September 2008 Archives

THERE are some characters in soaps I couldn't care less about, some I actually wouldn't mind seeing meet a sticky, painful end. Tess Bateman, the clinical nurse manager (yes, it's a real job apparently) in Casualty is one such person.

Miserable, self-righteous, pompous, cold - she's been something of a pet hate figure of mine for quite a while. In fact, she's one of the reasons I stopped watching Casualty during its last series (yes, it still runs in series sequence, it's off air for at least a fortnight between each season). Her and the increasingly boring staff v management and consultant/important doctor sleeping with nurse stoylines.

But the two-part opener to series 25 (25!) was little short of spectacular. Which is the least you'd expect from Casualty. A reality TV crew following the cast managed to get involved in an exploision in a block of flats - with paramedics about nine floors up - then film paramedics running over the girl who'd caused the explosion and who, in the meantime, had fallen out with Tess when being treated for burns.

There's a lot wrong with Fox News, the Murdoch news channel which is blasted into UK homes via the ol' Sky box. Yes it's biased, massively in favour of the Republicans. Yes, it's dumbed down in a way even the brains behind BBC Breakfast News would find offensive. And yes, it doesn't understand the irony when it announces it is the news channel which is "fair and balanced."

But, by God, it's compulsive viewing when there's a storm on. In the UK, when there's a severe flood on, Sky News might go over to its "news wall" more often for an update than usual. At Fox News, with Hurricane Ike pounding Texas (natural born Fox News territory if ever there was such a place) they went to their, wait for it: Extreme Weather Center [sic]. Oh yes, this is news injected with dangerous hormones to the factor of 10.

... Mock The Week (Thursday, BBC 2, 9pm).

It's one thing for us to enjoy it, it's quite another to see six comedians enjoying the work of a seventh, quite so much.

Yet that was just what happened when Stewart Francis appeared this week. He had Frankie Boyle in stitches, Russell Howard doubled over with amusement and host Dara O'Briain smiling for longer than the obligatory moment he gives most people.

Normal service resumes on this blog next Monday - an enforced break from the goggle box is to blame - but I couldn't let the remarks from Setanta, pass without comment.

Oh yes, Setanta. The most hated satellite channel going. Setanta Sports, the supposed rival to Sky Sports which appears to be nipping around buying as much sport as possible and then making us pay to view it.

At the weekend, it declared: "Setanta is the best thing to happen to TV sport for years." Really. That's what it said. Which is no doubt what the estimated 10 million who normally watch an England game will be thinking when they either had to make do with Five Live commentary or slink down the pub to watch the match on Setanta.