry’s offer of re-employment in weeks to come? It – and the accompanying workplace heartache - seem virtually guaranteed. A word too for the episode’s closing twist; a lovely, quiet farewell to Malcolm that pays tribute to his long and unwavering service via the medium of understatement. The most gripping and stylish thriller currently on TV is back.

Twitter alert

2009-11-03T23:06:00.003Z

From today, The TellyPort has a second home at http://twitter.com/thetellyport. Drop by for further - and shorter - TV thoughts!

Ross Noble’s Australian Trip

2009-10-26T20:25:00.003Z

10pm Five, Monday 19th October

Five are to be roundly applauded for this sparky comedy travelogue that’s every bit as haphazard and freeform as its famously improvisational guide. The set-up is simple – British comedian Noble travels by motorbike across Australia on an 85-date stand-up tour – and the execution somewhat messy, but it’s a refreshing and frequently laugh-out-loud take on the travel show format. We see Noble discovering the more unlikely tourist attractions of his part-time homeland, then watch the day’s off-the-wall observations become the evening’s invariably winning comic material.

Here Noble begins by stumbling across the extraordinary sight of Kryal Castle near Ballarat, a huge replica medieval fortress built from scratch by its present owner. ‘You kept that quiet!’ he exclaims later to an audience of locals. He hears a suitably peculiar tale of an actor in a jousting tournament biking home in full armour, and ponders the inconvenience of an eagle-inflicted back injury. The journey also takes in the giant seafront statues of a sailor and a prostitute in Geelong, the uncharacteristically-named Mount Abrupt in Australia’s Grampian range, and the sheer terror of passing a ‘Lookout’ sign.

Viewers of earlier instalments will be delighted to encounter Horsham’s Green Lake, at first glance a rival to the Blue Lake of Mount Gambier. ‘I have to say,’ Noble muses, lakeside, ‘it’s pretty green…’ but it’s nevertheless not quite what was expected. One of the strangest episodes features a nonplussed employee of Port Pirie’s tourist centre, who is more reluctant than any tourist officer I have ever seen to inform Noble about the town’s claims to fame. Far more enthusiastic are the staff of the council offices, who whip up a jolly charade in which Noble believes, quite wrongly, that he is to be granted the keys to the city.

The only false note in the whole project comes from the wildly misconceived soundtrack, which has Noble travelling from gig to gig accompanied by the kind of emotive acoustic guitar work that suggests a voyage of momentous self-discovery. It is to the series’ credit that it studiously avoids travelogue cliché, so it might have been nice if the incidental music had boasted a similarly irreverent attitude. But this minor complaint can’t distract from Noble’s natural charisma or his pin-sharp comic talents, and it is these assets that achieve the difficult task of making a comedy travel show seem like a very good idea indeed.

Last Chance to See

2009-10-22T16:04:00.001+01:00

8pm BBC Two, Sunday 18th October

It’s been a joy to spend time with odd-couple adventurers Stephen Fry and Mark Carwardine as they retrace the steps of their mutual friend Douglas Adams, 20 years on from the original Last Chance to See expedition. This final leg of their journey – a search for the endangered blue whale off the coast of Mexico - has an added poignancy as it takes the place of Adams and Carwardine’s earlier visit to China and the Yangtze river dolphin, which has been declared extinct in the intervening years. But in Baja California on Mexico’s westernmost edge, spirits are undimmed; the area is a breeding site for several different whale species and something of a mecca for marine wildlife specialist Carwardine.

It’s another action-packed trip, featuring inquisitive grey whales in the San Ignacio lagoon, a sobering look at the effects of over-fishing in the Sea of Cortez, and possibly the world’s least tense rescue mission when Carwardine and a colleague are marooned briefly on a rock beneath blazing sunshine. As always, the main attraction proves fairly elusive, but time flies thanks to Fry’s inimitable similes – ‘It’s as if some child has run riot at a vintage car rally’, he says of a group of barking sealions – and Carwardine’s obvious passion for his work as zoologist and wildlife photographer. The pair’s visit to a small island embedded with fossilised whale bones prompts some fascinating facts about whales’ continuing evolution, and a sudden encounter with humpbacks allows us to eavesdrop on their eerie and hypnotic underwater song.

Time looks to be running short for the blue whale mission, but when Carwardine takes to the air with a pilot friend in the hope of ensuring a sighting, luck is on his side. Soon afterwards, he and Fry are back on the boat, mere metres away from one of the most extraordinary creatures in the world. Even on a television screen, a sense of its immense size is palpable. While Mexico’s surreally calm blue waters and clear light have made this programme a visual treat, however, conservation and education lie at its heart. The deliberately ridiculous revelation that, were an episode to be made about every endangered species in the world, the series would run weekly for over 160 years, is shocking. It’s the tentative hope in Fry’s closing voiceover, though, that provides the most eloquent comment on the uncertain future these animals face.

The Armstrong and Miller Show

2009-10-19T21:06:00.002+01:00

9.30pm BBC One, Friday 16th October

Much of the talk surrounding this second BBC series has been of a longtime comedy partnership ‘hitting the bigtime’, entering the mainstream and generally securing popular success. There’s a sense that the pair have for too long occupied a place somewhere just shy, let’s be frank, of their more ubiquitous contemporaries Mitchell and Webb, and that a second go at BBC primetime will change things for good. But while those inspired slang-spouting WW2 pilots – rightly foregrounded in trails for the series – have done a sterling PR job, the rest of this opening instalment actually feels rather disappointingly safe. There’s a lazy take on injury claims adverts, in which actors injured whilst recreating workplace accidents take their grievances to ‘Reconstruction Claims Direct’, and a clumsy art historian strongly reminiscent of The League of Gentlemen’s unfortunate vet Mr Chinnery. The exuberantly filthy Flanders and Swann-alikes are back, along with Armstrong’s hapless Prime Minister and his trivia-obsessed briefing team, but neither routine has anything really fresh to offer.

One or two new set-ups are more promising; a trio of wayward kids’ TV presenters are forced to apologise onscreen for sordid tabloid antics that culminate in a less than successful attempt to deal drugs with some charity appeal money. Most joyously of all – and it’s to be hoped that they return in future episodes – a pair of exam invigilators find silent and increasingly inventive ways to amuse themselves behind the backs of their oblivious pupils. Their progression from dancing and mock sword-fighting to rope-swinging and a full-blown acrobatic display is far funnier than it should be, but are these two or three points of hilarity enough? It’s not much of a hit rate, particularly when so very much more has been expected.

Emma

2009-10-07T11:52:00.002+01:00

9pm BBC One, Sunday 4th October

The casting of the luminous Romola Garai as Jane Austen's naïve, spoilt matchmaker Emma Woodhouse seems so instantly obvious, you wonder why this latest four-part adaptation didn't swing into production years ago. Sure enough, Garai not only grapples successfully with the contradictions of her character - snobbishness and prejudice failing to diminish a child-like charm and an essential decency - but seems actually to relish them, breathlessly lending life to the woman who 'had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to vex her'. Sandy Welch's crisp dialogue is matched by the series' fresh and contemporary high-def finish, with a pleasing lack of sentimentality in locations or costumes but just enough escapist gloss to make this TV to wallow in. Garai has solid support, too, particularly from a gauche but likeable Louise Dylan as Emma's innocent and unwitting plaything Harriet Smith. Much of this opening instalment's arch humour comes from their discussion of Harriet's marriage proposal from local farmer Robert Martin, and Garai keeps things careful and subtle as Emma guides her young friend towards more socially advantageous prospects.

But playing a rather more pivotal role in Austen's biting comedy-romance is Woodhouse family friend Mr Knightley, and so it comes as a disappointment to find the production coming a little unstuck with the casting of Jonny Lee Miller as Emma's verbal sparring partner and would-be mentor. While the characters' age difference is not crucial in itself - Austen's Knightley is sixteen years Emma's senior - it's an important signifier of their relative maturity, and Miller does little to indicate anything greater than the real-life gap of ten years between himself and Garai. After a rather laidback start, he soon seems to show himself almost as heated and hysterical under pressure as Emma, becoming far too invested in the Harriet Smith/Robert Martin situation and turning a stern reproach into a furious full-blown argument. A slightly heavy-handed script doesn't help here, but it's Miller who sets the pitch too high and skews the tone of a potentially much more restrained moment. There's still ample time for things to settle down, and with a four-hour running time, the events of the novel are unfolding at a laudably leisurely pace. But with memories of 1996's twin successes - the film adaptation starring Gwyneth Paltrow and the television version featuring Kate Beckinsale - still very much alive, this so far uneven attempt has plenty to live up to.

Merlin

2009-09-22T16:15:00.001+01:00

6.40pm BBC One, Saturday 19th September

The magical medieval romp is back for a welcome second run, and once again looks set to show up the likes of the dreary Robin Hood and ITV shocker Demons with its effortless sense of fun. Writer Julian Jones has countered the mass outbreak of life-saving that went on at the end of the first series with a neat, mischievous story that sees Camelot newcomer Cedric turn Arthur (Bradley James) against his loyal manservant and secret wizard-in-training Merlin (Colin Morgan), playing up the humour in Arthur and Merlin's fraught relationship. The episode also benefits from superbly cast guest star Mackenzie Crook, well-used in the double role of thief and chancer Cedric and the undead dark sorcerer Cornelius Sigan who possesses him to terrifying and spectacularly costumed effect. Morgan's performance still defines the show, blending wide-eyed innocence and vulnerability with growing frustration as he finds King Uther (Anthony Head, sporting a new Guy of Gisborne-esque black leather look) as deeply opposed to the use of magic as ever. But it's his easy chemistry with James, whose comic timing and princely arrogance seem to be strengthening with every passing day, that lends spark to their banterish dialogue.

