Rest in Peace Jack Duckworth and Where's Lucas North?

I just watched Jack Duckworth aka Bill Tarmey walk off into the next world with Vera. I used to watch Corrie as religiously as I still do Newcastle United. Bill Tarmey was one of the many reasons I stayed tuned to the programme. Over the years, he and Vera have had some brilliant set toos and equally touching moments. As we loose more and more of the old dears on Corrie, the programme gets less less Corrie like. I found myself impatient for the non Jack bits to end so I could bid a fond farewell to  an old friend.

When it did come, it was a mixture of realism showing how tired and worn out Jack was feeling, blending effortlessly into a dream sequence that as it went on was clearly Vera coming to take him to the next place. It reminded me of the way I could feel the spirit of my own grandfather hanging around my grandmothers house for so many years before he finally moved on. Even now I still know that feeling as until only recently, the spirit of my father's deceased 2nd wife was a constant presence in the house, and this after 10 years. She seems to be happy he's being well taken care of , so she isn't as obvious now, but every so often , you can feel her there from the corner of your eye, observing. And so Vera was there when Jack passed on and joined her for one last dance before they had to go.  I don't know if Coronation Street will ever quite recapture the magic of the days when Fred Elliot, The Duckworths and the rest of them were Weatherfield royalty, but Phil Collison gave Jack Duckworth a send off worthy of the character and the actor who played him. Compared to actress Liz Dawn who's alter ego Vera, passed away quietly in the same chair, Jack's passing was also the passing of an older tradition of less a less conniving, unpleasant Corrie, deeply rooted in stories about the ordinary people and their lives. As the creator had strived so many years before, it was about the boring bits in between. Over the years I saw many passages in my life reflected in the lives of Weatherfield folk, but today, it's mostly high finance, bizarre love triangles and a most improbable lesbian affair. I'm all for inclusion and good story telling, but at least get it right. There is no way Sian is a lesbian and to have play it that way is an insult to our good sense and the reality of what ti means to be a lesbian. I've asked a few and like me, they don't buy it either. In a simpler time, even the gays on Corrie were mostly concerned with getting paid, getting the drinks in and the latest craik at the Rovers. Now days, if somebody isn't going bankrupt  because of highly improbable situations, then somebody else is being manoeuvred into killing against his will. I lived on an old established working and middle class street for over 20 years, NO ONE for three street either way EVER went insane and killed anybody, no one killed in cold blood and no one ever set fire to the commercial buildings on our high street. If you believed the goings on on Corrie, the only place more dangerous would be Midsommer. I despair of ever watching Corrie any time soon again. A pity as it was the only thing recently outside of football that kept me tuning in.

Spooks, In another conclusion of sorts, Lucas North aka Richard Armitage seemed destined to leave Spooks for good by the end of the hour. What happened instead was a bird of a different colour. All series long Ruth and Harry have been playing the game of "why didn't you save the boy" and " would you let me die". All along it seemed clear Harry was always going to choose country over personal attachment, but in the end he allowed Ruth's endangerment to cloud his judgement. Harry ends up paying the highest price possible short of death for the freedom of his beloved Ruth. By allowing state secrets out of safety and ultimately in the hands of a foreign power , he breaks the the most sacred trust he was given by MI5.  Surely his days are numbered at MI5.

And what of Lucas himself? Throughout the finale he displays a near cold fanatical desire to hurt somebody or something by selling  the Albany file to the Chinese. His motivation is never properly explained and we can only hope we find out in the next series. We do know he wants out of the spy game and new life with the lovely Maya. Something I never though for a minute he'd be allowed, but I never expected Maya to be the one gasping like a guppy out of water for breathe as she lay dying. Just when you think the rules are set in stone, Spooks show runners turn the tables on us and let a load of people live, even the now cruelly twisted and evil John Bateman/Lucas North. I held off writing this till today so most of you could watch the ep, because I can now say that Lucas comes out of this as a broken man who is beyond redemption or understanding. Despite every hand reaching out to help, Lucas only becomes crueller and more determined to  jeopardize his former colleagues, and the World, by giving away a secret  that could cause the death of millions of people. Even if he emerges from self imposed exile next year, we won't be inclined to trust him, believe him or like him. The only way he can redeem himself is a spectacular death.

This leaves Thames House in an uproar, Harry Pierce is about to loose his job, there is no section chief and worse of all, with the vultures circling for Harry, what will they do to MI5 itself? The use of Alec White former internal affairs specialist would seem to mitigate most of the damage to the agents involved in last night's action, and would also leave the road clear for Ruth to succeed Harry. Perhaps after all, the only scalp that will be taken is that of Harry Pierce. In the world of Spooks, it takes up the opportunity to craft a next series predicated on a lot more unauthorized skulduggery among rogue or freelance people. We'll see next year.

