Search the Community

When I’m away, I rarely get the opportunity to enjoy any telly. Partly because it’s quite tricky to get hold of UK TV channels when abroad, but even when I’m in the UK, I don’t have the time. I know I shouldn’t, but I do tend to over indulge when I get back. It’s like coming in from the cold and wrapping yourself in the warming comfort of an old, familiar duvet. There’s been a bit of talk on other blogs about what’s on the telly, so I thought it might be a nice idea to make a list of the Top 10 TV programmes I’m enjoying this particular time I’ve fallen off the TV waggon. So here we go. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin. NB I’ve done them in a sort of reverse order to allow them to build to a crescendo. 10. Click This is the BBC’s flagship technology programme. However, UK technology geeks would be forgiven for not even knowing it exists, tucked away as it is on BBC News 24’s daytime schedules. Perhaps they think it doesn’t matter when it goes out, because tech-heads will be watching it on catch-up anyway. Anyway, I like it because its apparent low budget means that it cuts to the chase, rather than cluttering up its on-screen time with competitions, prizes and reading out live tweets from people whose attention is divided between the show, and their iPhone (and hence whose opinions are worthless). 9. Big Bang Theory This is the first of two US imports I’ve chosen, that air as part of E4’s ‘Quite Big Thursday’ (the other being ‘Brooklyn 99’; see next item). Believe it or not, there are people in this world who have never seen an episode of Big Bang Theory. My heart goes out to them. They truly do not know what they’re missing. As an aside, an Admin Assistant in one of the places I sometimes work looks like Penny, and so it’s a happy day for me when I go there. 8. Brooklyn 99 This one snuck up without fanfare. As mentioned above, this comes as part of E4’s ‘Quite Big Thursday’. The trouble with E4’s ‘Quite Big Thursday’ is that it’s littered with fairly lacklustre and formulaic US comedies that are only ‘quite’ funny. Something about this one, however, caught my eye, and after the first episode I was sold. 7. Bear Grylls: Mission Survive This is a little like “I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here”, in that a load of celebs are taken into the jungle and made to do many things they’d sooner not do. There the comparison ends, however. IACGMOOH is hosted by those cheeky Tyneside Eric-and-Ernie-alikes Ant & Dec. Mission Survive is hosted by an unsympathetic ex-SAS survival expert who famously rehydrated himself by In IACGMOOH, you never get the impression anyone will actually die as a result of eating bugs or getting covered in rats. With Mission Survive, it’s always a puzzle how any of the celebs manage to still be alive at the end of the episode. The viewers vote off celebs in IACGMOOH, whereas in Mission Survive, Bear Grylls dispatches them humanely with a small hunting knife before their incompetence can kill anyone else (that’s not strictly true, but by the time you’ve watched the first couple of episodes, it wouldn’t surprise you). 6. Bear Grylls: The Island Once Bear Grylls has euthanised the last of the celebrities in Mission Survive, Channel 4 will segue him seamlessly into this particular offering. The premise is this: Bear Grylls leaves a group of a dozen or so overweight office workers on a small, swampy and dangerous, deserted island with no food, water, survival kit or training. He then goes back after eight weeks to see what became of them. You think I’m joking? I am not. Lord Of The Flies can’t hold a candle to the horrors of the last series. In series 2, the ante has been upped. There will be two islands and two groups; one of men, and one of women. Oh, the humanity! 5. Raised By Wolves Every now and again, Channel 4 delivers up a new comedy that is like nothing that has ever come before it. ‘Father Ted’ and ‘The IT Crowd’ are obvious examples, and you may remember ‘The Comic Strip Presents’. The most recent to fit into that category is ‘Raised By Wolves’. Written by Caitlin and Caroline Moran, whose writing career doesn’t seem to have edged into TV before, this is the story of a very unusual West Midlands working class one-parent-family, and their sundry misadventures. Wow! 4. Inside Number 9 Back for a second series, this darkly comic (emphasis very much on the dark, rather than the comic) anthology of one-off dramas is written by Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton, two of the powerhouse writing team that brought us the deeply disturbing ‘League of Gentlemen’. The only connection between these half-hour stories is that they all take place in Number 9, be it an ordinary house, a gothic mansion, a dressing room, or a rail couchette . . . oh, and there’s always a knock-you-sideways twist in the tale. 3. Only Connect It only became apparent to me after watching ‘Only Connect’, but there live amongst us a race of super-intelligent alien entities, disguised as ordinary human beings. They created this quiz show to test their immeasurably superior intellects; to compete amongst themselves by performing mental feats so amazing to ordinary mortals as to make them nearly dizzy at the cerebral capacities involved. For humble men and women such as you or I, it is a feather in the cap to even understand the answers given, let alone come anywhere near providing one. It bills itself as ‘the toughest quiz show on TV’, and I see no reason to doubt that claim. It is hosted by Victoria Coren-Mitchell, who must surely be the sexiest woman on whatever planet she comes from. 2. 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown Born of a one-off experiment by Channel 4, ‘8 Out Of 10 cats Does Countdown’ has shoehorned two very different shows together into one. ‘8 Out of 10 Cats’ was a long running panel show where comedians answer questions on statistics. Very funny, but just one of many similar panel shows. Countdown was a number and letter puzzles gameshow, shown midweek afternoons, and mainly watched by students, and retired people hoping that exercising their brain cells will stave off dementia. The format is simple, and it’s the longest running gameshow on the planet (interesting fact: Countdown was the first show on Channel 4). Anyway, surprisingly enough, you put these 2 ordinary shows together, and you get ab-sol-ute dynamite. The whole is so much bigger than the sum of its parts. Funniest thing on telly at the moment by a long chalk. 1. Life on Mars I saved the best until last. OK, so this isn’t showing at the moment. I found the complete series 1 & 2 going cheap on iTunes, so I loaded it onto the iPhone to take away to Austria with me. I didn’t really get chance to watch it, so I’m catching up on it now. If I had to make a list of my top five TV shows of all time, this would probably be at the top. Gene Hunt is such an inspired creation, that Life on Mars would be at the top of the list on that character’s merit alone, but the rest is all superb too. Other highlights of my square-eyed habit are ‘Family Guy’ and ‘Banished’. My wife says I should watch the new ‘Poldark’, but I’ve already nailed my colours to ‘Banished’s flagpole, and there’s only room in my life for one Redcoat-based period drama. And anyway, I think she only watches it to see Aidan Turner’s six-pack.