It’s Christmas Time, There’s No Need To Be Afraid.

You can tell Christmas has finally arrived when Carols from King’s College gets rolled out (BBC2 at 6:15pm if you fancy). No matter what your family’s traditions are on the 24th Decmeber, I am pretty sure that television will play a part in it somewhere if only to take the weight off your feet for half an hour. BBC1 will entertain you with a non-stop selection of light(weight?) entertainment throughout the evening. From 8pm there’s an hour-long installment of My Family, which I gave up watching after Kris Marshall left to join BT and I continue to work on the assumption that it’s not worth going back to. After that it’s the RT Pick of the Day, the wonderful Victoria Wood and her Midlife Christmas, which is a brand new hour of sketches and then David Tennant continues to take over the airwaves with an appearance on QI, anyone would think he was trying to plug something. If that 30-minutes isn’t enough, you can get more of a Tennant-fix on CBeebies at 6:50pm where he’s reading bedtime stories all week. If this is all a bit fluffy for your tastes, ITV comes along with the 1one-hundredth episode of Taggart for your delectation. Over on the digital channels, there’s not a lot of new stuff with most of the larger stations offering endless repeats or old movies, which I guess is pretty much all some people will be after. On E4HD though, new epsodes of my favourite sitcoms can be found back-to-back from 9pm, The Big Bang Theory, followed by How I Met Your Mother. The latter has been a revelation to me in the months since E4 acquired the hugely successfull US show and broadcast it to hugely unaware UK public. I recall that the first series was shown in some godawful time-slot a few years ago and it crashed and burned so kudos to E4 for resurrecting it. Not only that, they gave it the tea-time slot and showed 5 new eps a week for about four months, which was thoroughly wonderful. It is hard to review it without comparisson to Friends, but take my word it is so worthwhile taking some time with it. So, that is my, quite surprising, recommendation for the day. Legen-”wait-for-it”-dary!

Keep Calm and Carry On

Here we are, two-and-a-half weeks into 2009 and it’s been a quiet one on the TV viewing front. There have been quite a few nights of late when the telly has remained stubbornly switched off. A quick glance at my Sky Planner shows a meagre capacity of “29% free” so I will have to start watching soon.  BSG returns on Tuesday and Lost cannot be too far away either and both of these HD shows will eat into that at a pace. I have five parts of Neil Fergusson’s The Ascent of Money and all the Royal Institute Christmas Lectures that are on the brink of getting the dreaded yellow button treatment.

24 has returned and, although I only watched “hour 1″, I thought it was a pretty good opener. A few interesting plot strands were laid out in the usual 24-ish fashion and new characters were introduced, some of whom were almost interesting.  CTU has been disbanded, (which was about time really given the level of incompetance and the number of internal security breaches, let alone the human rights violations) but I’m hoping that Chloe makes her return soon. My major problem was the re-introduction of Tony as the bad guy: I really hope that the reasons behind this 180-degree personality change hold up to a little scrutiny. Anyway, suspension of disbelief has never been modus operandi of Twenty-Four up until now, so I shouldn’t really expect a change.

However, one of my favourite new finds of the year has been Oz and James. I somehow missed the first two series of this duo’s adventures but I am reliably informed that they are well worth seeking out. This time they are travelling the length and breadth of Britain in search of its favourite and best drinks. So impressed was I with James’ T-shirt in episode one, that I sought one out for myself and bought on online. Good banter, plenty of gags and a story worth telling all combine to make a very rewarding half-hour of TV. Talking of which, QI is also back with series F. It has now made the move to BBC1 as a reward for its success but, as if half-an-hour wasn’t enough, there is an extended QI XL version (on BBC2 on Saturdays) that has not been hindered by the additional fifteen minutes of material.

Comics Brittanica Continuing to Entertain 

Friday nights are undoubtedly back to being the definitive “staying in night” of the week.  Of course, this meant that last Friday we went out to see some friends for dinner and had to postpone our viewing until Saturday but it was worth the wait.  QI made a welcome return for its fifth series on BBC2 and the second installment, as is fast becoming tradition, followed immediately on another channel (to encourage all the luddites to upgrade to digi).  Back on BBC1, I am delighted to report that Not Going Out, as I had hoped, is back to its best.  We also enjoyed a couple of Jonathan Ross vehicles during the course of the week: his Friday Night… show continues to attract A-listers but it was his contribution to Comics Brittanica that was my highlight of the week.  This has been a great series of shows over on BBC4 and, as Andrew Collins points out, is surely worthy of a repeat showing to a wider audience.  Also, yet again I broke that promise to myself to studiously avoid “list shows” by sitting through hours of The Most Annoying TV We Love to Hate but it was actually quite entertaining.  All in all, it looks like the autumn season is picking up nicely.

