CCTV Cities. Bobbins on the box

Posted by Remote Control on July 31, 2008 5:20 PM

Here's a frightening statistic which sent a shiver down my spine earlier this week: When Dragons Den (BBC 2) and Police, Camera, Action (ITV1) went head-to-head a week ago, the result was a draw.

Yes, as many people watched a cheap-to-produce, thrown-together collection of clips of cops in action as opted for the carefully produced, two hours filming for every pitch lasting 10 minutes on screen TV show fronted by the ever impressive Evan Davis.

Sad, isn't it?

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Countdown has begun - it will continue without Carol

Posted by Remote Control on July 27, 2008 9:39 PM

POOR old Carol Vorderman eh? The show which made her a star loses half its viewers and she's asked to take a paycut. From £1.2 million to around £100,000.

For that £100,000, she'd have to (according to the Mail on Sunday) have to do 40 days work, filming around five episodes at a time.

Being no Carol Vorderman myself, I can't rattle off the answer for you as to how much that is per shift - but I'd take a stab at £2,400 a day? So, more than the average man or woman - including many with the same engineering degree Carol has - earns in a month.

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The funniest cameo role ever?

Posted by Remote Control on July 27, 2008 3:06 PM

Is it possible to have a cameo role in a film if you're not already a celebrity? Can just be being in a film for a brief moment make it a cameo role? If it does, then I think I've just witnessed the funniest one ever.

In many way, Eurotrip shouldn't be funny. It's one of those teen comedies which follows the American Pie formula by mixing emotion with excruciating embarassment and odd moments of gross-out humour to create something which is incredibly watchable.

Stuck out of the way on BBC 1 last night at around 11.30pm, you can't help but think the Beeb schedulers were looking for something to pad the evening out before flicking across to News 24.

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The world's worst advert

Posted by Remote Control on July 23, 2008 11:26 PM

That Craig Doyle chap, he's annoying isn't he? First of all, he pops up on the BBC freebie show Holiday, each week showing the nation holidays which can only be afforded by people who don't tend to watch holiday programmes.

Then, when that gravy train comes to its final destination, he's suddenly doing sport over on ITV after working within BBC Sport. If ever you needed another reason to groan at the thought of sport on ITV (think showing adverts during the vital moment which cost Lewis Hamilton the F1 title last season), here it is.

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Sugababes, Hollyoaks, and why soapland should be very grateful

Posted by David Higgerson on July 21, 2008 10:17 PM

The Sugababes are back in the charts. Or rather, a song they released last year is back in the charts.

About You Now was a number one for them last autumn, and the only reason people can think of for it landing back in at number 36 is: Hollyoaks.

You see, it was used during the funeral of Max Cunningham and the likes of itunes saw a real surge in downloads for the track afterwards.

Proof, if it were needed, of the power of soaps? In the same way Coronation Street holds sway in middle England, as shown when Tony Blair joined the debate on whether Deirdrie should be released from prison, Hollyoaks obviously knows how to touch a nerve with a younger audience.

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Mock the Week's back. And mock it did

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Posted by Remote Control on July 13, 2008 8:27 PM

Kerry Katona's determination to populate the planet, Robert Mugabe's "Brazilian moustache" and how seeing a moonwalking duck would improve Russell Howard's mood. On only one TV show can just a single question lead to discussions about all of the above.

Yes, Mock the Week is back. And, now in series six, it is so good that I'm currently watching it again. Frankie Boyle at his best from the off, kindly pointing out that "John Prescott needs to know there is a difference between bulimia and eating until you puke."

Russell Howard, pointing out the absurd at every opportunity, saying: "On one hand, we're throwing away millions of pounds of food a year, yet a quarter of the nation is obese. This means one thing: fat people are raiding our bins at night. Now that's a reality TV show I'd watch - fat people dressing up as foxes and going through our trash."

Andy Parsons, shouting as usual, yet solving the problems of the olympics: "We don't need to spend billions on new arenas. We only win at pub sports, all we need is the world's biggest Wetherspoons. A giant pub quiz. We'd all watch that."

And then there were a couple of new faces. The hopelessly happy Lucy Porter, cheerfully pointing out how sweet it is that Osama Bin Laden still keeps in touch. "Many men don't, I find. And he still uses audio casettes. He's the only man in the world who uses them. Find the man still buying the c-90s and you've caught the bugger."

But perhaps the most surprise package of the show was Mchael McIntyre. He tried very well on NewsKnight over on ITV but perhaps even he couldn't save that show. Yet on Mock the Week he was superb, cheerfully pointing out: "I don't eat whole asparagus. I'm not a monster."

And then onto how the Archbishop of Canterbury solves every argument by playing the "Jesus card." "No, we're not watching that, Jesus says it's the Whole Nine Yards tonight."

So good was Michael that as I wait for this blog to write itself, I'm buying tickets for his next live gig.

And finally, Dara O'Briain. A host to put any other panel show to shame. No autocue needed. And the banter was second to none all the way through. It's strange, isn't it, how the Beeb keeps quiet about its best shows - yet plugs nonsense like Bonekickers all day long.

Yes, it's a very welcome return to Mock The Week (episode 2, Thursday at 9pm). Shame they've kept Hugh Dennis though - Still can't have everything

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Bonekickers

Posted by Remote Control on July 7, 2008 10:14 PM

You can always tell when the BBC is getting excited about a programme: Its stars start turning up all over the place.

Whenever there's a sniff of a new series of Spooks, the whole cast is wheeled out to do interviews all over the place: From Friday Night with Ross to the Chris Moyles Breakfast Show on Radio 1, there truly is no great machine geared up for self publicity than the BBC.

As so it's proved with Bonekickers, which seems a bit like a British Indiana Jones, but done by committee. Yet top marks to Simon Mayo who, on his telly preview segment on his daily Five Live show pretty much killed off any desire most of his listeners will have had about tuning in on Tuesday at 9pm.

Of the panel of three, no-one had anything good to say about it, all neatly summed up by the phrase "It's like Scooby Doo but without the detail." Oh dear. Part of the panel's problem also seemed to be the fact it was made by the creators of Life on Mars, and so they sought out, where they could, parallels in the characters. And from the writers of a sharp-tongued cop drama comes a sharp-tongued new drama. Fancy that.

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The Visit. It's great

Posted by Remote Control on July 3, 2008 7:56 PM

Have you ever noticed a programme in the TV listings and thought to yourself "Nah, it looks crap, I'll give it a miss" only to stumble across it anyway and actually realise how bloody good it is?

For me, that moment arrived at around 10.40pm yesterday. Having revelled in the sheer crapness of the current midweek Nationa Lottery draw - especially it's graphics, which make the current News at Ten look positively space aged - I had meant to hunt out something else instead of watch The Visit, BBC 1's new comedy.

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Fern Britton: Sad fools who criticise her should be ashamed

Posted by David Higgerson on July 1, 2008 1:44 PM

IF you believe everything you read in the national newspapers, then the current tale about Fern Britton is certainly a sorry one.

To recap: Somehow she ended up on the front page of the News of the World after they got the shock horror story that her recent weight loss was not just down to exercise and eating well – she'd had a gastric band.

Now, about a month on from this, if the “sources� on the This Morning programme are to believed, Fern's brave face in front of the cameras is masking a weepy, withdrawn woman off camera who now fears for her career.

I have several questions, all of which start with the word “why.� Why should she lose her job? Why does one, reasonably good mid-morning TV presenter's choice of weight loss warrant the front page of the UK's best-selling Sunday newspaper? And why is she being treated as though she failed to mention she was the strategist behind Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe regime?

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