Best bits had to be the location of Albany, St- Edward's, which  begs the question , what else are they hiding there, and the huge relief I felt when Maya died and they did not let Lucas do the silent scream thing. The entire cast from the Home secretary down to the most humble extra, seemed to really take the story even more seriously than usual. This series from episode one to eight, was superiorly written, acted conceived.  Less of the fake countries and more grit about real issues using the names of real places. The box set for this series is a must have.

A good thing the BBC1 has the excellent Garrow's Law starting on the 22nd of November to keep us busy.

Turn Back Time- The High Street: Retail was never tougher than this & Spooks

Now we know what Greg Wallace was doing that one time he skived off Masterchef. He was attending Market day in Shepton Mallet. BBC's long anticipated, at least by me, Turn Back Time- The High Street, kicked off with the Victorian era. Greg Wallace greengrocer and foody, Juliet Gardiner social historian and Tom Herbert baker and food historian with High Street experience, form the "Chamber of Commerce" charged with guiding the participating families through the various eras that will take us all the way through to the era I was born in, the swingeing 60's. I love the concept of this programme, it does for retail what Victorian Farm did for agriculture.

In this series we follow a grocer  a baker, a butcher, and a candlestick maker ( ironmonger ), who must try to attract modern shoppers back to the town market square with old fashioned goods and services. As we'll see, some things never go out of style and others are a bit of a stretch for the modern sensitive Briton. With a combination of advertising, guile and  judicious use of ingredients, these families must try to make a profit by the end of the week. At the end of each week they have a Market Day when they have a last chance to sell off any perishable goods that hadn't moved during the week. Will the people of Shepton Mallet warm to the return of the weekly market or will they continue going out of the way to a big box store? The results will surprise you.

Whatever conceptions you may have had about Victorian retail, romantic or otherwise, they are shattered into a million pieces. While Larkrise to Candleford paints a pretty picture of happy merchants being nice to punters, never dreaming of thinning out quality material for a bit of profit, High Street pulls back the veil to reveal the truth of early High street commerce.  There is a reason we have standards and practices and quality control regulated by government, the imperative to make a profit and avoid the workhouse was enough for many merchants to skip on hygiene, proper ingredients, add poisons or useless fillers like sawdust, plaster of paris,  clay or poisonous alum and be economical with the truth. Oh wasn't it grand when the government stayed out of our business?  Well actually no. People died, got ill, workers lived even rougher than the poor merchants did and clients were generally ripped off.

What was interesting to note in episode one was the modern families taking up the trades, were already modern day practitioners. What they took for granted as normal and they considered as standard for the industry was turned on it's head. Seems that years of state intervention, sociological change in the family unit as well as commercial law, has moved commerce from furtive struggle to get as much for as little possible off un demanding clients to the current high standards and inspections that insure that even the tattiest shop today is still safer for even least careful shopper.

 What hasn't changed is the hard graft required to get raw materials turned into product in the shop window. To the last man woman and child involved, they were early to rise and late to bed. Merchants often shared a single large room over the shop. Working conditions were tougher than now, at least in part down to the fact they had to do everything by hand, had no labour saving devices and water had to be taken from the one pump in the town square. Refrigeration was a nightmare for the butcher if the twice weekly ice delivery wasn't on time, but did serve to inspire butchers to come up with novel quick ways to sell off stock. These included Pease pudding, sausages and pork pies. For the Baker it meant creating demand for product that wasn't always of the best quality or was on the point of becoming too hard to eat. Had they had enough time, I'm sure our bakers would have discovered bread crumbs. Our Ironmonger realized quickly he'd need an apprentice if he was to keep up with orders and sell goods from the shop, and the grocer fell back on home delivery, to insure people got in and out of the shop quickly and still felt they had been served.

So what sacrifices were made this Victorian week. The funniest had to be the Baking family, when the mum who is the master baker in 2010 had to stand back and let her husband take over duties. She found it hard to hold back and he found it hard to take advice. His first batch of 25 horribly burned, salty,  and under baked loaves was a complete disaster that cost them money and taught them the need to understand the materials at hand. With help they learned to add filler to the bread, which in this case was rice, not a bad thing, but could have been much worse. Alum, sawdust and far worse was put into bread to manage expensive flour. Baker Steven Oxford showed how authentic Victorian bread was made and uttered the phrase" Have you ever licked wallpaper before?" to describe the experience of eating it. Dry heavy and nasty, it's no wonder Victorian Farm Ruth Goodman was keen to make her own bread, which of course is what farm wives did in fact do. Later on they moved into 1870 and new lighter easier to use flour, producing a tastier and easier to make bread.