• Sun 23rd Sep: movie The Queen (8/10); Studio 60 OTSS “The Option Period”
• Sat 22nd Sep: Not Going Out “Librarian”; QI 5×01 and 5×02; Cricket Twenty20 Semi Final India v Australia; Friday Night With Jonathan Ross; The IT Crowd 2×04; The Most Annoying TV We Love To Hate – part 2
  
• Fri 21st Sep: No TV
• Thu 20th Sep: Channel hopping but didn’t watch anything of substance other than Spurs scoring six against some Cypriot outfit in the UEFA Cup.
• Wed 19th Sep: No TV
• Tue 18th Sep: In Search Of Steve Ditko; Friends “The One With The Flashback”; Cricket Highlights
• Mon 17th Sep: Nigella Express; Hell’s Kitchen Final

The Object of Angus Deayton’s Affection

Week thirty-six was decidedly forgetable. A few new series for the autumn season managed to sneak their debuts in with the chucklefest that is Not Going Out back for a second outing. I found that it was not quite up to the standard of last series and felt a bit like a reset because of the introduction of a replacement for Kate and the arrival of Miranda Hart as the maid. I’m certainly expecting it to get better as the show progresses. Friday nights are further bolstered by Jonathan Ross’s return with A-list guests and well scripted gags as well as news of the forthcoming “Series E” of QI, and the yo-yo’ing standards of the IT Crowd. Definitely becomming a night to stay in. Meanwhile, there was lots of cooking fun this week too with Nigella Express, The Restaurant and the rather watchable Hell’s Kitchen. All in all though, I found my memory playing tricks on me as I really struggled to recall what I had been watching from day-to-day over the seven days, so much so that I am forced into awarding the Show Of The Week prize to Marco Pierre White and his kitchen from Hell.

• Sun 9th Sep: No TV
• Sat 8th Sep: Cricket Eng v Ind 7th ODI (England cruise home to 4-3 win); Football Eng v Isr (England cruise to 3-0 win)
• Fri 7th Sep: Outnumbered; Studio 60 OTSS “Nevada Day. Part 1″; Not Going Out “Series 2, Ep 1″; The It Crowd; Friday Night With Jonathan Ross
• Thu 6th Sep: Cricket on Five; Doctor Who “Utopia”, “The Sound of Drums” and “Last of the Time Lords”
• Wed 5th Sep: No TV
• Tue 4th Sep: Outnumbered; Hell’s Kitchen
• Mon 3rd Sep: Nigella Express “Part 1″; Hell’s Kitchen new series (with added Marco Pierre White)

Staying In Is The New Going Out

It’s been a quiet few days here at Fazzinchi Towers, so apologies for the lack of updates.  I have about five posts that I’ve started but have yet to finish, plus the tenth and final installment of the Series One Retrospective for “Bad Wolf/Parting Of The Ways” and, inevitably, the review of “Daleks In Manhatten” that will be shown tonight.  Plenty in the pipeline then.  Meanwhile, The Other Viewer and I had one of those lazy Friday nights on the sofa yesterday and there was a fair amount to keep us entertained.  We started off by watching the with the latest episode of the magnificent Heroes off the Sky planner.   The episode, “Six Months Ago” featured a Lost-style flashback story that I will talk about further in a forthcoming post.  Then, and in a break from the norm, we switched to live TV to see what was on.

We started off with the ever enjoyable, Have I Got News For You, now, amazingly, in its 16th year and 33rd series.  Still persisting with the weekly, guest presenter style ever since Angus Deaton’s departure has been so succesfull it’s hard to remember it any other way.  Sticking with BBC1 we stayed in position to try out the second installment of Ruddy Hell!… and the forumla still seems to work in its “hit” (the posh scaffolders, Bono and The Edge, the title sequence) and “miss” (Jamie and Oliver, Nelson Mandela, and the surgeons) style.  Well, I laughed out loud at least three times so they must be doing something right.

Flicking over to BBC2, I caught an episode of QI that I appear to have missed first time round focussing on “death” as the word of the week.  Stephen Fry reading out the Pizza Express menu would be entertaining TV for me as everything he touches turns to gold.  Back to BBC1 and it was a short wait until Friday Night With Jonathan Ross where the guests of the week were a slightly surreal collection of guests: Patsy Kensit, Alan Carr (who I still can’t bear) and Gilbert and George.  Ross’s cheekiness falls into that marmite category of love him or hate him, fortunately I’m in the former camp.  Last up was the Culture Show special on the Montreal band Arcade Fire.  I had heard a bit about them beforehand and read some good reviews of their latest album, so was intrigued to see what they were like…. and I can safely say that they were “not bad”.  The show left me still debating whether or not to buy the album but it was a pleasant enough was to end the working week.

Stephen Fry And Sister Discuss His Condition

It takes some quite remarkable courage to not only delve deep into your own personality and history, and then cast a critical eye over how an ailment like manic depression has affected you, but to undergo this soul-searching in front of a camera and give the populace that insight too is quite some feat. I had little to no knowledge of bipolar dissorder before this two-part Stephen Fry documentary, The Secret Life Of The Manic Depressive, aired a few weeks ago but I felt that I was a better person for having watched it, and that is some accomplishment. Mr Fry’s honesty about his condition and how it has affected him was admirable as was the openness that he encouraged in his interviewees as he explored the nature of the condition and how various ordinary and celebrity people coped (not that celebrities aren’t ordinary, of course, but you get my drift). The only thing lacking perhaps was a contribution from his long time friend and on-screen partner, Hugh Laurie but there was enough insight from others for this not be a problem.

Also, good to see Stephen Fry back at the helm of the latest BBC4/BBC2 panel show, QI (Quite Interesting) as the they take a long and interesting look at the letter “D”. I believe that the format is a little different this time around, with each show having a theme over and above the letter by concentrating on a word, such as “Dogs”. Anyone who is uninitiated into the world of QI should take the opportunity to take a look as it’s one of the wittiest shows on telly, with the ever-present Alan Davies also on show (providing the voice of the people as well as being the eminently accommodating butt of the jokes) as well as a smorgasboard of other comics and Jeremy Clarkson taking obvious delight in the chit-chat. The shame, announce this week, is that we will no longer see Fry as the host of the BAFTAs