TV
Veronica Lee
Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer's fans recall with huge affection their previous collaborations – among them Big Night Out and The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer, two wonderfully anarchic shows. Now comes their first traditional, one-room (well two actually) sitcom House of Fools, which, true to form, is a mix of physical comedy, bawdy humour, surreal sight gags and utter nonsense.As in another project, Shooting Stars, Bob (Mortimer) is the straight man, who has his house constantly invaded by a succession of eejits – chief among them his lodger Vic (Reeves), a lothario friend and neighbour (Matt Read more ...
Jasper Rees
A week ago the first episode of Benefits Street crashlanded on Channel 4. It visited the eponymous area of Birmingham where most residents are on some form of social security. Housing benefit, child benefit, disability benefit: you name it, they were in IDS's crosshairs. Channel 4’s regular payload of viewers shot off the chart: 4.3 million was higher than the ratings for any of its programmes last year. Many of them have apparently taken to visiting James Turner Street, where the luckless and mostly likeable stars live. This must be what people mean by a hot-button issue, the button being on Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
As Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock reached the end of its latest brief span, Timeshift [****] surveyed the history of dramatic interpretations of Baker Street's finest with a wry eye, in a narrative sprinkled with nutritious facts and anecdotes. The account by Margaret Robinson from the Hammer Films art department of how she designed the latex horror mask for The Hound of the Baskervilles (the title role was played by a Great Dane called Colonel) was notably priceless.Aided by zesty interviews with Christopher Lee, Tim Pigott-Smith, PD James and more, and pinned together by an outrageously Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
If you’re a channel trying to prove that there is life in a tired old format, it’s hard to think of a more effective way than signing up Kylie Minogue. It’s tough for a telly talent show to make an impact in those early weeks, before the audience has warmed enough to the contestants to begin rooting for them or otherwise, but the prospect of will.i.am serenading the diminutive diva during the judges’ opening medley of “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” and “I Predict a Riot” was reason enough to tune in to the third series of The Voice.The contestants were almost exclusively pale, skinny Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Having brought us to the end of Homeland, Channel 4 are hoping lightning will strike twice by introducing another American series based on an Israeli original. Where Homeland was the American version of Hatufim, Hostages is derived from Bnei Aruba, made by Israel's Channel 10, who sold the format to CBS before the original had even been completed.Not that this is another war-on-terror saga, unless a theme of that nature should happen to pop up later in the series. This time, the plot revolves around an elite surgeon, Dr Ellen Sanders (Toni Collette), and her family. As the first episode opens Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
How come there is always a free parking space right outside the police station’s front door as Saga Norén draws up? If she has malodourous armpits, what must her manky leather trousers smell like? What does her partner in investigation Martin Rohde do to distract himself from her personal hygiene issues? Wouldn’t he do better to downsize his expensive car and use the money saved on renting an apartment rather than kipping in a hotel? All burning questions raised by the second series of the Danish-Swedish co-production The Bridge, currently being aired by BBC Four.It was the same with the Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Take two television formats and blend in mixer, then serve on one platter. The Taste is essentially Mastervoice, fusing Masterchef’s wannabe kitchen creatives and The Voice’s blind auditions. An early tasting suggests that the stand-out ingredient is Nigella Lawson in the court of public opinion.The Taste has come along at exactly the right time for Channel 4’s PR department. There’s seemingly always room in the television schedules for yet another show about cooking, but how to stand out in the heat of the kitchen? This latest concoction has enjoyed a massive boost in pre-publicity thanks to Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
There are times us northerners watch your typical London-set big-budget BBC drama and think, well, this really is another world. Whether it’s the two-hour commutes or the estate agencies where there is so much business that nobody has time to sit and watch cat videos on YouTube, there’s little about the world of The 7.39 familiar to those of us lacking three-bedroom semi-detached suburbia and a job in the City.That said, there’s probably little about David Nicholls’ vision of London that seems familiar to those who live and work in the capital either. As in the screenwriter’s novel-turned- Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
For a drama as committed to the exploration of the changing role of women in post-war Britain, The Bletchley Circle isn’t above a little sleight of hand. The second series of the critically acclaimed whodunnit began with a flashback to 1943 and to Alice Merren (Hattie Morahan), a bright young codebreaker who quickly solves a puzzle that the menfolk have been bamboozled by for the past two days. It’s a three-character shift in the cypher, she says, noting that even if the enemy were to build the most complicated machine in the world, “it would still be run by people”.It’s people and the Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Why has Nordic noir been such an addictive novelty? Yes the plots are great, the locations moodily cool, the flat dialogue enigmatic. But in the end it’s all about gender. The detective who is a genius at work but clueless at life – we’ve seen it all before in a suit and tie and a battered mac. What’s different in equal-opportunity Scandinavia is that the dysfunctional crimebusters are beautiful bug-eyed Valkyries. Up north it’s the blokes who are the sidekicks.First there was Sara Lund in The Killing. However much work she needed to do on her empathy skills, Saga Norén of the Malmö police Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
In our big-bang globalised environment, Sherlock Holmes is now more like a Marvel Comics superhero than a mere "consulting detective". We take it for granted that his deductive powers can peel open the physical and psychological secrets of a complete stranger within milliseconds, while the scope of his ambitions has advanced from solving quaint Edwardian mysteries to unpicking global conspiracies and phantasmagorical terror threats. The game is afoot, but now it's in fibre optic HD 3D with 7.1 surround sound and added social networking.Happily, Mark Gatiss (who wrote this series three opener Read more ...
Jasper Rees
The late rise of Ruth Jones, who has been made an MBE, is a blessed relief. According to the prevailing rules of ageism and lookism, Jones should still be plugging away in supporting roles, typically as the large gobby sidekick which for years looked like the outer limit of her casting range.But after 20 years in the business and at the ripe age of 41, she won best female comedy newcomer at the British Comedy Awards. The performance that swayed the jury was still a gobby supporting role. But this time Jones – with James Corden (who won the male award) – had written it herself. Read more ...