Our grocer and his family was struck by the lack of goods we assume should be a staple of any such shop, mayonnaise, fresh fruit and crisps. The rest all had to be made, wrapped and delivered to customers by cart. Eggs, butter, cheese, jams and veg were seasonal and had none off the preservatives that lurk in our food now. Perhaps the greatest adjustment was for the butcher, who had to re introduce the art of entertaining punters while making sausages and cutting meat. There's a reason why good food retailers until recently were such great showmen. You needed to to do everything you could to get customers to YOUR shop. The best stunt was the giant cheese, a massive round of cheddar brought in special for market day. It was the star of the show and was advertised with sandwich board and loudspeaker! the worst thing to happen wasn't the burned bread, but the burned pork pies left alone in the baker's oven while ALL the men were down the pub. On reflection, you had to see this coming, but I suspect no self respecting butcher would have left his pies untended like that back in the day.

The biggest challenge in this programme easily had to got to the ironmonger. He had the doubly hard job of selling what he himself called  "a pile of useless old tat". Today we would call him the hardware store and buy a variety of goods like lamps, tools and fencing material. Just how was he going to make any money at all? Turns out it was one of the most profitable enterprises in the experiment. He first spend a great deal of time catering to the needs of the High Street merchants then on market day , he sold an incredible amount of candles and candle holders. As for the useless old tat, lots of it went as well.

Quality over reputation was the balance and choice that had to be made by our families, see for yourself how well they did, but all in all I would say they came out well and the people of Shepton Mallet came to appreciate the experience. The biggest joy among shoppers over the age of 10 seemed to be the discovery that they enjoyed market day, not least because they could talk to friends and take it easy an experience you can still have in any ethnic neighbourhood you visit. It's the modern rushed suburban consumer of today that has forgotten the joy of what it meant to shop on a high street. What really struck me was the finickiness of the  ill informed people who turned their noses up at bread with lard in, or were put off by the sight of cured meats hanging outside the shop. One little girl made a remark about how that was why she wanted to be a vegetarian. Well honey, even veg was dirty once, and just what DID YOU think goes into your food? The direct connection between source and finished product was on display in the High Street for all to see. I grew up in this and to this day do not feel offended by the sight of lung or pig's trotters, nor do I find it an alien concept to include animal fat in my baked goods.  Modern folk are cut off from their food and  have sanitized their lives and eating habits to such an extent that the Briton of 1870 would not recognize them as English. For more information on the programme, click here.

Spooks fans, it's down to one last ep before the current series ends. Sad news ladies, seems Lucas North is not who seems to be, in fact he's not even Lucas North. Will he redeem himself? will he save the world yet again? Will he die in the attempt to pay for his sins?  Yes , yes and most probably! Harry Pierce and his agents are lured into a chase for the real killers who planted a bomb in the British embassy 15 years ago. Vaughan tries to sell Harry Pierce the information with Lucas in full view. What secrets is Lucas North hiding, what is the awful truth he so wants to avoid getting out? If you watched, you know, If you didn't,I'm not telling you, but it was cracking good fun. The quality of the writing this series has been head and shoulders above last year's and I liked that series as well, despite it's low ratings. What has happened this year is simply that the characters are that much more compelling and from the first ep, it was obvious Lucas was going to be in trouble.

What a rotter you say, a scoundrel and a bounder and a cad. But I suspect we'll be seeing the sort of end you give to tragic heroes in stories of old. That great speech in which he comes clean, the moment he betrays the bad guys and put's pay to the Chinese plot to do something nasty capped by his ultimate sacrifice in a heroic bid to save his mates, or even his cold killing at the end by a vengeful Vaughan, a ticked off spy, or an inconsolable Maya. Any way it goes, it's sure to be a heartbreaking bit of telly.

Ruth's story is also picking up pace and leading to something dreadful, I doubt she'll be killed, but clearly there is going to be a heavy price paid for her current emotional tumult. We know she will be deeply involved next week in the denouement  of the Lucas story line, just how it will play out will determine how many funerals we'll be watching in the last 5 minutes and just what cliff hanger they leave us on

Dear readers, I accidentally switched over to ITV2 during "The only way is Essex". After about 5 minutes I turned it off fearing for my sanity should I watch it any longer. These people vote? They are allowed to carry on reproducing and living among us?  Lord help us if any of these glakes gets near a position of responsibility, but no how could a bunch of vacuous, spray tanned, Visigoths get anywhere near power?  Shhh don't tell me I know, the PM is one of them isn't he?

Ian Holloway v Wayne Rooney, BBC budget cuts and Breast cancer

It's been a while since a did a post that covered a multitude of vaguely related things. Just today my in box has  given me grist for the mill and yesterday I made a discovery that shocked even me. Then of course there's a multitude of tiny bits and bobs worth passing on that don't frankly fit in to any of the usual Strictly, Masterchef or History posts.

