Category archive: tv

Possibly even better when viewed in the context of Mr G – The Musical (song starts at 2:28):

There's nothing I like on TV these days.

Apart from the fantastic Flight of the Conchords, all saved up on the PVR for a rainy day marathon, all I record now is filler TV, the kind of stuff I play back at 1.5 speed while folding laundry (i.e. Project Runway, The X Factor and Ugly Betty).

Last night I folded laundry while watching The Secret Millionaire, that I had recorded after a hammering multi-media (including Facebook status updates) promotional campaign by Chig.

I shall not go into details in case you want to download it from 4OD or catch the next repeat. Let me just say that Terry George, the millionaire, is a very decent chap.

I managed to fight back the tears throughout the programme, but when it ended the PVR switched back to BBC3 and the All New House of Tiny Tearaways. All new because Dr Tanya Byron is not running it (she has been busy writing Vivienne Vyle with Jennifer Saunders)? Or all new because the latest set of families seeking help with unruly children are teenage pram faces lounging around, fag hanging from pinched lips, effing and blinding and declaring they're bored.

I felt I was watching Big Brother, a show in which I lost interest since they started putting borderline psychos in the house.

That's when I finally cried.

Wilson White to Jordan McDeere on last week's (terrestrial UK) episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip:

Content may be king, but distribution pays the king's mortgage.

There's this song I've been humming to musically well-read (or should that be 'well-listened'?) friends for a while now, to see if they could help me put a title and performer on it, and to tell me where I might possibly know it from.

Either I'm bad at humming, or my friends are a bit crap, or it's a really obscure track, because so far nobody could help.

Then the other night it was playing in the background on Sugar Rush and I made a note of the only lyrics I could hear under the dialogue:

Looking back [...] on the track
[...] little green bag
got to find just the kind
I'm losing my mind
Outside in the night [...]

And thus spake Google:

• It's George Baker Selection, Little Green Bag (video).
• And I know it from Reservoir Dogs.
• Or possibly this Heineken advert.
• But definitely not from a record handed down to me by one of my brothers, because that would show how ancient I am, and I'm so not.

It had been so long since I'd just sat on the couch to take in what TV had to offer. Well, recorded and watched mostly at 1.5 speed skipping all the ads. And a few boring bits.

So tonight I made the most of Dr B. being out meeting with his company's lesbian gay bisexual transgender group and watched:

• Dirt S01E02: American, crass, wanting to be shocking (ooh look, it's Monica from Friends moaning with a vibrator) and failing, with me at least. Intriguing schizo pap character though, played majestically by Scouser Ian Hart.
• Sensitive Skin S02E04: British, subtle, subdued, disarming and oedipically unsettling.
• Victoria Beckham Coming to America: actually not as bad as everyone made it out to be, and the the 'mockumentary' angle was at times believable. However, a one-off is more than enough.

And now excuse me, but I have to catch up with the Nazi Pop Twins that started fifteen minutes ago.

I watch less and less Big Brother with every passing year, and this being season 8, I practically tuned in on opening night and then just read Grace Dent's TV OD at Radio Times on Mondays and Thursdays.

Grace Dent makes me giggle. I wish I could say that the way she describes what goes on in the house is spot on, but having watched about thirty minutes altogether this year I just have to trust her.

That's how I learnt that Gerry has slept with between two and three thousand people. Crikey. On Monday Grace was wondering:

And what's with the array of medals that Gerry seems to be wearing attached to his little military jacket these days? The Royal Vauxhall Tavern Cross for Valour? Who knows.

And I spluttered the water I'd just swigged across the seats at the woman in front of me in the tube. I apologised, wiped the display on my phone, then thought: is this the same Royal Vauxhall Tavern I know, the one down the road from our flat, our local, where the drag act is un-PC and the men are sweaty and dance with their tops off? The pub where Dr B. and I met over four years ago (while sweating and dancing with our tops off)?

Either Grace Dent has an extensive knowledge of all things gay, or there is another Royal Vauxhall Tavern that is rooted into the public consciousness.

Touch Me, I'm Karen Taylor is a new comedy show on BBC Three. Very funny – and at last a sketch show that does not rely almost exclusively on catchphrases (remember Little Miss Jocelyn? 'It's going to take a looong time').

Best bit in episode 1: Cash Cow, the late-night quiz show.

Best bit in episode 2 (or so I've heard, as I've yet to watch last night's recording): Glamorama, a WAG-hosted current affairs/politics programme.

• When is Touch Me, I'm Karen Taylor on next?