Category: TV

…Paul O’Grady Show repeats. Yup. ITV really is so devoid of ideas that the best it can do to combat C4’s signing of Paul O’Grady is to run repeats of previous shows directly up against it in the 5pm-6pm slot. Brilliant. I seem to remember them doing something similar when they got miffed that Tricia…

There’s a worthwhile piece in Mediaguardian today about my new latest bugbear – “participation television”, or rather, premium rate TV quizzes. We all know that Richard & Judy and GMTV have for years run premium rate competitions asking you to answer a trivial question with the promise of many pounds if you win. But things…

A new run of the Channel 4 series, Dispatches, has started up recently. I’ve only watched a few, Peter Oborne’s report on losing our liberty, and this evening’s report by Rod Liddle on evangelical Christians. I also saw the Ryanair exposé. Now I won’t get into the rights and wrongs of the content of the…

I think it was Charlie Brooker who first pointed out in Screen Burn (coming to BBC4 this Thursday as Screen Wipe) who first pointed out how expository programme titles are now. Thus tonight, we have a collission of “Reals” with The Real Dad’s Army on C4 up directly against The Real Rain Man on Five.…

Nice piece from Emily Bell in Media Guardaian today about how a billion people probably didn’t watch the BAFTAs (Particularly since only 3 million watched it in this country). I’ve talked about this before here, here, here and here.

ITV4’s a strange beast. I really like it. Lots of old ITC shows in the early evening – Strange Report, The Persuaders etc. Then it moves into some more recent stuff cult stuff like Dark Skies or First Wave. Then, in the post 9pm slot, there might be football, a film or a recentish lower-tier…

At around 9.15pm on Saturday night, BBC2 was showing the pairs short routine in the figure skating at the Turin Winter Olympics (or are we calling it Torino? Nobody seems too sure). Over on ITV, David Seaman, Bonnie Langford and their cohorts were performing in Dancing on Ice. How many people do you think were…

I know I should be doing other stuff with my time but, in a week that was sorely missing any reality shows for Flett to get her teeth stuck into, here’s the great woman on Who Do You Think You Are?: It’s a wildly successful format, but there’s no denying there’s something faintly naff about…

I don’t know if this is some kind of precurssor to a new series of The Hustle, but BBC Three has just shown a programme called The Real Hustle. They showed a series of genuine “hustles” using their own hustlers on unwitting members of the public showing some common scams with hidden cameras recording the…

‘Shocking’ is probably a bit too strong, but Channel 4’s website has always felt poorly designed to my mind. And the thing is, I bet it’s really well resourced. Case in point. I wanted to get to the website of the new Channel 4 comedy The IT Crowd, where you can watch episodes in advance…

The best bit of the Guardian Guide comes to life. Excellent.

What a terrific programme Who Do You Think You Are? really is. This evening’s programme with Stephen Fry was qutie moving.