I may as well reveal the shocking news first. I who have sworn to never watch The One Show as I thought it to be just a step away from bizzaro telly for the truly odd, have become a convert. There's something appealing about the new hosts Jason Manford and Alex Jones that makes the segment where Salman Rushdie plays table tennis seem less surreal. The informative pieces that I'll admit were also on the old One Show, seem to fit better now that the hosts don't seem to be sharing a brain cell. There are in fact three people who are a near guarantee to make me switch channels if they are on a chat show.... James Corden, Adrian Chiles and Katie Price, together these three make almost a whole personality. Perhaps it is the insensitivity and near total lack of knowledge emanating from Mr Chiles that so repelled me from the One Show, but with him gone , the segments worthy of BBC4 are truly informative and entertaining. All my favourite BBC4 presenters seem to be doing a short film a week for them, and  it doesn't seem as pointless now that we don't have interviews in which Yo Yo Ma will be asked for his favourite Lady Gaga track or if he thinks she's a tranny. 

Another chat show that has taken us by storm is the Rob Brydon Show. Normally a comedian with two chairs and a musical guest falls flat on his face as he or she will just end up interviewing the same dreary list of celebs Wossy used to get. But not our Welsh dynamo. He's got a small room, fewer than 200 people in. This intimate setting insures that no person sitting in a chair is immune from interrogation by the host and must be on his or her toes. Guests are mostly drawn from a combination of iconic British personalities to rising stars of comedy and drama. What I consider the icing on the cake, is that Rob Brydon is in fact not a bad singer, and will sit in with musical guests for a bit of a jam session. Guests of late have included Seasick Steve and Paloma Faith. If you like indie pop and music outside of the x factor production line, you will enjoy the segments. Brydon  has filled the void that once was the near exclusive domain of Graham Norton .

So why don't I watch Graham Norton anymore? Besides being off the air at the minute, his guest list had got so polluted with visiting Americans who needed everything explained to them  and the strange allowance of Jedward, TWICE, as well as apparently regular visits by James Corden, that I could not bear to turn on the telly. This sort of booking has replaced his previously entertaining range of comedians, actors, authors, freaks and funny misfits who knitted, made strange toys or channelled dead pets. Since He moved to BBC1 and Jonathan Ross lost his show, the BBC have tried to get Norton to take up the Ross mantle along with his guest list, in the process stripping him of any remaining charm.

In the it sucks to be you department, universally loved NUFC hero Andy Carroll, who is now living with Kevin Nolan under terms of his bail from assault charges, has had his brand new chrome-plated Range Rover burned to a crisp while parked in the drive. Graffiti expressing above mentioned love was found nearby . Joining Caroll this week in the race to see who is more "loved", is Wayne Rooney. He made Alex Ferguson look deeply disappointed and hurt beyond words on Sky sports. While no one will want to burn Wayne's car, I think he wins the twat of the week and the month award. Football has gone wrong when a single player and his agent can hold the the club hostage like that. If he's going to sit and sulk till January and bugger off on a free, then shame on him and the people who think this is ok. Ian Holloway got it right today when he raged at the players and agents who are now bigger than even the biggest clubs. What arrogance, what hubris, what a shame. What is the point of a contract when it means nothing, what is the point of training up a player only to have him throw his toys out the pram and leave when HE's done with YOU!?This rant was so good it made the Russell Howard show

Speaking of tits, some dim bulb with a computer has sent me an e-mail letting me know I've won £500,000. To collect I only had to send an e-mail to "Dear Graham Poll at graham.poll6@gmail.com". If that didn't work I got a second one telling me to use graham.poll9. If you get one of these, don't respond, you're only telling them you have an active e-mail address. Best comedy line of last week goes to visiting American comedienne on Qi XL Animals , when she stopped Ross Noble to ask him "Are you speaking English?". I also learned that if ever meet a honey badger, I should be wearing a steel jock strap.  Want a super power? Get bit by a radioactive hag fish and acquire the skill to ooze mucus at will, very cool and useful as well in a tight spot. Get it, tight?

Now if you are good soul and want to give to breast cancer awareness, may I suggest you avoid buying pink branded foods, products and other such crass commercial grasping and give directly to the charity. If you like cheese and the pink wrapped cheese is the one you would have bought normally, go right ahead, but for pity's sake, don't encourage this fake marketing  by buying a product from a company that will give a fraction of what you spent to the cause in question. Take note that you care about the cause, keep going , then when you get home, give something through paypal or write a cheque. And on that subject, we are a month away from Children in Need.  Start checking your finances now to make sure you have something to give on the 19th of November.

Spooks has been chugging along nicely. In last week's ep we learn the new commodity will be fresh water  and that there is a new world that resembles the old one of the pre-ideological days, when nations did war unto each other by stealing industrial secrets and attempting to shore their own economies at the expense of others. We also wondered just how bent Lucas was going to be; very it turns out, having set up some drone passing him in hall way. Loved his line where says  " We can be together, I've fixed things". When the fall comes, it will be spectacular. This weeks ep had the President of the United States, oddly referred to as the leader of the free World, chairing yet another doomed to failure, peace conference about the Arab-Israeli conflict. In a fresh twist, it takes a turn at stating the obvious, mainly that ultra religious elements in Israel are far from interested in peace before they get their nationalist agenda firmly in place. One of the most annoying things about the story was that I had so wanted to dislike the Home Secretary, but he turns out have a soul after all.