Behind the adolescent hijinks this time though is what appears to be a heftier budget; the show now looks more expensive and more filmic, where it previously tended towards primary colours and amateurish charm. The effects still falter occasionally - see the laughable CGI wild boar that attacks Arthur's hunting party - but when Cornelius regains human form, the legion of stone gargoyles that slither to his aid from the castle walls are scarily convincing and a genuine surprise. There's a certain thrill in hearing Cornelius name Merlin as a sorcerer directly during his climactic speech, and another in his insidious references to Merlin's insecurities about his position at Camelot - particularly as this series should continue the build towards Arthur's discovery of Merlin's powers. Much criticism has been made of the show's extreme slow-burn policy on major story arcs but with the new-found gloss of series two to enjoy, it's beginning to look a lot like straightforward confidence. This episode may only hint at Arthur's ultimate transformation into a popular and level-headed king, or his future romance with Gwen/Guinevere (Angel Coulby), but far better that than a cloying or improbable bit of shoe-horning. It's certainly to be regretted that both Gwen and spooky Morgana (Katie McGrath) appear even more superfluous than usual in this Arthur-centric story, but the full series trailer - a magnificent piece of work edited for maximum fan frenzy-inducing effect - promises that this may soon change.

Derren Brown: The Events

2009-09-12T21:08:00.001+01:00

9pm Channel 4, Friday 11th September

Following Wednesday’s lottery prediction and the dozens of explanatory theories, some more reasonable than others, which were circulating online immediately afterwards, it’s fair to say that this heavily-trailed ‘reveal’ was eagerly anticipated. Forty-eight hours on, the ‘split-screen’ idea seems to have gained the most traction, being the least ludicrous of the bunch, and armchair magicians across the nation are impatient to see themselves proved right. It’s nice to see, then, that Brown does the decent thing and gives us all the only explanation show worthy of the circumstances: a hugely entertaining hour of television in which we learn absolutely nothing about how the lottery stunt was carried out.

We first see the stunt replayed – unnecessary, but a neat refresher nonetheless – followed by some vague but extensive gesturing towards quirks of probability, ‘deep maths’, and the wisdom of crowds. For a worryingly long time, it seems as though he’s going to tell us that a group of the exceptionally gullible predicted the numbers for him via a spot of that Brown favourite, automatic writing. But with less than five minutes to go, he whips out another scenario; one in which he fixed the lottery. That’s right, fixed the lottery. With the help of a Camelot insider and some rigged balls.

No-one, surely, is expecting any genuine revelations by this stage, but did we ever? A staple of Brown’s live shows is the spectacular and breathlessly delivered coup de grace in which he seems to explain the factors that enabled the evening’s climactic illusion, and what we are watching here is merely the TV equivalent. All we are left with in the closing seconds is a mischievous statement of the obvious – the lottery prediction was ‘just a trick’. Most of us, I’d hazard, will be quite content with that.

Last Chance to See

2009-09-10T17:13:00.003+01:00

8pm BBC Two, Sunday 6th September

Following in the footsteps of his friend Douglas Adams, Stephen Fry sets out here on the trail of some of the endangered species Adams featured in his 1989 radio series of the same name. It's not, however, Fry who steals the show but his gently humorous and fearsomely knowledgeable travelling companion, wildlife photographer Mark Carwardine, who travelled with Adams on the original expeditions 20 years ago. While the technophile national treasure struggles to relax when venturing down the Amazon without mains electricity, Carwardine bubbles with infectious enthusiasm, revealing endearingly that he has to spot a whale or dolphin every fortnight in order for life - it seems - to be worth living.

The pair's target this time is the Amazonian manatee, a slow-moving aquatic mammal classified as 'vulnerable to extinction' and guarded - so local legend has it - by the boto, a bright pink dolphin. Unlikely as this sounds, the dolphins themselves prove relatively easy to track down, and our intrepid explorers are soon swimming alongside them. 'They feel like an old vinyl lilo', Fry memorably declaims. Manatees proving elusive, he and Carwardine move on, taking in a hilariously tricky photo opportunity when a snake is spotted dangling from a riverside tree, along with the revelation that the now-illegal manatee meat tastes more like beef than fish. Fry seems slightly out his depth in this South American backwater; still personable but disconsolately rumpled, and in awe of his surroundings and Carwardine's total unflappability.

It's a slow-paced affair, and the search isn't called off before we've heard at length about the odd semi-circular progression of manatees' teeth around their mouths, and bobbed about on the river for a while longer. In the end, the disappointed pair resort to a Manaus zoo that holds a collection of captive manatees - an opportunity for Carwardine to get some fabulous underwater images from inside their tank. 'They're a bit like seals, but more like travelling cases for putting seals in', is his memorable verdict. It's when the travellers visit the Brazilian city of Tefe and meet a team releasing rescued manatee orphans back into the wild that the trip takes an unexpected turn for Fry. Stepping off a pontoon, he falls heavily onto one arm and breaks it badly - hospitals in Manaus and then Miami beckon, and, for him, this journey comes to an abrupt end. There's time for an eloquent voiceover in which he addresses the sheer indecency of allowing species to become extinct, but Carwardine easily takes over his presenting duties, rejoining the rescue team further along the route, puppyishly excitable as ever. The two may make a vaguely mismatched duo but the series has promise as a warm, quietly informative look at species at risk in the 21st century.

Wuthering Heights

2009-09-07T16:44:00.005+01:00

9pm ITV, Sunday 30^th/Monday 31^st August

Emily Bronte's weird and windswept tale of passion, betrayal and revenge may have been underserved by the meagre three-hour running time of this new ITV dramatisation, but it has real emotional backbone thanks to the casting of Tom Hardy as the violent and unknowable hero Heathcliff. The result is a patchy but spirited retelling which sacrifices complexity in favour of a more dominant love story, but which also compensates for its sometimes heavy-handed storytelling with some electrifying moments of drama. Purists will point to several unfortunate omissions as signs of ineptitude; Lockwood, the unsuspecting visitor to the moors who leads us into the action, has been cut, while the book's central misunderstanding - in which Cathy's conflicted feelings are only partially revealed to Heathcliff - never happens. But this dubious editing would be easier to criticise in a less finely acted production, and Hardy is matched by Charlotte Riley as a child-like but selfish Cathy and Andrew Lincoln as Heathcliff’s respectable rival, Edgar Linton.

The opening few minutes do seem muddled, with hurried character introductions leaving even those viewers familiar with the novel behind. The otherwise excellent Hardy never quite convinces as the middle-aged, pre-flashback Heathcliff – not helped by a distinct lack of effort from the make-up department – and the overall effect is rather underwhelming. But when the story takes us back to the central arc of Cathy and Heathcliff’s young adulthood, the performances sharpen and the production gains momentum. Riley has been styled as a strikingly contemporary Cathy, roaming the moors in multi-coloured bohemian chic lest we fail to recognise her independent streak, and drawn entirely believably to Heathcliff’s wildness. Hardy effortlessly suggests a tormented psychology without ever doing too much, his brooding subtlety impressive given the size of the character. Writer Peter Bowker (Occupation, Desperate Romantics) has scripted some happier moments for the pair – whose dalliance is only briefly sketched by Bronte – and they prove sweetly endearing, with Hardy and Riley showing off a sparky chemistry. These scenes do, though, have the effect of making an instinctive and unspoken attraction oddly articulated, with so many professions of love and eternal allegiance that Cathy’s later betrayal seems shocking .

This is where the drama’s main flaw lies; we get no sense that Cathy feels forced into marriage to Edgar, simply that she accepts him in the vain hope that Heathcliff will ride to her rescue. Consequently, her devastation upon hearing of Heathcliff’s marriage to Isabella Linton doesn’t quite work, as we feel she has brought her fate entirely on herself. Hardy is brilliantly inscrutable here as the returning Heathcliff, quietly ruthless and set at first on total revenge. And later, his fierce loyalty and animalistic howl of grief upon Cathy’s death are powerfully moving; his desperate plea for Cathy’s ghost to haunt him sends shivers down the spine. But when the concluding section of the story ends the flashback and takes us abruptly back to where we began, Bowker loses touch with the original text and loses his audience in the process. He not only shies away from showing the older Heathcliff’s brutishness – he is cold but never terrifying – but, more disappointingly, conjures up a nauseatingly sentimental ending which inconveniently becomes the viewer’s lasting memory of the production. For those who can overlook it, this is a vibrant and superbly performed period drama, but for others, the creators’ lack of courage during the final crucial minutes may prove unforgivable.

