Help an hour of my life's been stolen: ITV's Drama season kicks off

ITV are class if nothing else. The network that brought us Sherlock Holmes , Midsommer Murders and the great voyeuristic drama Diary of a call girl, kicked off it's drama season tonight. All during the bits of the World Cup  Adrian Chiles bored us with , we got to see the princess and the PURRvurse veg in her bedding, we also got to see the dramatic best bits of IDENTITY, the new ITV cop drama meant to get us all excited about identity theft. Well just to make sure we didn't forget it was on, we got several trails on Corrie and in a presumably unrelated story line, Sean and Michelle create a fake facebook account using Liz MacDonald's identity to see if Violet has posted any pics of her baby son .....Sean's kid,  keep up people ......I'm sure it will all end in tears.

Now in real life an identity thief gets your credit card and books a flight to Warsaw , buys a flat screen telly and tries to empty your bank account. Once he's done or you've reported your cards compromised, the party ends. To build a programme on such a thin premise requires a lot of suspension of disbelief and some cracking good writing.

So did that happen?

 Identity finally starts with an OTT  dramatic  situation  in which the police try to keep a man from committing suicide over a man named Smith .....  He' hasn't done nuffink  Guv  honest  it was all Smith.....He hates me, he wants me ruined..... Ok so we get it , whackjob out for revenge of some kind.  It gets better, seems our victim was in Afghanistan and saved some  soldiers life, he's well hard, that's why he tried to kill himself with a sniper rifle yeah.... And the aptly cast Keeley Hawes plays a DCI based almost entirely on Alex Drake formerly of 1983 (Identity theft). She has worked hard to create an Identity division  and by gum  it had better work warns her boss.... she even has a broken detective she's brought in from the cold who spent 10 years under cover working with the Bulgarian mafia or something. Whatever you do,  warns the gaffer, don't try and fix him , he's past his sell by date, yeah we get it , don't get close, don't sleep with him , don't be surprised when he screws up.

The look, pacing and acting of this drama are a near perfect copy of the style of Spooks ( MI5 for you Americans), oh my  Identity theft again! They even have the gadget guy and the woman who goes through bank statements and web sites, thrilling I know.  The only problem is, however you light, act, and film this, the script is some of the worst writing to hit our screens since some first year drama student wrote a Harry Potter fanfic . Over the top speeches, wholly unbelievable dialogue delivered in bad pantomime style reminiscent of mob films about London in the 80's, written by people who live in the country and eat nothing but veg. It gets worse, the so called plot , if you believe it, is that the bad guy has done this before, he steals a person's identity to torture them as they spend the rest of their natural lives in prison or commit suicide. His latest victim spends the ep looking like a deer in head lights  gibbering about how this person knows everything and he's a waste of space and deserves to be dead. Well yes , I don't disagree, but I though you're supposed to sympathize with the victim?  Half way through the hour I lost any interest I may have had in any of the characters or the denouement of the story.  I think they arrested the son of the geezer the veteran rescued in Afghanistan. Seeing as most identity thieves are anonymous, almost never caught and not psychotic vengeance mad mental patients, I don't see how this expensive, well cast , badly written badly acted  ITV detritus will survive the next few weeks. Bottom line is that I didn't give a toss about any of the characters at the beginning and cared even less when I tuned out.  With luck it will be quietly moved to a later time slot and sold off to a market where this sort of thing looks good compared to repeats of Columbo. On the Vogon Poetry scale of bad . 10 being where you gnaw your own leg off after 10 seconds, this was at least a 7 bordering on 8.5. Had I not tried to last as long as possible ( 30 minutes adverts included in my case) I would have turned it off after the opening 5 minutes.

The good news is that you now know to plan around this. You could have watched the Well good show, but we already know that's a 10 on the Vogon scale, you could have watched a repeat of Cities of the world  or just taken a walk. Being a divorced Dad I could have watched the BBC thing A Century of Fatherhood, but I think I'll pass as I was having a mostly good day till now. Tomorrow the football returns and the hope of nations hang on the whims and talent of referees and footballers.  Sadly it's ITV's turn to make a hash of the coverage yet again, so I'll   just be tuning in for the kick off and forced to  migrate to five live for commentary. Come on you Oranje, we all want a Holland Germany final.