Speaking of the current government, the spending cuts at the BBC are on the one hand, not as bad as they could have been, and on the other hand still terrible. Or as my mate Keith Topping said, "It's better to loose only one leg instead of the two". The fact is that 16% of operating budget is being taken out of original programming. BBC News and the Welsh service that used to be paid by government departments are now paid for out of the main BBC budget. That budget by the way  frozen now for several years. So it you're nostalgic for the cheap special effects of 70's Doctor who, then wait a few months and you'll be right at home. Merlin has already seriously downgraded it's FX budget from last year with obvious results. I may not say it all the time, but I LOVE THE BBC. If I take away the few programmes I watch on ITV  ( Corrie, the occasional special crime drama and football), I'm left with a huge amount of telly I still watch. In fact if you took away my BBC, I'd be left with nothing.  One hopes that a few Lib Dem  or Tory MPs are caught in a scandal or are too ill to work, It won't take but a handful of seats to bring the whole rotten house of cards coalition down.

I'll close this with a massive praise of Mark Gatiss and his History of Horror of a less detestable kind. It has been a joy to watch, taking us step by step by step through the fascinating , sometimes forgotten sometimes unknown parts of the the story of Horror cinema. I was a boy all over again, watching Frankenstein, Dracula, then moving on to my teens, the Hammer films which I was finally old enough to see. Because of this series I've had to make a list of must watch again  and must watch for the first time classic horror films. I need to see the wax museum films, never seen Freaks, and I've forgotten  more Hammer films than I've watched new films in the last 10 years. I love how Gatiss explores the Luton buses or shows us how Bray studios reinvented the genre with it's more urbane, sexy  and bloody monsters. BTW, I'm with Luton, I'd much rather make up my own monsters, seeing them sometimes  just makes you laugh, robbing the whole build up of any tension and fear. There is one more instalment left covering the Texas chain saw massacre era to now, an era frankly I found far too bloody and macabre without ever telling a story. Zombie films will also get a shout, so if you fear the walking dead, get your trusty shovel, make sure nobody around you is dead and lock the door.

Happy telly people, and don't forget, if there's nowt on telly, go for a walk, read a book or talk to your significant other. Me, I'm off to see if her indoors would like to do something other than stay in for the night.

It was the salmon mousse! Masterchef, Spooks and Gently

It was the salmon mouse that done in the Scot who showed no respect for the fish. Masterchef: The  Professionals kicked the week off with a cracking half hour in which we saw three truly gifted chefs and hatchet man. Scary Monica  flolloped and vollued* in amazement at the hopefuls as they made mousse.  County Durham David nearly lost the plot but was saved by being less rubbish than the portly John. This left Claire who teaches cooking and is married to a French chef, David and full of himself but in actual fact rather good Kevin. One hopes Kevin learns to curb the self love a bit, nobody likes a twat, even if he is good at what he does. Next step was the dreaded Chef Michel test, Cherry Duck from the same hand that gave us Duck a l'orange. What do you do when all three cooks produce a near faultless plate of food on Masterchef? Why you make the cooks and the viewers sweat till ..... I could tell you , but I won't, if you're a fan you know what's coming if you're not, just watch, it's worth it. Of the three who got past the Salmon mousse, I like the fat lass Claire, she clearly LOVES food, she worships it like some people do art or a perfectly bent ball on a corner. Claire is a contender for getting all the way to the finals, I know because of the way Michel Roux smiled at her. The other one who is going to go far is boastful Kevin, he genuinely does know what he's doing and starts with a fairly high base level of knowledge, but then this IS The Professionals after all.  Durham David ( I have a soft spot for him) has so much potential in him if he can only conquer the nerves, at one point Chef Roux was sure he would slice a finger off or something worse. One wishes him luck and hopes he gets past the nerves. Small warning to children, Gregg Wallace has an orgasm at the end of the ep whilst eating duck. I hope the refrigerator full of puddings at home wasn't watching, the row after that would be spectacular. As always, Masterchef The Professionals keeps the tension and the excitment going. Yes I know it's a cookery show, but by G-d it's good.

Next up was Spooks for the main. MI5 are embroiled in a plot that tests the very limit of the fragile relationship between old enemies and asks the question, Can we be friends with a regime out of need, even if we don't like their methods? How do we balance the needs of small sovereign nations against the gtreater good of World security? With great difficulty and lying to each other is how of course. It's the old Bulgarian question all over again. BTW if you're playing along, the new fake country invented by Spooks is Azakhstan, not much of an effort is it? Can you remind us of the other perhaps more creative fakes they've come up with? The other game to play this series is who will end up in the end of series body bag? We have heavy odds on Lucas, but Beth is just as likely. Based solely on tonight's ep, even Harry Pearce is not immune from the guessing game. And as much as we all want Lucas to be happy, we know the rules, he cannot be allowed to hold on to Maya and bliss, great twist in the Lucas arc that is playing itself out to what one hopes is a spectacular finale at series end.