Desperate Romantics

2009-08-30T17:09:00.002+01:00

9pm BBC Two, Tuesday 25th August

The Dante Gabriel Rossetti Show, as it became several weeks ago when the gormless womanising bore began claiming indecent amounts of screen time, comes to a surprisingly tumultuous end here as tragedy befalls the fracturing Brotherhood. It’s all still elaborately costumed fluff at heart, but writer Peter Bowker doesn’t shy away when the Pre-Raphaelites’ story swerves into angstier territory – here featuring the now laudanum-dependent Lizzie Siddal (Amy Manson) as she faces the loss of her artistic patronage and the ceaselessly roving eye of new husband Rossetti (Aidan Turner). At last the production’s wasted cast get a chance to shine in some fiery confrontation scenes; a public row between the visibly ailing Siddal and her oblivious, self-interested spouse is powerfully acted, while a lighter exchange between luckless narrator Fred Walters (Sam Crane) and onetime prostitute Annie Miller (Jennie Jacques) is fun and sparky.

It is, however, history that ultimately saves this drama from its terminally irreverent self, providing a redemptive depth and darkness in its climactic moments. When Rossetti suffers a sudden and devastating personal loss, Turner deftly exchanges laddish bravado for the grief, guilt and raw horror of a deluded man brought violently to his senses. It’s mesmerising; an overdue reminder of his newcomer’s promise as conflicted vampire Mitchell in last year’s Being Human. But Desperate Romantics’ source material also, crucially, offers forth the jaw-droppingly tasteless twist in the tale which brings this breakneck rampage through art history to a close. The series has seemed awkwardly pitched at times – unconvincingly lowbrow, shapeless and somehow tediously risqué – but it comes good here with a clever, bittersweet and fittingly mischievous conclusion.

Spanish Flu – the Forgotten Fallen

2009-08-09T17:54:00.002+01:00

9pm BBC4, Wednesday 5th August

The unforeseen pertinence of this drama set during the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic might be enough to initiate mass hysteria were it not for the dignified performances of Bill Paterson and Mark Gatiss as medical health officer Dr James Niven and statistician Ernest Dunks respectively, two Manchester-based men set on combating the disease with every resource at their disposal. Put into production over two years ago, the Spanish Flu cast were in rehearsals as news of the swine flu outbreak in Mexico began to emerge. Extensive rewriting must surely account for some of the script’s most chilling lines; upon hearing of an unexpected new flu fatality, the less experienced Dunks responds with, ‘Flu? We’re done with that, aren’t we? We had it in August’. Much is made throughout of the near-inevitability of the ‘second wave’ among infectious diseases, of its generally increased virulence, and of the importance of basic hygiene and the restriction of public gatherings.

Paterson is excellent as the brisk and business-like Niven, determined to stop the spread of the illness before it overwhelms the city as has already occurred in London, and angered by the naivety and bureaucratic opposition he soon encounters. But perhaps more compelling is the quiet horror of Gatiss as Niven’s younger colleague, witnessing the terrifying progression of such an outbreak for the first time and turning to Daniel Defoe’s account of the 1665 plague in search of a medical precedent. There’s a moving moment between the pair when Dunks admits to receiving an accusatory white feather through his door – flat feet have in fact excluded him from military service – and is reminded by Niven that this disease itself will be his war.

The scenes of personal suffering are powerfully and memorably rendered, with a muted palette of blues and greys lending a frightening realism to the opening minutes, in which a young girl collapses in the street, and to a later sequence when a dying soldier is forcibly quarantined in a station waiting room. Charlotte Riley also shines as Niven and Dunks’ efficient secretary Peggy Lytton, rendered speechless when she realises she knows how to stop the virus spreading but not how to save her already ailing son. The closing moments are poignantly bittersweet, with the thanks received by Dunks and Niven seeming bluff and hollow given the unhelpful or even obstructive official rulings that so hindered their efforts, and there’s a sad twist in Niven’s own story as the credits approach. More than a panic-inducing study of a city in crisis, this is a stately tribute to medical achievement in challenging times.

Psychoville

2009-08-02T13:14:00.003+01:00

10pm BBC Two, Thursday 30th July

This comedy mystery may have started out as a Marple-esque whodunnwhat, but by the end of a bewildering series finale it’s become the freakiest fairytale around. Co-creators and chameleonic stars Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith unleash a screamingly OTT denouement in which midwife Joy, blind millionaire Mr Lomax, serial killer enthusiast David Sowerbutts and hook-handed clown Mr Jelly are summoned to the abandoned Ravenhill Hospital by their masked correspondent. Panto dwarves Robert and Kerry, meanwhile, are on a nocturnal drive through the woods – but are soon forced to make alternative plans following a spot of car trouble.

There’s plenty of laugh-out-loud humour as the hospital showdown approaches, including an over-written but nonetheless hilarious scene in which David (Pemberton) tries to confess to murder at a Haringey citizens' advice bureau, and a slapstick tour de force in a toilet featuring Shearsmith’s Mr Jelly and the pensioner to whom he has been inconveniently handcuffed. But in a deft gear shift, we also see more of that eerie flashback set two years previously, when Joy, David, Robert and Mr Lomax were psychiatric patients at Ravenhill. A nicely subtle electronic soundtrack increases the tension as we begin to discover what fate befell the sadistic Nurse Kenchington.

It’s when the engineer of this strange reunion makes his presence known that things really take off. His identity turns out to be disappointingly guessable, but as the nightmarish revelations come faster than we can process them, the deliriously surreal climactic moments hold just a hint of over-ambition. Could this long-term writing partnership finally be feeling the pressure of expectation? At this stage it’s impossible to say, as the baffling note on which we end suggests nothing so strongly as a green-lit second series. This could yet prove an unmitigated triumph.

Desperate Romantics

2009-07-24T16:18:00.002+01:00

9pm BBC Two, Tuesday 21st July

This brash and breathless drama based around the lives of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood - Dante Gabriel Rossetti (Aidan Turner), William Holman Hunt (Rafe Spall) and John Everett Millais (Samuel Barnett) - promises much more than it delivers, falling short of lively period romp and instead offering clunky historical soap. Writer Peter Bowker's impressive pedigree (Occupation, Blackpool) is nowhere in evidence in a script which succumbs too often to graceless exposition, and which renders the growing personal and professional jealousies between our central trio as cartoonish bickering. As the series opens, a voiceover from friend of the Brotherhood and flimsy narrative device Fred Walters reminds us that these heroes of the art world were not always thus, and when we meet them, the search is on for the flame-haired muse that will kickstart their stalled careers. The spectacularly (read: ludicrously) coiffed hat shop girl who seems to fit the bill is Lizzie Siddal (Amy Manson), her arrival proving an instant source of friction between laidback chancer Rossetti and the impulsive Hunt.

The undeniably excellent Spall is, however, acting for three here; Turner struggles to lose his Irish accent and dispenses with his usual charisma instead, while Barnett offers a colourless sap in place of child prodigy Millais. It's left to Tom Hollander as the repressed John Ruskin - a crucial player in the young artists' success - to provide what subtlety there is. There's certainly none to be found in the over-excitable orchestral score that strikes up whenever the Brotherhood engage in a spot of larky banter or swagger in formation through the streets of London - which they do often. It's frustrating to find that a series which ought to have been the Victorian equivalent of Russell T. Davies' effervescent 2005 hit Casanova has fallen so short of its predecessor's standards; we can only hope that when later episodes explore the widening cracks within the group, the poorly served leads are able to shine.

That Mitchell and Webb Look

2009-07-18T19:01:00.004+01:00

9.30pm BBC Two, Thursday 16th July

It’s certainly not a perfect end to the series – and surely nothing could top David Mitchell’s magnificently sentiment-free best man’s speech from episode three – but there are laughs aplenty nonetheless. A medieval inventor has created the first computer mouse, the latest in a pioneering series of creations including windscreen wipers, a tin opener and ‘a Sky Digibox’. A drunk hotelier welcomes two new guests to an establishment where the ‘continental’ breakfast is free, and is wine, the ‘en-suite’ is a tiny staffed bar and in order to avoid the challenge of inserting keys into keyholes, ‘we’ve had all the doors removed’. Mitchell delivers a deliciously barbed mid-episode monologue on the unhelpful impact of YouTube and torrenting on DVD sales – ‘Great for the viewer...and/or casual criminal’ - and the pair’s wry fascination with mobile phone technology continues as they announce a new Wagner-by-text service.

There’s also an frighteningly accurate advertisement for a Sunday afternoon chill-out DVD featuring ‘all the establishing shots from ITV’s Kingdom’, objects from the Antiques Roadshow without the stress of hearing what they’re worth, vicars walking across lawns and a crossword being filled in with the names of characters from Dad’s Army, then smeared with jam. Unfortunately Hennimore makes another appearance, and a sketch featuring God talking to an extremely easily persuaded Abraham doesn’t quite take off. But the series’ final minutes are a treat, with two Victorian brothers – one on his way to execution - finding that the mere half hour they have been granted to say their last goodbyes is, in fact, more than enough. ‘Any trouble getting here?’, Webb’s condemned innocent asks out of sheer desperation.

Psychoville

2009-07-10T14:54:00.001+01:00

10pm BBC Two, Thursday 9th July

Just when you thought the rich, dark and joyously creepy Psychoville couldn't get any better, Messrs. Pemberton and Shearsmith offer this flawless three-handed farce as a series centrepiece. The episode focuses solely on murderous mother-and-son duo Maureen and David Sowerbutts, just one of the many subtly intertwined story strands we've been introduced to over the past weeks, who here receive a visitor at a deeply unfortunate moment. In a technical and organisational tour de force, the plot plays out in an apparently continuous shot - the boys' neat homage to Hitchcock's 'Rope' - necessitating some clever blocking and the unseen whipping away of sofas and suchlike to allow the camera to move freely. The result is slick, audacious and dazzlingly efficient, to the credit of Pemberton, Shearsmith and their special guest, a surprise (or not, depending on whether you've read the Radio Times) appearance from their longtime associate Mark Gatiss.

