June 2009 Archives

Two seasons of CSI have been waved off in the UK in the last week - just as the third returns.

CSI: (for the purposes of this blog now called CSI:Vegas) went for a more subdued exit from the ninth season than at the end of the eighth - which was good.

Meanwhile, CSI:New York went for the more nuclear option as it bowed out with a superb cliff-hanger which, rather like the shooting of Warrick Brown at the end of season eight of CSI:Vegas, you simply couldn't see coming.

Replacing CSI:Vegas in the Tuesday night slot on Channel 5 is CSI: Miami, now in its seventh season here, and my least favourite of the CSI trio.

As sure as summer follows spring, it's time for one of the Websters to get all randy again.

Now that at least one of the Webster children in Coronation Street is above the age of constant, the who'll-have-the-affair merry-go-round has taken a bit longer to return to one of the more regular riders.

Remember Sally's fling with the car dealer? It kind of made sense - Sally, always driven by money, had had her head turned by richer man who could lavish her with everything she wanted. Somehow, it all went wrong and she ended up back with Kevin, but it took a while.

IT'S not often I agree with Chris Moyles. Not because I don't find him an amusing entertainer - he is. It's just that he isn't that agreeable. If he was, he wouldn't be that good.

But he got it spot on this morning on his Radio 1 breakfast show when he returned fire at the newspapers which had a pop over the 400 people the BBC sent to Glastonbury.

Read The Sun or the Daily Mail and you'd get the impression that the vast majority of people at Glastonbury for the BBC were there on some sort of corporate lig.

Talk about picking a good day to bury bad news. Maybe this is also the reason why the BBC published executive expenses yesterday, it needed to be sure there was something else rumbling so it could slip out this headline un-noticed:

Last Of The Summer Wine recommissioned for BBC One

Last Of The Summer Wine, the world's longest-running sitcom, has been recommissioned for a further six half-hours by Jay Hunt, Controller, BBC One, and Lucy Lumsden, former Controller, Comedy Commissioning.

At about 11.30pm yesterday Sky News flashed up the headline: Breaking News: Michael Jackson has died.

By that point it had been speculating about the condition of Mr Thriller for about an hour, ever since Tmz.com first reported that Jacko was in hospital.

When TMZ then reported that the King of Pop was dead, Sky, and the other 24-hour news channels for that matter, began to do the same, but pointing out that they were just repeating what TMZ was saying. Still, it didn't stop much speculation and pre-emptive tributes from "friends" of Michael Jackson.

What sort of friend responds to hearing from a website or news channel that his/her friend has died by then giving out a tribute before the death is confirmed?

Good news has arrived in the Remote Control inbox - Mock the Week is back!

A press release from BBC 2 tells us that the series will start next month.

Here's what arrived:

In a country ravaged by plague, war and financial meltdown, Dara O'Briain and his four horsemen are preparing to ride to the rescue this summer with the seventh series of smash hit topical panel show Mock the Week.

Returning on Thursday 9th July, BBC TWO's top-rated comedy maintains the unique mix of quiz, performance and topical discussion that saw the last series regularly pulling in viewing figures of more than 3 million in its 9 pm slot as well as becoming a huge hit on the BBC's You Tube channel and iPlayer sites.

Fresh from their sell out nationwide tours, O'Briain and the other hugely popular regulars Frankie Boyle, Russell Howard and Andy Parsons will be joined as ever by Outnumbered star Hugh Dennis and the very best talent from the stand up circuit to supply must see satire that's funnier than Gordon Brown's You Tube videos and edgier than the Sky Plus favourites on Jacqui Smith's telly.

Sometimes you can almost hear the thought process that produced a programme as you watched it.

Why on earth would anyone devise a quiz show in which a reality TV star and a senior MP had to teach other about their lives before watching them answer question about said life?

Yet that's what we saw on Don't Call Me Stupid (ITV 1, 10.35pm), dumped in that post-news slot which used to guarantee you an audience once Sir Trev had delivered his "and finally."

These days, seeing a programme dumped in that slot means it screams "Even ITV is ashamed of us" at you from the electronic programme guide.

And so Setanta has entered administration, just days after losing the rights to Premier League football on account of the fact it wasn't keeping up with payments on the contract.

Scottish football football followed suit, and then UFC, the real version of wrestling, did the same, leaving people with little reason to actually subscribe to Setanta in the first place.

ESPN, whose American sports coverage has to be seen to be believed such is the fantastic razzmatazz they inject into it, have now stormed in and taken the rights to the Premier League package Setanta had.

And for the English football fan, this means little more than having to switch subscribers if you want the full package of Premier League football.

But my question is this: Why do the competition authorities insist on splitting up the Premier League sports package in the first place?

Let's be honest, Michael Schumacher probably isn't The Stig. If you think about the timelines - the last "named" Stig was removed after revealing his identity in 2002 - Schuey has had quite a lot on his hands since then.

Can you, honestly, hand on heart, imagine the world's top F1 driver fitting in whipping around a Home Counties race track/air strip inbetween Formula 1 seasons?

No, neither can I.

If ever there was proof the BBC has too much money to spend, then it was served up on a plate in the form of Hotel Babylon (Fridays BBC 1).

Presumably now being aired in the Friday 9pm slot because the schedulers assume viewers are so brain dead from the week that they just want fluff on the box, Hotel Babylon does little more than give you a reason to get involved in Big Brother over on Channel 4.

Contrived doesn't begin to cover last night's plot. Wooden doesn't begin to cover the level of dialogue. Pointless doesn't begin to cover the programme's existance.

And the really worrying thing is, despite a script and plot which makes Neighbours feel like gritty real life, Hotel Babylon continues to pull in decent actors.