And lest we forget, Inspector George Gently: Peace and Love, brought us back to the safe ground of normal detective fare. A nice uncreepy and normal murder surrounded by intrigue and scandal at a University. One of the highlights of the ep is the gem of a scene during which Martin Shaw interrogates a man with a thick Geordie accent and Lee Ingleby translates for him. Straight out of Bananas. Being set in 1966ish, Gently and company stick their toes into a revisit of the Peace and Love movement and all that entails. . It's interesting to note that the big issues haven't changed all that much and universities are still intellectually free floating islands of social experimentation with sometime little or no connection to real life and practical day to day problems. It's when those worlds collide as they did in this story that you test the veracity and honesty of the principal players and their ideals. I cannot honestly say, regardless of how often one says it, that free love ever worked, at the end of the day women want commitment and men want certainty. The lefty proff is ultimately undone by the very base instincts he abhors and the very values he hates end up defending the innocent. As for the lovely lady professor who also betrays her own rigid ideals in so many ways, she is proof that even in the 60's, the idea of the ultra feminists rang hollow and sounded more dogmatic than practical. . She epitomized the very worse of the castrated woman who believed as late as the naughties, that a child is a disease and a anchor on womankind. Even the Peace movement comes in for a bit of bash as we realize that any kind of fanaticism leads to abuse and crimes as great as the injustice one is combating.  As a political animal, I am reminded yet again that Uni is where you pretend to dable in politics, but party politics is where you play with the big boys and girls. No amount of chanting ever accomplished more than the breakage of public and private property. While some protest is never bad, it's what you do with the momentum of it in practical politics that matters. The last highlighted issue was gay rights. Threaded through the piece, you see how much some things have changed and yet others frankly haven't. If you were looking for one word to sum up the underlying theme of the ep, it's hypocrisy. The hypocrisy of the feminists who purified themselves of every last once of humanity, the free love advocates who thought they could live without consequences, the hypocrisy that heterosexuals were free to  love each other but not homosexuals, the luxury leftists who loved the working man as a whole, but not it's component parts.The hypocrisy of the ultra idealists of any kind who were to crash and burn in later years faced with practical situations and the reality  that not all that was old was bad.

This gives me the excuse to be dead proud of my wife, who's blog Retro home tips, was recently featured as one of the best political blogs by Britblogs. In her featured article she put forth the principles that underpin the so called third wave of feminists. It's the old and well established 1st and 2nd wavers who take issue the most, as they have consistently kept on telling women what is good and what is bad , but have not stopped to ask them or for that matter, listen to them. Please read this and pass it on, were it up to orthodox feminist sites, these and words like them would never see the light of day. The truth however is that  young women have evolved far past the rigid anti male vision of some radical feminists still out there.

* flollop and vollue from "Life, the Universe, and Everything", Douglas Adams. Something a mattress does

Huzah! Spooks and Qi are back for another series,

What a great time to get ill. I have full blown stage 10 Man flu, Lurgie , call it what you want. But it means I  get to sit in front of the telly most of the day and then switch over to the iPlayer when I'm in bed. My doctor recommended lots of rest, and I'm following her advice. Haven't moved a muscle in the kitchen or gone outside except for some medicine. It's new series season and the feast that started last week continues apace this week.

At the week end I watched Qi XL and regular Qi. Loved both, but sad to say BBC scheduling boffins, if I have to choose, I will always want MORE Qi, not less. Hodge Podge was funny from beginning to end and featured the perfect Geordie. Seems Ross Nobel is the one man from the North who can communicate with Stephen Fry. I particularly enjoyed the monkeys who were ultimately clad in red and white striped pants. I cannot believe that was accidental. Perennial loser and straight man Alan Davies had a canny loss, coming 2nd  with quiet dignity never losing his ability to hit the punch lines. The best nugget of information I took from this ep was that Halitosis is a made up illness treated with harsh Victorian washing fluid. I was half expecting Victorian "enthusiast" Ruth Goodman to come on set with some of it to clean Alan Davies. Listerine was until the invention of Halitosis, not a mouth wash, but floor cleaner. Mouth wash , another clever concept like dragon breathe that hadn't previously existed.