David and Maureen have barely recovered from throttling their latest victim - another blameless member of David's am-dram company, who Maureen believes responsible for a blackmail note - when a knock at the door heralds the arrival of a local policeman (Gatiss). The comic triangle formed by the trio enables some priceless physical comedy; David's mistimed brandishing of a knife and a plate of HobNobs above Gatiss' startled detective is unforgettable. The script sparkles throughout, from Maureen's heartfelt description of killing as 'moreish', to her thoughtful take on their victim's appearance: 'Look at that face. What would you say that is - a royal blue? Or a duck egg blue?' Needless to say, there are several twists in this tale, with some impeccable double-playing from Gatiss and one or two surprisingly understated moments of revelation from Pemberton and Shearsmith reminding us of the group's solid acting credentials. It's impossible not to feel that all three thrive on challenges such as this, and that the eventual resolution of Psychoville's intriguing set-up is in extremely capable hands.

You Have Been Watching

2009-07-09T10:39:00.001+01:00

10pm Channel 4, Tuesday 7th July

Charlie Brooker's flimsy panel show take on the TV Burp format is going to need sharpening up if it's to prove a worthy competitor to Harry Hill's one-man comedy hit. Those hoping for a dose of Brooker's customary vitriol will be disappointed by this opening episode; this is Brooker-lite, with the acerbic cultural critic playing the role of host and quizmaster via lazy one-liners and cheap shots at the week's TV events. Guest panellists Rufus Hound, Jamelia and Richard Herring seem only semi-engaged as Brooker begins with a piece on excessive nodding, amateurish camerawork and odd mood shifts in The One Show, and an autocue 'game' featuring Herring and Jamelia just isn't funny. Already, this feels like watching Brooker's between-witticisms downtime.

The pace and joke rate pick up when the guests are asked to dramatically increase the viewing figures for Channel 4's festival of catering and backstabbing Come Dine With Me. Come Die With Me is Hound's offering; his argument being that while there is one near-normal participant in every episode, the rest could probably be served arsenic with minimal viewer complaint. Jamelia’s suggestion – 24/7 Big Brother-style coverage of the contestants' everyday lives – leads Brooker to the highlight of the show; a spectacular comedy riff taking in the submarine-cramped filming conditions of real suburban dining rooms and the sheer relentlessness of Dave Lamb’s gleefully sarcastic voiceover.

The rest seems too easy, as we move towards the end of the show with a look at the already outrageous US war-gaming series Deadliest Warrior. Nothing Brooker or his flagging panel could say could make the idea of pitting the weaponry and techniques of infamous historical warriors against each other seem any more ridiculous; the set-up of the series finale is simply jaw-dropping. Even Herring et al seem taken aback. A strangely jovial Brooker then chairs the obligatory quick-fire closing round, and the credits roll. The scoring seems irrelevant and, at a running time of fifty minutes, the concept has been stretched to breaking point. There may be a pithy half hour of humour here but what we see is a messy, meandering affair that fails to show Brooker at his best.

Occupation

2009-06-23T22:14:00.001+01:00

9pm BBC One, Tuesday-Thursday 16th-18th June

This laudably ambitious three-part Iraq War saga may hit the odd false note in its eagerness to be deemed a sweeping epic, but its emotional impact is still devastating. Spanning several years, it charts the fortunes of British soldiers Mike (James Nesbitt), Danny (Stephen Graham) and Hibbs (Warren Brown) from their tour of duty in Basra through the lawless aftermath to an almost unbearably harrowing conclusion. The consistently impressive trio of leads rise above a slightly stagey script, with a particularly terrifying turn from Graham as the loose cannon who returns to Iraq to set up a ‘private security’ firm in partnership with US Marine Lester (Nonso Anozie). The casually amoral, pill-popping ‘peacekeeper’ Danny is soon drunk on power, money and risk – and it’s not until the drama’s climactic tragedy that we really see the traumatised serviceman he remains.

The recurring scenes of confusion and anarchy in a country crippled by ongoing political and religious power struggles are viscerally real, and the punctuation points of sudden, graphic violence are dizzying. Even the most understated moments have the power to shatter, though, including the confession by Mike’s son Richard, newly joined up, that his father’s reassuring picture of life on the frontline has proved entirely and horrifyingly false. And as Danny and Lester’s machinations begin to have irreversible consequences, the corruption and callous self-regard on display is frequently hard to stomach.

With all this in mind, Occupation’s central flaw comes close to being an unforgivable one; the repeated use of needlessly sentimental soundtrack music. Massive Attack’s ‘Teardrop’, ‘Lonely Soldier’ by Damien Rice, Amy McDonald’s ‘Run’ – decent songs all, but cringeworthy when slapped on top of the searingly brutal events we see here. The rousing instrumental score, meanwhile, simply draws attention to itself and achieves nothing. If only the creative minds behind this production had kept complete faith in the strength of its remarkable central performances, this might have proved the stand-out TV event of the year.

South Pacific

2009-06-09T22:07:00.001+01:00

8pm BBC Two, Sunday 7th June

Previous episodes in this breathtaking documentary series have shown us the natural spectacles of the South Pacific; the curve of a monster barrel wave, a tiger shark attack, active volcanoes. This time it's the turn of some smaller phenomena - the island creatures which have evolved into distinct and uniquely-adapted species thanks to centuries of isolation. No showy photography is needed here, just the remarkable evidence of Darwinism in action and several sobering anecdotes regarding human intervention in the islands' fragile ecosystem.

The extraordinary kagu, a flightless bird native to New Caledonia, resembles an elaborately plumed pigeon, while the dingiso of New Guinea - never before filmed – is, we are told, the first kangaroo to develop tree-climbing abilities, due to the island's absence of monkeys. In the Solomon archipelago, the honeycreeper has evolved into a wide variety of bird species with specialised bills, as there are no hummingbirds or woodpeckers with which to compete. There's also endearing footage of the ponderous and bewhiskered kakapo - the world's heaviest parrot and a critically endangered bird - and fellow New Zealand resident the fiordland crested penguin, seen waddling through its unlikely forest home.

Narrator Benedict Cumberbatch draws out a streak of subtle humour in some of the episode's choicest stories, such as that of the Stephens Island wren, no sooner triumphantly confirmed as a new species than rendered extinct by the attentions of the island’s burgeoning cat population. But grimmer tales are told too, and Cumberbatch lends a hypnotic gravity to the infamous collapse of civilisation on Easter Island. The subject has been broached before during the series – one of the few faults of which has been the needless recycling of footage between episodes – though here there is room for more extensive speculation about what truly brought life on the island to an abrupt and violent conclusion. With only one instalment now remaining, South Pacific continues to offer a mesmerising view of a vibrantly beautiful and frequently surprising region of the world.

My Life in Verse: Robert Webb

2009-06-07T18:52:00.002+01:00

9pm BBC Two, Friday 5th June

Comedian Robert Webb proves a frank, funny and fiercely intelligent contributor to this series exploring the significance of poetry to the individual. He begins by revealing the life-changing impact of T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’, first read to him at school shortly after the untimely death of his mother, but reaches far beyond this single work to create a freeform, remarkably moving exploration of the poetry that has meant the most to him and, indeed, the reasons why poetry means anything to anybody. From Eliot, Webb takes a highly personal look at works by e.e.cummings, Philip Larkin, contemporary poet Don Paterson – whose reading of his starkly poignant ‘The Thread’ is a highlight – and even Clive James and comedian Abigail Burdess, Webb’s wife.

The striking photography is worth mentioning, with broodingly atmospheric views of Webb’s native Lincolnshire – revisited during reflections on his school years - always stopping short of sentimentality. (Though while Webb’s honesty regarding his early bereavement and willingness to read from his excruciating teenage diary make for powerful viewing, the mood of confessional intimacy is perhaps taken a touch too far in the oddly numerous extreme close-ups). This is a truly refreshing documentary which, while covering all the bases, keeps the emphasis not on poetic technique or historical context but on the emotional kick created by placing the right words in the right order.

The Real Hustle on Holiday

2009-05-24T14:36:00.002+01:00

10.30pm BBC3, Thursday 21st May

The approach of summer brings a timely appearance by the Real Hustle team recreating a range of scams targeting unwary tourists - here on the Costa del Sol. It might be solid, awareness-raising stuff if Alex, Paul and Jess didn’t approach the cons with such obvious relish, and it would be pure entertainment if every set-up wasn’t rounded off with obvious and slightly patronising travel tips. But this peculiar balance somehow continues to produce compelling television, with the routines here including the simple but staggeringly effective ‘Airport Pick-Up’, in which Paul makes off at a stroll with returning holidaymakers’ luggage. The Celebrity Con Games, introduced last series, show no sign of becoming more than a series of smug party tricks, however – this time Andi Peters tries and fails to tear a Yellow Pages in half while Alex succeeds effortlessly after a bit of strategic creasing and stretching.