Before I forget, Digital spy reports that

Johnny Depp has been linked to a movie version of Doctor Who.According to website Tor, an article appeared on PubArticles which allegedly quoted former showrunner Russell T. Davies.Davies reportedly said that he was in the process of developing a Doctor Who movie and promised that the Daleks would be involved. However, the article was later removed.Tor has now claimed that sources in the film industry have confirmed that Depp will star in a Doctor Who. It is unclear how genuine the reports are as Davies has previously said that he has no plans to make a Doctor Who movie. film, which would be released in 2012.
 
This from the same site that couldn't get the weather right if they stuck their heads out the window. Digital Spy make The Sun look like the Times of London some days. All I can say is, better be as accurate as all the other equally imaginative Who rumours floated in the past.

I love the sound of deadlines whizzing by

A propos of nothing, I got up this morning like a fag addicted creature stabbing in the dark for my fix, only to remember there is no football today or tomorrow, so now stuck with an entire day to fill interacting with other humans, I need to come up with a game plan that still has room for the two articles I promised but haven't touched since the World Cup has started. I'd like to say that I'm feeling guilty about having had to make an excuse to my editor, but to be honest he knows I been spending my time watching the world cup. What I'm sure concerns him more is that I had time to write an article on the state of Humour, saved English football, reviewed a BBC4 Bio pic , the last episode of Doctor Who till Christmas, and still not even a draft for him to look at. Honestly Mark, I haven't forgotten you, I promise, hand on heart, I'll have something for you in a couple of days tops.   

Well it's many hours later and the visitors I least expected have left, I've made enough spaghetti sauce to feed a small army, the cat has been washed, made some sandwiches re-organized the pantry and took a bath. My wife who is my researcher, baked two loaves of bread and a massive tray of cookies,  but it's not procrastination. I can hear you asking, did you do any writing today?  Well yes in fact, I did some stuff on facelick, banged on in Galli Base about why Germany will take Argentina to go on to the final, and wrote a polite note to my council about getting us a new recycling bin, as the one we have is knackered. All in all a productive day, if not big on  literary output.

I also did one thing I hadn't had a lot of time to do.  I looked at how my list of regular readers has grown. I'd like to thank mysterious person in Moscow for coming back everytime there's a new post, then there's Gavin in Estonia who doesn't read my Who reviews till he's seen the episodes as he thinks I might have too many spoilers, maybe yes and maybe no Gavin. Jeffrey wants to know where the food bits are, they're coming  is the short answer. Have a cracking honey bread recipe that would be at home in any Polish home and if you can lay hands on some matza, you can make your own skor bars...  In the last few days I have established a steady supply of information from Unsigned Sunderland and few other sources ( more on that another time), so a few days hence, you can expect a once weekly list of must try acts you won't ever hear on Darth Cowell's iPOD. Then there's the nice people at BBC Radio Newcastle who have knowingly and not so knowingly contributed to this blog. Nick Roberts and Paddy McDee are legends and if you've not caught their contributions to radio I can only ask , what are you waiting for?

I know some of you are wondering why I didn't write a word about the last few days of World Cup Matches, but if you watched, you'll know that like most, I was too busy trying not to slit my wrists to  dull the pain of having to watch Japan v Paraguay play the kind of football that makes watching paint dry feel exciting. By the time we got to the penalties I was relieved it was over, I didn't care who won. I do know that if I ever see either of those teams on a fixtures list, I will hope they get hammered into oblivion until they learn to at least try and score some goals. Crossing your legs like a frightened virgin seems interesting for the first 5 minutes, but three matches in a row is enough to make you swear off the game. At least Chile  Brazil was interesting even when it was nil nil for the longest time. In the end Chile succumbed 3-0 and it was entertaining.  I must also confess a slight perverse joy in the discomfiture on Christiano Ronaldo's face as he was having a pretty bad day at the office. Seeing him unhappy more than made up for all the unpleasantness a few years ago and since. There are few players currently active that I dislike more, in fact only three and two of them had a vile World Cup, seeing Gatusso not play and then get sent home a loser was personal joy surpassed only by the knowledge that Lippi, master of dull anti-football and cheating will likely be sacked joining the disgraced Raymond Domenech on the manager black list. I won't belabour the point made by a few others in various other blogs and columns, suffice to say that the self important superficial condescending Adrian Chiles, is not worthy of licking Gary Lineker's shoes. Bet you thought I was going to have Chiles lick some other part of Lineker?  Well it's not that kind of blog, but for £2.99 a minute there is a site where you see strange creatures humiliate themselves live on telly. Is anybody still watching Big Brother? ITV have proved that even the World Cup can be trivialized to a point where you wait for the last possible second before tuning in to the match to miss the awfulness that is the ITV warm up show. Thankfully, you can choose who's coverage of the final you want to watch, with luck, next World Cup/Euro ITV will be stripped of any right to International football.