Not to be outdone, Britain's Really Disgusting Drinks, further educated us to the clear  dangers and minor perils lurking in our drinks cabinet. Alex Riley first blew the lid off the "medicine man" style waters on offer. Some apparently help us slim, yet others keep us alert and yet others supplement our vitamin deficient bodies with a bit of help from Pharmawater. Having never been taken in by the confidence men and women telling about pro biotic this and vitamin enhanced that, I was a bit surprised by the number of seemingly intelligent people who bough into the concept. Having flushed the lies from water, he next targeted wine. I dreaded the expose, but it turns out the worse thing I found out is that cheap wine special marketed to be sold at half price is fobbed off on innocent, read ill informed folk. Ok so maybe I'm not as easily fooled as some with a bit of French or Italian and a fancy label. But it was amusing to say the least to again see people delude themselves that the cheap plonk they were buying was somehow highly prized quality wine that Tescos had got a good deal on.  Cheap high alco beer got a quick going over, but did we really think the power buzz tramp special was anything other than what it was? It at least meant my tipple of choice, Guinness, wasn't mostly mouse droppings or  toe nail clippings .I can continue blissfully thinking beer is made from cold mountain streams and the heather of the valleys and if I drink it, truly fit women will want to have sex with me.. Or was that the Vodka advert?

Well in the end there had to be a Bogey Man to hang a sack full of blame on, the monks who have brewed the fortified wine Buckfast for over 80 years. Seems the Scottish reprobate of today chooses Buckfast to go off his heed and commit acts in the name of stupidity. Is anybody going to take out the caffeine? Why aren't there roving bands of wankered OAPs? Well simple answer first. The kindly grans of yore only have a wee glass, while the yobs can sometimes drink 2 to 3 bottle a night. Clearly something has to be done. Not one to avoid blame being heaped on the makers of the product, I fully agree something has to be done about the price and the easy availability of this Jekyll Hyde juice, I'm just not so sure that the full blame lies with the brewers. Oh in case you missed it, there wasn't anything particularly disgusting in any of the drinks. Disturbing and alarming perhaps, but not disgusting. I've eaten tripe, drank old fashioned cough medicine and eaten pungent cheese, now some of those can be disgusting, but that's just a question of taste and how prepared you are to open yourself up to the full range of flavours and textures. I have however eaten food in American fast food places and shopped in convenience stores. There lurks the truly appalling and disgusting, as it's not only foul tasting, but some of it will kill you. Nice touch, the animated balloon heads, never tired of them.

Speaking of scary, Go Compare, Go Compare!!!!!! No really, go compare the last few teeth rattling mind jolting outings of our least favourite insurance pitch man. The New Egyptian theme seems tired and forced. Even the victims seem  bored by it all. If you want to make it into a proper 30's or 40's musical, we need to move on and get a smooth crooner in a tux. not the male Ethel Merman. I know a mate of mine who will disagree with me, but I still much prefer the Meercats and even my till now brilliant Omid Djalili spots over these annoying adverts that serve only to insure I will never Go Compare.

I have saved the best for last. Spooks has at long last landed in our happy schedules that were gagging for some decent drama. Spooks yet again shows that dreck like ITV's Identity can never hold a candle to the best spy thriller on telly at the minute. So were we ?  Ros has died, Harry wants to retire, Ruth and Lucas are back in from the field. Another series opener, another funeral. If you are a cast member, don't expect any sentimentality from the writers. Tonight the world is on the brink of another well conceived Al Quada/Somali pirate story. Nothing is as it seems and you will be surprised if you think you can foresee the twists before they happen.  One of the best things about Spooks is that enough of the future story is dribbled out in little teasers of doubt and suspicion that you will need to re watch if only to be sure you were on the right track. Top scene has to be the scene when  Harry Pearce visits the now disgraced former Home secretary. The events that follow are a master class in keeping things in the family. Do I trust the new girl? of course not, where not supposed to, do I trust the new Home secretary? Definitely not, but I can't tell you why. He exudes a sort of reserved caution that could have him end up being Satan or Saviour. We have yet to crack the Hydra headed international conspiracy and the world of Lucas North is in for some more turmoil this term. It can't help but get better and better .

Don't miss starting this Wednesday, Micheal Wood's History of England, tracing the twisted alliances of history from early Roman times to today by digging up the past of a small village. And of course C4's Ramsay's best restaurant and the BBC's Great Bake off continue.

Happy telly all, I will now climb back under the covers and whimper quietly as my sinuses are held hostage by microscopic pirates intent on ruining my week.

Is Top Gear past it's sell by date and other unmentionable thoughts?

As television watcher and reviewer, I take very seriously the prospect that a production company is watering down the product or not doing all it can to entertain me. Conversely, if it's not broken divn't fix it.

Top Gear, a programme I've been watching, it seems like for ever, is it possible it's gone soft in the middle and lost touch with it's audience? Is it possible the Guardian and a few other Top Gear haters are right? I only ask as that I myself found myself getting weepy at the sight of vintage British sports cars on one of the eps of the last series. Top Gear sells itself as a car enthusiast's magazine. From such a show I expect to be informed, educated and entertained. If I'm honest I'll admit that sometimes it verges on the sentimental and soppy when they revisit the classic cars, but are they out of date? I don't think so.  I can honestly say that the presenters reflect the interests and cares of the average  modern BBC viewer. Through all the silliness that keeps me coming back for more, it seems enough car news and automotive knowledge seeps in that I can carry on an intelligent conversation about the latest trends and features in motoring.