Much more engaging is the week’s ‘long con’ – superficially a look at how naïve Brits abroad can find themselves acting as entirely oblivious drug traffickers, but in reality also a rather impressive piece of theatre by our brazen trio. Jess lays the groundwork in a beachside cafe, bewildering a Liverpudlian with her attentions and pack of well-rehearsed lies about a nephew’s imminent 1st birthday. The result is an agreement by the unsuspecting holidaymaker to take a toy bear through customs on Jess’ behalf, ready for collection by her ‘brother’. This is, fortunately, the point where one’s patience and sympathy start to dwindle – fortunately because the scenario awaiting the mark back home in the UK is too good not to be enjoyed simply on its own artistic merits. Invited out for drinks by his friendly new acquaintance, now unexpectedly returned from Spain, he dutifully brings the bear to a distinctly dubious-looking empty restaurant to be greeted by a gum-chewing Alex at his creepiest, offering drinks and meatballs and generally behaving like the recipient of something altogether more significant than a teddy bear. ‘Uncle Paul’, seated grimly in a backroom, is still less reassuring. The mark’s moment of horrified realisation, aided by some deft prop-switching, is priceless – and perhaps, after all, its inevitable comedy value increases its effectiveness as a warning to similarly unwary travellers.

A Poet’s Guide to Britain: George Mackay Brown

2009-05-20T20:22:00.001+01:00

8.30pm BBC4, Monday 18th May

This latest instalment in the series linking poetry to place around the UK offers a fascinating look at the remarkable life and work of Orkney writer George Mackay Brown, via his poetic masterwork Hamnavoe. Against atmospheric shots revealing Orkney’s huge skies and clear light, presenter Owen Sheers illuminates Brown’s early life and artistic development, bound as they were to the islands’ isolation and sense of difference. There’s enough pace to hold the casual viewer’s attention as Sheers begins with the Second World War and the swelling of Orkney’s population by British troops moored nearby in defence of naval base Scapa Flow, moving on to the TB diagnosis that prevented Brown from going to war himself and the sudden death of his postman father. The drifting, adolescent Brown is brought to life in revealing anecdotal snapshots; the army officer billeted with the family who introduced Brown to the literature of DH Lawrence and Dylan Thomas and the music of Mozart, Beethoven and Mendelssohn, or the library book of Norse sagas borrowed by Brown, read voraciously and never returned.

The Orkney bard proves an ideal subject, with innumerable links existing between the place of his birth and the nature of his writing. Contemporary poet Don Paterson contributes some sharp insights into the spare quality of Brown’s verse and its hinted evocation of low-lying, tree-dotted scenery, and there’s a good balance between readings, literary analysis and accessible commentary. It’s testament to the programme’s well-judged tone that what comes across most powerfully is Brown’s grasp of the resonance of geography and the way in which we respond to the spaces around us.

Bill Bailey’s Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra

2009-05-12T22:08:00.001+01:00

9.40pm BBC Two, Saturday 9th May

Neither remarkable nor a guide to the orchestra, this evening of humorous music-making filmed recently at the Royal Albert Hall is nonetheless enjoyable, largely thanks to Bill Bailey’s obvious and long-standing enthusiasm for musical comedy. It’s a shame that the misleading title probably put off many fans of Bailey’s own musical stand-up routines, because these are what it largely consists of – massively scaled up, of course, thanks to the presence of the BBC Concert Orchestra under the baton of Anne Dudley. This does mean that for serious fans, there’s a strong sense of déjà vu when Bailey gets stuck into a deconstruction of the ‘70s cop show soundtrack, appraises the influence of ‘Cockney music’, tackles the subject of unlikely television news themes, or equates the Doctor Who theme to Belgian jazz. But it’s a such a thoroughly good-spirited affair – the Hall’s audience seems enthralled and entertained throughout – that it would be churlish to criticise its host for relishing the opportunity to try out old favourites in this all new setting. There’s some less familiar material too, including the slapstick triumph of Bailey and a cowbell choir risking injury to bring us a unique take on the sound of the Alps. The closest our master of ceremonies comes to a ‘guide’ of any sort remains the opening overture, a medley of mood pieces narrated by Bailey to demonstrate the orchestra’s scene-setting abilities, but it’s – literally – played entirely for comic effect. Confusingly billed but engagingly delivered, this is a welcome oddity of a programme in the BBC’s weekend line-up.

Genius

2009-05-04T22:45:00.001+01:00

10pm BBC Two, Friday 1st May

The singularly good-humoured half hour provided weekly by Genius has fast become a Friday night essential, the series translating easily and naturally from radio to television. Presenter Dave Gorman’s guest for this final dose of eccentric invention is comedian Stewart Lee, who shows just how uncontrivedly funny he is away from the strictures of his recent BBC Two stand-up-cum-lecture format. As ever, four aspiring genii put forward their suggestions for (arguably) improving some aspect of contemporary life, and face interrogation from Gorman and his guest on the finer points of the scheme. Whether each one qualifies for ‘genius’ status or not is in Lee’s hands, and this series closer offers up some comedic gems.

First up is the novel principle of the ‘swim lane’, a wet but health-conscious means of travelling to work. The potential problems are, of course, myriad, and between them Gorman and Lee raise the issues of rogue wildlife, hills, the terrorist invitation posed by interconnected waterways and the all-round unpleasantness of following breakfast with the sight of the average Brit in swimwear. But the plan’s enthusiastic advocate has an answer for everything and the fact that she has, in Lee’s grudging words, ‘really thought this through’, simply makes the discussion go with more of a swing. The most alarming moment arrives with the modelling of a scarily convincing pinstripe wetsuit, mocked up by the Genius team as a possible all-day number for the aqua-commuter.

The barking but brilliant propositions keep coming, with one contestant proposing virtual reality headsets for battery-farmed chickens and leading Lee to question whether we could perhaps already be ensconced in a chicken version of The Matrix. The ‘Speed Genius’ round provides quickfire humour - featuring the possibility of airbags printed with funny faces - before we hear the third suggestion; a return to our hunter-gatherer past with all high-fat groceries to be retrieved from moving delivery vans. It’s not the most inspired moment of the night, but well worth it for Lee’s deadpan analysis of its inherent fascism, and for his and Gorman’s running machine-based demonstration of the principles at work.

The final idea is a beauty, consisting of hooking a choir up to a keyboard and triggering each chorister to sing a designated note by pressing the equivalent piano key. The hopeful genius tries to explain his motivation. ‘I saw a choir singing once, and I thought...’ ‘You thought they had too much control over their own destiny?’ Lee interjects. Unbelievably, Team Genius have devised a working model, and the spectacle of a real-life choir (dressed in white for white notes, black for – you get the idea) singing something not too far short of Fur Elise, one disjointed note at a time, is... memorable, certainly. As ever, Lee’s eventual choice of top genius is irrelevant; the fun of the show lies in the inspired marriage of comedy and unhinged ingenuity.

British Academy Television Awards

2009-04-30T12:49:00.002+01:00

8pm BBC One, Sunday 26th April

An odd one this year, with surprising winners in several categories, a more than usually excruciating host's script delivered by Graham Norton and, thankfully, a smattering of amusing moments to make the evening palatable. Notable shock successes included Anna Maxwell Martin, who defeated both EastEnders veteran June Brown and star-in-the-ascendent Andrea Riseborough to take Best Actress for Poppy Shakespeare, and White Girl, which snatched the Single Drama prize from The Shooting of Thomas Hurndall. Few recipients seemed more visibly taken aback than writer Graham Linehan, who, accepting the Situation Comedy award for The IT Crowd with producers and cast members, had obviously given it up as lost to either critics' favourite Outnumbered or the enduring Peep Show. Apparently forgetting Chris O'Dowd's name in the excitement, his endearingly bumbling speech certainly provided more humour than anything the autocue had to offer.

It was gratifying to see the BBC's classy Wallander pick up Best Drama Series - and even more so to note star Kenneth Branagh's hint at a second outing for the Swedish detective. 'We thank the good people of Ystad - we hope to be back there soon…' seems promising at the very least. Saturday evening behemoth The X Factor collected the trophy for Entertainment Programme, while Entertainment Performance went to Harry Hill, whose TV Burp offers sterling support in ITV's weekend schedule. David Mitchell expressed the peculiarity of nominating one half of a double act in the Comedy Performance category when he dedicated his own win to comedy partner Robert Webb - relegated to presentation duties this time.

In fact, the fairly high quality of guest presenters gave the evening the lift and sparkle that Mr Norton's leaden one-liners abjectly failed to, with appearances from The Wire's Dominic West and Idris Elba, Rob Brydon, Louis Theroux, James Nesbitt and Lindsey Duncan. Departing Doctor David Tennant also delivered a fulsome ode to controller of BBC drama Jane Tranter, receiving a Bafta Special Award. Possibly the night's most misjudged event, though, was Helen Mirren's fantastically mannered and overblown closing tribute to French and Saunders, who were awarded the Bafta Fellowship. It sounded (aptly) like a spoof, and in trying to elevate the duo to the level of national heroines simply made the whole affair ridiculous. All in all a watchable year for television's most significant awards ceremony, but not always for the right reasons.

Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle

2009-04-26T16:27:00.000+01:00

10pm BBC Two, Monday 20th April

This frustratingly patchy series concludes on a high as, tackling the subject of religion in comedy, Lee finally keeps up the pace and the laugh count to winning effect. Beginning with thoughts on the nature of religious jokes and the way they tend to focus on religious language and accoutrements, he imagines a Laurel and Hardy sketch featuring Ollie in the robes of a bishop of the Greek Orthodox Church. It’s all an elaborate lead-in to an astonishingly sporting appearance from Paul Merton, who here lampoons his own recent eulogising of silent cinema in a mock interview. ‘Today you’d have to do that with CGI...or...something...but, back then, they actually had to wear the actual costume!’, he enthuses with a lunatic grin. There’s also a deadpan consideration of the Vatican’s onetime trade in lollipops decorated with the image of Pope John Paul II – ‘he had a lickable face’ – and a clever, wry look at the difficulty of giving Western audiences jokes about Islam that extend beyond Abu Hamza and his ‘hooks for hands’. Once again, the inserted sketches seem awkward and unnecessary, here featuring Stephen K Amos in a film about faith schools for dogs, but it’s a joy to see Lee’s own occasional direct-to-camera delivery providing a sly, genuinely startling challenge to the complacent viewer.

In place of the repetitive centrepieces that have dragged other episodes back almost to the point of total inertia, Lee’s masterwork here is a priceless anecdote about a door-to-door Christian evangelist who once asked him, ‘Sir, Jesus is the answer. What is the question?’ Needless to say, Lee provides a plethora of possible responses, each more hilariously pedestrian than the last. ‘Complete the name of the influential but little-known late 1980s Chicago rock band The *blank* Lizard?’ is a particular highlight. And where some of the series’ earlier extended routines relied on the cumulative hysteria created by watching a joke go nowhere, this one moves along nicely, allowing the evangelist to offer Lee advice on the wisdom of using this conversation in his stand-up. The band reference has a very specific demographic reach, he suggests, and a set which had previously been building nicely may take something of a dive at this point. And is a primetime BBC Two comedy slot, he continues, really the place to experiment with this level of self-indulgent improvisation? It’s dangerous comedy territory but Lee handles it effortlessly, wringing further laughs from the potentially routine-killing nature of the material. The way he then closes the anecdote and brings the set and the series to an end comes as a total surprise and is worth leaving unrevealed here, but it’s a charming and strangely humble deconstruction of the art of the comedy performer. If more of this is on the cards, we should hope that the Comedy Vehicle gets another outing soon.

Doctor Who: The Planet of the Dead

2009-04-13T12:31:00.001+01:00

6.45pm BBC One, Saturday 11th April

Fun and frenetic it may be, but this first of 2009’s four Doctor Who specials seems unlikely to prove the best. Described by the soon-departing David Tennant as a ‘last hurrah’ before his swansong begins, its stunning desert setting, feverish action and eerie score can’t compensate for the truly misguided casting of Michelle Ryan as temporary companion Lady Christina de Souza. In Lady Christina, we find perhaps the universe’s most improbable risk-taker, fond of applying her chiselled vowels and stiff delivery to lines such as, ‘That’s how I like things: extreme’. An unlikely thief on the run after stealing a priceless museum piece, she becomes trapped with the Doctor on a distant planet when their London bus takes a detour through a wormhole in space. When she later responds to the Doctor’s mischievous claim that the worse things get, the more he likes it with a ‘Me too!’ and a fixed grin, it becomes clear that the much-hyped Ms Ryan is simply not up to the job.

The episode’s other notable guest performance is a joy, though; Lee Evans relishes the part of excitable Earth-based scientist Malcolm, rendered almost incapable by the thought of communicating with the Doctor himself. The (pseudo-)science itself is baffling even by Who standards – alien flies, metal-boned scavenging space rays, a crystal, something to do with gold – but the fleeting moments of human drama are captivating. Tennant works his empathetic magic in a sweet scene on the bus, during which the Doctor distracts his panicking fellow travellers with thoughts of home. And, as the end approaches, what would the show be without a few deliciously bittersweet lines of passing reminiscence. But bittersweetness turns to foreboding during the closing minutes when psychic bus passenger Carmen leaves the Doctor with an enigmatic glimpse of his own future. Whatever the failings of this Who-lite romp, with the ‘dark’ and ‘epic’ tags already flying there seems little cause for concern about the handling of the Tenth Doctor’s Christmas/New Year send-off.

Five Minutes of Heaven

2009-04-06T21:45:00.002+01:00

9pm BBC Two, Sunday 5th April

‘For me to talk about the man I am, you need to know about the man I was’, begins Liam Neeson’s Alistair at the start of this emotionally complex drama about the long-term aftereffects of a sectarian killing in Northern Ireland in 1975. It’s a simple enough statement, delivered by a man who, 33 years previously, shot Catholic Jim Griffin in front of his horror-struck younger brother Joe. But it’s a measure of how thoroughly and sensitively this production explores the repercussions of violence that this seemingly innocuous sentiment is so effectively unpicked, subverted, mocked and reclaimed during the 85 ensuing minutes. This depth of feeling, coupled with powerful, nuanced performances from Neeson and James Nesbitt as Joe, makes for eloquent and memorable television.

We first return to the day of the killing itself, in a series of scenes that convey the fear felt by four young boys – Alistair among them – determined to commit murder for the sake of local glory. The botched preparations reveal their naivety and inexperience: Alistair can’t decide where to keep his gun, two of the boys are disturbed in the act of stealing a car, they are all terrified by the sudden appearance of army trucks and one is shocked to hear that their intended victim’s mother is his dinnerlady. But this is tragedy, not farce, and the impact of seeing all four suddenly balaclava-clad is chilling – as is the eye contact made between Alistair and Joe seconds before the shot is fired.

Shifting to the present day, we find the adult Joe babbling almost incoherently with nerves as he is driven to a meeting with Alistair organised by a reconciliation programme. Nesbitt is mesmerising as a lifelong victim consumed by anger, bitterness and scorn for Alistair’s professional success as a touring speaker on conflict resolution. Travelling to the same meeting, Alistair is quieter, calmly sharing with his driver thoughts on what happens to families torn apart by loss. Neeson subtly hints, though, at the self-defence mechanism that this cool authority really represents and which becomes starkly apparent as the drama develops.

As we move closer to the planned televised confrontation between the pair, there’s room for some understated satire on exploitative documentary-making as Joe is patronised and misinterpreted. But the scenes belong primarily to Joe himself, who boils with fury at Alistair’s apparent hypocrisy and is set on revenge; his ‘five minutes of heaven’ would be, he believes, killing Alistair. There’s a clever parallel drawn between Joe’s distracted, panicky anticipation of the meeting and the build-up to the original shooting, and we are made to feel the full weight of the pressure being placed on Joe by this contrived set-up. Things do not go according to the programme makers’ plan, however, and the fates of the two men hang, unresolved, as we are finally shown the extent to which Alistair is psychologically crippled with guilt and barely functioning on a day-to-day basis. When the delayed moment of confrontation comes, it is TV drama at its best; messy, raw and explosive but not sensationalist or even very conclusive. A shaky but hopeful resolution has been found by the time the credits roll, though heaven – even five minutes of it – remains out of reach.

Dexter

2009-03-30T21:55:00.001+01:00

10.35pm ITV, Thursday 26th March

After resolving last week against turning himself in, Dexter finds his fate resting on one knife-edge after another in this series finale. The hairpin twists of the supremely tense penultimate episode may be past, and this week’s follow-up is arguably less nail-biting, but with the storylines of Lila and Doakes simultaneously reaching critical point, it’s even more essential viewing. Lila begins by putting her fondness for fireworks to good use, disposing of the caged Doakes the only way she knows how – with a massive gas explosion. He knew Dexter’s murderous secret identity and now the charred pieces of him that wash ashore will never tell – surely this will win Dexter back. Won’t it? On returning to the cabin, our anti-hero is certainly dumbfounded by the miracle that appears to have come his way, but unaware of Lila’s involvement, wonders mildly whether this isn’t the work of some higher power. ‘Who do you thank?’, asks Dexter the wry unbeliever in voiceover.

His immediate problem solved, he wastes no time in reviving his relationship with patient Rita and bringing doughnuts to work in liberal quantities. But Lila remains a threat, and as the episode develops and Dexter discovers her role in Doakes’ demise, so begins a brilliantly taut cat-and-mouse dance of deception and revenge. In one of the series’ most nerve-shredding scenes to date, Dexter lunges out of the darkness of Lila’s studio, hypodermic needle in hand, only to find that his almost-victim is in fact Deb, mere millimetres away from sedation. And when the moment of realisation finally dawns for Lila – that Dexter’s suggested road trip will prove, for her, a very long trip indeed – her response is both fiery and chilling. By the close of a spectacular climactic sequence, Michael C. Hall makes clear just how sharply Dexter feels like a phoenix risen from the ashes. A brief but bloody postscript set in Paris followed by a ‘life goes on’-style return to sunny Miami suggest that Dexter is now not all that far away from feeling invincible, which could cause havoc – in the best possible way – in series three.

Dancing on Ice – the Final

2009-03-28T16:17:00.001Z

6.55pm ITV, Sunday 22nd March

With no real fireworks and no last minute upset, the competition draws to an inevitable climax with shoo-in favourite Ray Quinn taking the trophy in typically confident style. And in the same way that the series as a whole has lacked tension this year, with even Ray’s least laughable competitors falling one by one by the wayside, the finale also failed to offer anything really show-stopping. The usually breathtaking wire routines creaked along with surprising sluggishness; Donal McIntyre’s charming partnership with pro skater Florentine went some way towards compensating for his slow, awkward acrobatics to the strains of ‘Rocketman’, while Jessica Taylor also slowed down noticeably after taking to the air, and didn’t seen altogether comfortable in an underwhelming routine of missed opportunities set to ‘One Moment in Time’. But how refreshing it was, on the other hand, to see Ray wholly out of his comfort zone following a week of wire training blighted by nausea and dizziness – and no doubt a resultant confidence knock. There was no room for complacency this time and he seemed truly staggered by his straight sixes – as well he might have been, as his performance to ‘Greatest Day’ was controlled and elegant but not flawless.