You may wonder who the revelation of the world cup has been, the most remarkable person or thing  to come along and make a permanent mark on our imaginations. Is it Diego Maradona, maybe the Dung Beetle, or perhaps the seriously annoying vuvuzela? Putting on my best Jeremy Clarkson voice, You're all wrong , it's ...  Ivica Slavikova  , yes the bird off the Sky broadband advert featuring the perverse (purrverse) pea in her mattress. Every time she say "Stop leaving vegetables in my bedding. Its perverse",  males watching are hypnotized or at least trying not to let it show if the  girl friend or wife is in the room. And on the subject of these self same women. Such brave, long suffering people they are, even my football loving wife wonders how I've managed to watch all but one live match without going blind, crazy and soft in the head. I'd like to put this in perspective. If you follow a team like say Newcastle United, and somehow you watched every match they played in the season, you'd have 38 regular season matches, a few FA Cup ties say 4, if you make Europe, another 10 if you go all the way, so 52 in total over a period of 10 months. I have watched 52 of 56 matches since the World Cup kicked off . I will watch another 7 between Friday and the final for a total of 64 matches in under a month with only a two day break. I've grown used to the idea I could see two allegedly high quality matches a day and even secretly missing the inane droning of Mick McCarthy in my ear. My wife knows enough to let me have my fun, it's only every two years and the rest of the time "I'm the best". Football zombie Mietek will be around for another couple of days and it's back to normal programming, my editor will have a steady stream of brilliant stuff, my wife will be able to talk to me normally as opposed to only for 10 minutes in between matches, life will go on and I will catch the occasional crap friendly, or Europa league qualifying match until the real football comes back in August.   Those of us lucky enough to have women loyal enough to understand we won't always be like this, need to appreciate how lucky we are. Some men have been forced to miss the football to go to in laws, do shopping or eat out cos it's nice.  These women don't seem to know we'd rather have our teeth pulled than miss the World Cup. So men, after all the fuss is over, and you need to go on footie withdrawal, show some appreciation to your lady, take her to see that new vampire porn flick that just came out, ( you can sleep in the dark it's ok) , you could have a few friends over and talk for hours she'll like that, or you could just revert to default setting and that will seem like a huge improvement on the grunting football obsessed eating sleeping lump she's been living with for the past month.

 If you do manage some telly time and you've missed these gems earlier in the week, go to your iPlayer and fire up Mock the Week, Graham Norton from this Monday and the first new Top Gear. More on those tomorrow as well as some recipes and music you won't find anywhere else.

In othe telly news Phil Collison Corrie boss and ex Doctor Who producer was recently asked about plans for the 50th anniversary.. “It’s still quite early and we’re still planning what we’re going to do. We’ll be announcing more details soon but what I can say is that it’ll be massive. It’ll be Corrie like you’ve never seen it before.” Collinson was also asked whether Corrie would be repeating the idea of a live episode like they did for the 40th anniversary in 2000. He acknowledged that the idea had been raised but added that he wasn’t terribly enthusiastic about the idea himself, citing the enormous amount of coordination necessary to make it work. I'll take that as a no Phil. Regardless, since his eps have started to run, Corrie has been a treat to watch. Good work Mr.Collison. Long may you reign.

One more day of rest and maybe I'll get closer to finishing at least the one article this week. In the mean time, if you feel like wasting a few bob at the bookies, put a fiver on Germany to get past Argentina. If they loose, it's just a fiver, but if they win the odds are tasty. If' I'm right send me my ten percent in the post. Laters all.