And lets talk about the silliness. Jezza and his uncensored tongue, are we really that sensitive that we need to read the most base and unpleasant motives into his every utterance? He is what he is, a bufoon, an opinionated man who says what he thinks and talks of what he sees. He is not a hate monger or a wind up artist, why should he pretend things he's seen haven't happened? The worst reaction I've had to his jokes is to not have laughed at a few of them. He means no harm and he incites no one to violence, if you don't include views on motor-homes and their owners. Jezza, Capt'n Slow and the Hamster are every knot of 8 year old boys in men's bodies. We like what we like, we think farts are funny and we call a spade a spade. I don't think it's a crime to be funny and informative or to go miles out one's way to make a point. To quote the lunatics at Myth Busters... "If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing". If the critics want a dry dull documentary style auto show like you can find on any other network they should be watching those, I however want to be amused and kept wondering what happens next.

So the new series is in filming at the minute and we'll be getting a new Stig. Seems the old one was hoping to make a few quid after hiding in a white suit for 7 years. Ben Collins who replaced Perry McCarthy when he got rumbled, was on the point of being rumbled himself. I suppose it's only natural that these things happen. I hope the next Stig is better at keeping his mouth shut and his eyes covered. Which of course begs the question... what colour will the new Stig be? Will he still be white? Will the new reasonably priced car perform as well with the new Stig? Will we kill a few more Morris Marinas with pianos? Will there be more crazy road races? Who knows, but I'll bet the answer is yes to the last 2 questions, why change what works, we expect certain things and if it still works, Top Gear should not stop doing them. At it's core, Top Gear does what it's supposed to do well. The whole fastest production car record was gripping and worthy of any serious news story about auto-mobiles. While I don't expect Jeremy Paxman to drop frogs down Mishal Hussien's blouse, the serious people could learn a thing or two from the hyperbole of Top Gear presenters. The road trips in Bolivia, The North Pole and Vietnam to name only a few were as good as or better than some BBC4 travel programmes.

My other un mentionable thought is even worse than the first.... Is it possible that the RTD years of Doctor Who were .... how to say this ... too slick?

I ask this as I have been re-watching early Who from the start and have also begun re-watching Ashes to Ashes. I cannot however bring myself to watch much of the new Doctor Who after Ecclestone. It's not that they weren't good. On the contrary, despite my criticism of Russell T Davies and his decision to isolate the Doctor by making him the last of his kind, the eps were gripping first class drama. They squeezed out tears fears and exposed the raw nerves and bizarre paranoia that lurks in all of us. No the eps in question, with  several Tenant exceptions, are lacking  the kind of individual scenes that taken separate and apart  could serve as humorous interludes, small slices of Doctor life that inform more on the character than just the current story line.  Re-watching the old Whos and the Gene Hunts, I found myself looking forward to many specific scenes and was mouthing dialogue as if it was HHGTTG, Torchwood or a Python sketch. Perhaps my core criticism is that RTD took Doctor WHO too seriously. He turned it into Spooks in Space and Time for a while.

Moffat by contrast, in choosing to craft a Doctor more related to the Throughton era, has written or had his writers create scripts that are increasingly manic at times and have from the beginning allowed a longer peek inside the world of our favourite Time Lord. While he still scares socks off our feet, he hasn't edited it so close to the bone that we don't get the intimate moments you used to get when Tom Baker had the luxury of 5 or six eps to sort out a story. Another thing, Moffat (or RTD before him) hasn't gone bananas with the special effects over the merits of the written word as acted by actors and actresses. Despite a mammoth budget compared to say Sarah Jane Adventures, Doctor Who is careful not to dazzle you with too much sizzle at the expense of substance. When Matt Smith talks to Auton Rory, he does so in a manner you could enjoy if it had been in any other story. It's one of many bits I want to see again. I suppose what I'm saying is that I want the shmaltz and the humour and the personal stuff like we used to get before it was boiled down to one hour, one story.

A propos of nothing, next time you watch a show on telly, pretend the cast is on a near empty sound stage,  then picture a painted back ground, if the acting and the writing still holds up even with the barren set, you know you've got something special. 

A great format about to change is that of Master Chef UK. I like the current format, I know the Australian version is massive and breaks records. But I've seen the format in the US version. It's got weeping contestants telling sob stories to get in the starting 20. I don't want to see three weeks of preliminary frying of eggs mixed with tear jerker stories of just how much this will mean to them if they win. For me it's always been about the cookery. I stopped watching X factor and BGT for the same reasons. The success of Master Chef UK so far has centred on the notion that the cooking is the star, the ingredients are the supporting cast and the contestants are aware they are only there as long as the cooking is up to par.  I don't care if the contestant is a single mum or a struggling artist, for me it's down to one thing....as Greg Wallace says,  "But can he cook?". The perceived need by production companies to inject pathos is incomprehensible, what's wrong with just talent?


Till next time ....So long and thanks for all the fish.

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.