There was plenty of decent skating elsewhere from all three finalists, and, as always, a chance to see brushed-up versions of their favourite routines from the series. Donal’s touching, lyrical take on ‘Everybody Hurts’ was lovely the first time round, and with a shade more grace and polish was a treat once again. Jessica reprised some slick, sharp and snappy choreography in revisiting ‘Mercy’, but there was no extra spark and little sense of skills honed since its first appearance. A disappointingly safe choice from Ray – ‘Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now’, for which he and partner Maria won sixes a few weeks back – did the job and earned top scores a second time, but it was never his most dazzling number and it might have been worth the risk of attempting that bewildering ‘Rock Around the Clock’ jive again. It didn’t come as a huge surprise, however, to find Ray and Donal heading into the final stage when the votes were counted, with Jessica relegated to third place.

Choreographing a new twist on Torvill and Dean’s iconic Bolero seemed likely to suit Donal – rarely slow to chip in with suggestions during training – down to the ground. So it proved – he and Florentine created as their final performance an expressive, imaginative version of the routine; slow but dignified and with a brilliantly fresh take on that dramatic collapse finish. No-one expected it to outstep Ray, and it didn’t, but it represented an extraordinary transformation considering Donal faced the skate-off back in week one. Ray’s own Bolero was surely little more than a formality, but in reality was a packed performance featuring a great transition from knees to skates at the start, plus plenty of reverential nods to the original. It was also strangely both more passionate and less moving than Donal’s effort - but the eventual outcome was never in doubt. This has been a notable series for revealing a natural ability so significant that, if not for Ray’s imminent appearance in Grease on the West End stage, it could surely herald a career change. Hugely entertaining television, as ever.

Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle

2009-03-18T23:46:00.002Z

10pm BBC Two, Monday 16th March

The inimitably droll Stewart Lee offers a new series interweaving stand-up and sketches, and this first instalment starts very promisingly indeed – for which all comedy fans should be grateful in The Month Of Horne And Corden. His subject this week is the celebrity hardback - or ‘toilet book’ - and his offbeat takes on obvious targets go down a treat during the first ten minutes. Performing to a live audience, he muses on the catastrophic changes to one’s Amazon customer profile caused by purchasing a work by Jeremy Clarkson, and unpicks a comment by Chris Moyles about ‘some’ of his friends enquiring, upon learning he was writing a book, what it was about. Literate and refreshing, it’s a terrific opening, and even overcomes the awkwardness of the audience laughter being simultaneously too loud and too sporadic.

But, introductions over, Lee slips to his usual laconic pace, favouring slow-burn observational reflections over punchlines. This may come closer to what fans expect, but there’s a question mark over whether it could ever be successful in a half hour primetime BBC format. It’s easy to see that, in a live setting, his painstakingly repetitive routine about rappers – inspired by the publication of a book by So Solid Crew’s Asher D – could be hysterical, but the detachment of television makes it simply tedious. The sketches are also patchy, mostly missing their mark and interrupting whatever momentum Lee has established, with the exception of a brilliant look at how the crashingly literal Dan Brown might break bad news.

It’s testament to the show’s potential that I intend to stick with it, given the unapologetic bile Lee directs at Russell Brand’s savage and funny My Booky Wook, the entire Harry Potter franchise and Radio 4 comedy (all of it, apparently). If he ensures that his confidence in his material stays shy of disdain for his potential audience, the series could still achieve more hits than misses.

Dancing on Ice; Dancing on Ice: the Skate-Off

2009-03-10T21:33:00.000Z

7.10pm ITV; 9.15pm ITV, Sunday 8th March

Lunacy prevails as once again Coleen Nolan – kept vertical by trusty pro partner Stuart and still showing little increase in confidence – stays in the competition over excitable Zoe Salmon, who has gone from strength to strength in recent weeks. Particularly galling is the fact that a spine-tingling routine from Zoe, choreographed to Leona Lewis’s ‘Run’, had shades of partner Matt’s triumphant collaboration with Suzanne Shaw in the last series. But Zoe is out, and so it’s left to remaining competitors Coleen, Jessica Taylor and Donal MacIntyre to present a challenge to skating supremo Ray Quinn in time for next week.

However, all they seem likely to present him with is the title on a plate. Coleen hasn’t improved in weeks, relying entirely on Loose Women’s supportive audience and relentless rinkside self-deprecation. Donal can be soulful if not exactly spectacular, but a bitty and unconvincing routine to ‘Let’s Stick Together’ this week represented a stall in his so far continual improvement. Jessica is perhaps our best hope for a decent race to the finish line, and kept things moving here with an energetic performance to ‘Mercy’ by Duffy. A solid partnership with pro skater Pavel should help, but she simply – and quite reasonably – hasn’t progressed fast enough to threaten Ray.

Who, this week, stepped things up another gear or three with a split jump a la Robin Cousins – the same Robin Cousins who just happens to be on the judging panel. Kings of Leon’s ‘Use Somebody’ accompanied another technically dazzling, joined-up and dynamic routine, exciting to watch and not a little awe-inspiring. And if the expertise on display can feel clinical from time to time, it hardly matters – his competition aren’t likely to move anyone to tears either.

Being Human

2009-03-02T23:39:00.002Z

9pm BBC Three, Sunday 1st March

This surprise uber-hit for BBC Three is still glowing with confidence as it reaches the climax of series one, and well it might. Not only has a second season of the dark supernatural drama at last been confirmed, but online reaction has revealed the presence of loyal and near-fanatical public support from the earliest episodes onwards. Now, as the increasingly interdependent storylines of vampire Mitchell (Aidan Turner), werewolf George (Russell Tovey) and ghost Annie (Lenora Crichlow) gain an unstoppable momentum, it’s easy to see why: there isn’t a weak link in sight.

When we last left them, the trio were at something of a crisis moment; Mitchell potentially gasping his last after a nasty staking incident, Annie finally facing Death’s Door in very real and wooden form, and George, as ever, dealing with both housemates’ dramas at once. An important flashback scene opens episode six – just how important becomes clear as the action develops – before we return to the hospital, the present day and a Mitchell who is causing some serious head-scratching among the medical staff. One of the series’ trademarks – those astonishing and intoxicating switches between humour and bottomless sadness – makes another appearance, this time partly thanks to Michael Begley’s likeably sarcastic ‘comedy vicar’, and largely to Clare Higgins as Mitchell’s ailing former love Josie, whose bedside reminiscence scene with Turner is almost painfully poignant.

Also effortlessly raising his game for this high-stakes finale is Jason Watkins as megalomaniac vampire boss Herrick, who works his breezy, conversational menace into something quite terrifying. When Josie’s dignified self-sacrifice enables his recovery, Mitchell becomes determined to finish the battle with Herrick once and for all, leading us towards the stand-off that has been brewing ever since the first rumbles of vampire insurrection in episode one. There are treats galore as the tension builds; a perfectly choreographed shouting match between Tovey and Crichlow as they wrestle with their fears over Mitchell’s future, a tour de force from Turner as he reveals the shocking side-effects of abstinence from blood, and a haunting but beautifully subtle string score. All three leads have consistently put the emotional truth of their roles first and foremost, and the bittersweet farewells they bid each other as each prepares to face his or her fate are genuinely moving.

In one of the series’ few disappointments, however, the big showdown itself is not always as compellingly handled as it might have been – budgetary restrictions no doubt being partly to blame. But the smaller touches are flawless here – a speech from George, mid-transformation, on the true meaning of ‘humanity’, and a spellbinding moment shared with girlfriend Nina (Sinead Keenan). Most crucially of all in the show’s changed circumstances, the writers seem so ready for a second run that it may as well start next week. Nina looks to be drawn right into the centre of things, and as the credits prepare to roll, Gregg Chillin as Annie’s killer fiancé Owen turns in a brief but brilliant performance opposite Donald Sumpter in a scene which heralds a truly intriguing new set-up. The bar has been raised for contemporary fantasy drama – can the Being Human team take it yet further next time?

Paul Merton Looks At Alfred Hitchcock

2009-03-01T17:52:00.001Z

9pm BBC4, Saturday 28th February

Paul Merton here follows his hugely engaging 2006 documentary series Silent Clowns, featuring the wordless comedy of Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Laurel & Hardy and Harold Lloyd, with an assessment of Hitchcock’s early British films. But, surprisingly, this effort is much less successful, as Merton’s genuine enthusiasm for his subject gets misdirected towards gimmicky presentation and irritating visual nods to Hitchcock’s iconic style. The programme’s excellent interview footage of this giant of cinema is unconvincingly manipulated to show Merton himself as the interviewer, while arty segues at times distract from the compelling story of Hitchcock’s rise to international renown.

