Recently by Remote Control

Most sports can be summed up in one sentence to make them sound very dull.

Formula 1 is no exception: "Very rich men drive very powerful cars around in a circle for an hour. Man in pole likely to win."

In fairness, last season was a bit of a rarity. No-one expected Jenson Button to win, least of all Button himself I guess.

So Formula 1 quickly changed the rules again to make it all predictable. Out went fuel stops, for example, and once again, Formula 1 has become a procession of fast cars around a track.

And the whole television world - on the BBC at least - has to give way to make room for this fortnightly spectacle.

I'm never sure why people have to go over the top when remembering celebrities who have just died.

Take Kristian Digby, for example. A star of daytime TV would surely have been enough in the tributes. Quite how he made homosexuality acceptable for the middle classes, I'm not sure.

After all, surely the middle classes are at work when Kristian is normally on the telly?

To me, a more fitting tribute would have been to remember him for what he really was: A property show presenter who actually knew about property.

It seems to be the week for characters crossing over from one show to another. Tonight, we see the cast of Holby City attempting to save the life of Casualty's Charlie Fairhead after he suffered what I think might have been a stroke.

Over on Channel 5, meanwhile, is arguably the most exciting crossover in a long time: The CSI trilogy.

CSI New York and CSI Miami have teamed up in the past - Horatio and Stella got a bit too friendly for my liking - but this will be the first time all three CSIs have interlinked.

... It won't surprise anyone to learn that another of Gail Platt's marriages has gone down the pan. Or down to the bottom of Windermere in the case of drippy Joe, the bloke who managed to lose all his money and end up borrowing from the world's most charismatic loan shark.

His death had been a long time coming. In fact, the fact it has taken so long tells us all we need to know about the sorry state of Corrie at the moment.

While Eastenders has successfully milked the whodunnit around Archie for several weeks now, we now face the prospect of a 'will he, won't he reappear' scenario with Joe, a character we quite frankly don't care about.

The real problem for Corrie with this scenario, other than the fact Joe is too new for us really to give a monkey's about, is that there comes a point where a character has repeated a mistake so often that it's impossible to have sympathy with them.

Now we all know Chris Kamara is a TV pundit legend. Yes he gets carried away, yes he's sentences sometimes don't make sense, and yes he's not that slick when giving updates from a game.

But Saturday's wouldn't be Saturday's without him shouting 'unbelievable Jeff' on Soccer Saturday.

And I can only assume that the producers at Sky decided one slightly bumbling ex-football player wasn't enough, or that maybe Kamara was becoming a little too good. How else can you explain the arrival of Dean Windass as a commentator?

Jonathan Ross said something quite telling last night. In that opening segment of his chat show where he cracks a few jokes, he pulled out a gadget which is supposed to help you clear your nose.

It prompted a bit of a laugh because it looked like, well, as though it could be used for something else. There was a bit of laughter, Ross looked at the camera and said: "Now come on, it's not that sort of show ... anymore."

And that's the problem I have with Jonathan Ross's show at the moment. Ever since he returned from Sachsgate the programme hasn't been the same. And the fact he's announced he is quitting the BBC, meaning the programme will end in the summer, has only served to make matters worse.

It's either like watching a wounded, trapped animal die, or perhaps watching a manager at a football team try and impose himself on his players who know he won't be around for much longer. There's no reason for us, as the audience, to invest in Ross's show because it won't be around for much longer.

HIDDEN AWAY, or at least that's how it feels, on a Monday night is a TV drama called Law and Order: UK.

I say hidden away because it's up against Hustle at 9pm on a Monday, and, in truth, one hour of ITV's time for this programme will never do it justice.

There's a great drama trying to get out but trying to cover off a crime, the police investigation, the arrest, the interrogation, the court case and often the second court case is nigh on impossible in the 46 minutes or show each episode has to run.

British television has a rich heritage of gripping crime dramas and gripping legal dramas, so mashing the two together with a British version of the US hit series is a great idea.

This blog is probably the odd one out in that it's a TV blog which doesn't really like Dr Who. But I can see its appeal, and it certainly has a lot of fans, so it makes sense that the BBC would make it a key part of its Christmas Day plans.

With the Tardis included in the BBC's Christmas idents, it was clearly one of the shows the BBC was banking on for big viewing figures, and it came third in the "most watched" charts with around 10 million viewers - down on the figures for the previous two Christmas specials.

It was beaten by Eastenders, watched by 10.9million people, and by The Royle Family, which was watched by 10.2million - 10.199million of whom must be wondering if they'd missed the joke along the way. It was shocking bad in my opinion, a dreadful send-up of working class people by a bunch of actors who came across as smug in the process.

But back to Doctor Who, anyway. Ten million isn't bad, but there wasn't much competition in that slot, either. From where I'm standing, the charm of Doctor Who is that it went away for a long time and then came back. Now there is no escaping it. And surely part of what makes it so cultish is that it shouldn't get saturation coverage everywhere.

THERE are some things Eastenders just does brilliantly. Whodunnits being one of them.
And as a result, this year's 'which soap was best on Christmas Day' battle between Coronation Street and Eastenders was a one-horse race.

Corrie, put bluntly, simply wasn't in the running. The return of Nicky Tilsley v Ronnie losing her baby. Kevin almost leaving with the world's most unlikely seductress v Who killed Archie Mitchell? If this was boxing, it would have been a knock-out in the first round.

The Archie story has been bubbling along nicely for quite a while, as he slowly made enemies with most of the people in Walford. Not just Phil 'I'm going to kill him, once I've had a drink' Mitchell, either.

There was Peggy, his long time love from whom he's snatched the Queen Vic. Does she have it in her to see off Archie? What about Bradley, just back with his long-time love Stacey only to find out she's up the duff to Archie? What about Ian Beale? He lent the Mitchells the money to keep the Queen Vic when Sam Mitchell skipped bail, only to be forced to sell the loan on to Archie if he wanted an early fling with Janine kept quiet. So he sells the loan on, but Archie then decides not to keep quiet. Could Beale have what it takes to finish Archie off? What about Janine? Having acted as his sidekick for months, being kicked out on to the street as soon as Archie had got what he needed?

Whereas as Corrie felt like it a battle to sit still for an hour, Eastenders flew by. A couple of the possible killers appeared to have a go but fail - Beale, Bradley, long-suffering daughter Ronnie, but there wasn't even a hint of a clue as to who the killer would be at the end as the bust of Queen Vic plunged into the back of Archie's head.

IT feels like panto season in our house whenever an interview with Tamsin Outhwaite appears on telly at the moment.

She's been very busy promoting Paradox (BBC 1, Tuesdays, 9pm). And in almost every interview she has done she's been at pains to say it's "not a sci-fi programme."

At which point, I just want to shout: "Oh yes it is."

After all, it's about a bunch of detectives who get to see a bunch of images relating to catastrophies taking place in the future which arrive at the offices of a firm of space scientists.

So, in one sentence, we're dealing with science, a mysterious unknown force, time travel (of a sort) and trying to convince the unconvinced of what is happening.

Yup, sounds like sci-fi to me.