After an illuminating anecdote that perhaps explains the young Hitchcock’s fear of the police, and a brief look at his early ascent within the film industry (taking in positions as title card designer, art director and editor), it’s on to the films themselves. Coverage of each is limited but covers some important territory; the visually inventive German Expressionist influences of ‘The Lodger’, acquired from a spell in Berlin, the arrival of the talkies and the ensuing speech tests anxiously conducted on non-English silent stars, the arrival at a coherent filmic style achieved with ‘The Man Who Knew Too Much’, and ‘The Lady Vanishes’, which finally enabled the Hitchcock family’s move to the US.

But throughout, the most spellbinding moments come directly from the man himself. The archive footage includes a simple but telling insight into the editing process, demonstrating how easily meaning can be altered, and a fascinating explanation for why 1930’s ‘Murder!’ became his only whodunnit. But ultimately, it seems that the programme has suffered from unnecessary attempts to enliven its relatively academic subject matter. Had Hitchcock and his famous fan simply been left to speak for themselves, the result may have been as absorbing as Merton’s recent Times article in praise of his cinematic hero: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article5803462.ece

Dexter

2009-02-22T15:36:00.001Z

10.35pm ITV, Thursday 19th February

We’ve waited what seems like an eternity for it, but Dexter (Michael C. Hall) at last seems to be having second thoughts about the explosive impact of Lila (Jaime Murray) on his previously well-ordered existence. Which is very good news, as his recent lapses of judgement and delusions of infallibility were threatening to lose him the support of us, his loyal audience. While Lila still has a powerful hold over him, inspiring another act of reckless arrogance when he taunts the police with a manifesto from the ‘Bay Harbour Butcher’, he’s also starting to question the wisdom of leaving Rita (Julie Benz) and her children for a woman about whom he knows almost nothing. ‘I believe we have found a true substitute for your addiction,’ Lila pouts during a romantic meal. ‘Life’. Another line like that and Dexter will, let us hope, come entirely to his senses.

Meanwhile, the problem of dogged Sergeant Doakes (Erik King) grows more pressing. The bloody details of Dexter’s childhood are in danger of being exposed, and something has to be done, so prompting the climactic showdown between Dexter and Doakes that has been brewing since series one ended. Elsewhere, there are some great moments for Deb (the always convincing Jennifer Carpenter), whose unlikely almost-romance with Special Agent Lundy (Keith Carradine) takes a sweet turn thanks to a Chopin nocturne, and she gets a straight-talking line or two to relish during an unexpected run-in with Lila.

As the episode ends, though, events seem to have conspired against Dexter once again. The cops, led by Lundy, get a lot closer to the truth about his joke manifesto than he could ever have imagined, while Lila takes drastic action when she sees him slipping out of her clutches. With five episodes remaining, the series has finally found its stride and looks set to provide plenty of drama as the storylines of Lila, Rita and Doakes come to a head.

Whitechapel; Moses Jones

2009-02-17T23:52:00.003Z

9pm ITV; 9pm BBC Two, Monday 16th February

Crime thriller Whitechapel draws to a workmanlike conclusion with a surprise factor of zero, but still boasting the odd feature to enjoy along the way. Steve Pemberton’s disconcerting Jack the Ripper obsessive – easily the series’ star - grows oddly sympathetic as he attempts to throw the killer off course by disowning his life’s work. Elsewhere, the investigation keeps up a fair pace under the direction of DI Chandler (Rupert Penry-Jones), if only to allow him to bark up the requisite number of wrong trees before settling on the sole probable suspect, an otherwise needlessly creepy hospital doctor we first encountered back in episode one. But at least the dialogue is several shades less clichéd by this point, with a philosophical pep talk from DS Miles (Phil Davis) on the stress-relieving effects of carp coming off less excruciatingly than it could have. Penry-Jones has a good line in polite frustration – of which there is much – though his measured performance is rather overshadowed by the jittery soundtrack orchestra who have reached a pitch of near-mania by the time of his eureka moment.

The episode’s closing moments are its weakest, with no-one seemingly having much idea of how to stop the thing. Penry-Jones is proved right about the killer’s ultimate fate, but only to us the TV audience, leaving him demoted and an equal to his newly respectful colleagues as the action fades inconsequentially out. This is nothing, however, to the toe-curling final minutes of Moses Jones; sympathy vote of the week goes to the magnetic Shaun Parkes for having to coda a masterful performance with such complete drivel. Writer Joe Penhall offers no warning, turning in a largely satisfying third instalment of his weighty thriller. Jones attempts to keep Joy (Wunmi Mosaku) safe from the violent rampages of the chilling, unknowable Matthias Mutukula – a performance of brilliantly manipulative menace from Jude Akuwudike - and his hired henchmen, leading to some subtly charged moments between Parkes and Mosaku. As the trio’s campaign of terror escalates, Akuwudike portrays a terrifying descent into delusion and ultimately insanity as Mutukula engineers a last stand with Jones and Twentyman (Matt Smith – who, it is now clear, never had a hope of making an impact with the effortlessly commanding Parkes beside him in almost every scene).

But after a tense climax, the fates of Mutukula and his associates are catalogued – actually listed – by Jones in the most agonisingly contrived epilogue to besmirch a TV drama in months. We can only hope that Joy – his onscreen audience – is suitably enlightened, for surely no viewer will remember a word of it. If only the mystifyingly awful dialogue then exchanged between the pair before they disappear hand-in-hand into a market day crowd – ‘I’ve always thought you were an extremely special woman; it was hard for me to do my job’ is only half of it - had made as little impression. A massive disappointment, but not one which can detract from this series’ bold premise, powerful performances and rich, dynamic production.

Being Human

2009-02-12T00:45:00.001Z

9pm BBC Three, Sunday 8th February

It’s official; the new home of quiet meditations on loss, love and loneliness is BBC Three. Just a couple of weeks in, this constantly surprising series has already become must-see viewing for those who have discovered it, and this week turns its attention to the story of unhappy ghost Annie (Lenora Crichlow). Her well-meaning and well-connected vampire housemate Mitchell (Aidan Turner) has decided it’s time for Annie to meet some ‘kindred spirits’, and with this in mind it’s off to the local ‘80s club night. There, Annie is introduced to the initially abrasive Gilbert (Alex Price), a Nietzsche-reading muso in a timewarp who just happens to have been dead since 1985. One of the most impressive things about Toby Whithouse’s writing so far has been his awareness of where Mitchell, Annie and their werewolf chum George (Russell Tovey) are the same, and where they are irreconcilably different. At last able to confide in someone with the same ‘condition’, Annie and Gilbert’s friendship is a tantalisingly slow burn from uncertainty to understanding – regarding both each other and their limbo-esque predicament.

The episode’s blacker moments are provided by Mitchell’s entanglement with reckless fellow vampire Lauren, whose desperate craving for blood threatens to break down Mitchell’s own resistance. There’s also more sublime comedy of awkwardness from Tovey as George tries to wine and dine a hospital nurse without letting his wolfish side disrupt proceedings. But at its heart, the episode belongs to Crichlow, who poignantly underplays Annie’s voyage of discovery. Her determination to be a spirit wife to former fiancé Owen – leaving boiled ham and parsley sauce in the oven, helping him find his keys, picking out a favourite shirt – could have been saccharine but is hugely moving, and all the more so due to the nagging sense of uneasiness both she and we begin to feel about it. When the inevitable revelation about her death arrives, it doesn’t need to come as a surprise for Crichlow’s intelligent, multi-layered performance to make an impact, while Mitchell responds with the knowing sympathy of the exceptionally long-lived.

But Whithouse knows better than to offer only a denouement we have all seen coming, and his handling of Gilbert’s own revelatory moment offers the hardest emotional punch. It’s testament to Price’s skill that we care as much about his fate as Annie’s here, and his final few drags on a nerve-steadying cigarette resonate as powerfully as Annie’s carefully averted gaze. As always, Whithouse’s refined handling of his characters’ raw truths remains key to the drama’s success.

Pushing Daisies

2009-02-07T18:49:00.000Z

10pm ITV, Friday 6th February

The second series of the whimsical US comedy drama continues to impress, its emotional pull at last matching the mischievous dialogue, fabulous visuals and barmy plotlines established in season one. Much of its newfound heart comes from Lee Pace’s soulful turn as piemaker Ned, who we find this week in a state of some confusion. Anna Friel’s Chuck – the girl he loved, lost, found and revived from the dead – has moved out of his apartment, set on living an independent (second) life. She hasn’t gone far, though, and the tug felt between Ned and the girl now residing next door is palpable thanks to Pace’s wry and endearing performance.

Not that Ned has much time to dwell on his predicament, though, as his Private Investigator buddy Emerson (Chi McBride) enlists him and Chuck to help track down a runaway teen. She seems to have fled to, of all places, a circus; the only excuse this already colour-saturated show needs to break out the super-luminous dye. Cue plenty of cute, imaginative circus fun as the trio try to follow up leads while clowns, acrobats and human cannonballs repeatedly get in the way. There’s a brilliant comedic moment when a murdered mime artist, briefly brought back to consciousness by Ned, tries to wordlessly convey the circumstances of his own death.

Friel gets to wear yet another wardrobe of gorgeously retro outfits, and the script remains tart, taut and joyously playful. The omnipresent voiceover frequently threatens to scene-steal with lines like, ‘[Chuck’s] aunt Vivian, who would have dropped dead at seeing her niece alive again, arrived again’. Best of all though, is the resolution of that niggling accommodation problem, as Chuck and Ned decide to start afresh as new neighbours in an achingly sweet role play scene that confirms how much new life has, aptly, been breathed into the show’s second outing.