There was a risk that this new take on the indestructible sleuth of Baker Street might be smothered at birth by a dust-storm of pre-publicity, with coverage stretching from the tabloids to Andrew Marr (who really seems to believe he's an arts correspondent, and not just Alfred E Neuman's long-lost twin brother).
tv reviews
Jasper Rees
Where can or will television’s thirst for tabloid anthropology fetch up? In previous tribal exchanges, wives have been swapped, geeks have gone to babe school, thugs to boot camp, WAGs to townships, Papua New Guineans to the big smoke. Posh girls have lately been parachuted into Peckham. Is there no social grouping so polarised that some bright spark at BBC Three or Channel 4 won’t want to thrust them into an alien environment for our voyeuristic pleasure?
howard.male
The fact that we humans are, technically speaking, bad liars proves that we are instinctively moral creatures (rather than getting our morals from our god or our parents) and that lying is therefore, evolutionarily speaking, probably a bad idea. You can get away with saying you were caught in traffic, rather than admitting you were in the pub, but a polygraph will pick up on changes in blood pressure, pulse and respiration - those indicators of anxiety you’d rather not be feeling - and your goose will be cooked. But imagine how much more difficult it would be if the lie you were telling had just been given to you on a card, and you had to elaborate on it, on the spot, in response to quick-fire questioning.
Adam Sweeting
I stayed in a frightful hotel in Plymouth once. Decrepit rooms, filthy windows, potentially fatal cuisine, sinister staff… By contrast, that same city’s Astor Hotel looked quite pleasant, though not if you were viewing it through the gimlet eyes of Alex Polizzi. Nothing that met her gaze was adequate. The décor was too kitschy and flowery and old-fashioned. The carpets were disgusting, the walls stained and peeling, the lobby too gloomy to contemplate. The establishment’s habit of equipping wardrobes with tatty mismatched plastic hangers aroused her ire. The practice of leaving towels on the bed in little heaps made her positively tear her hair out (“every shit hotel has towels piled in the middle of the bed!” she stormed).
Veronica Lee
Themed seasons are often the invention of programmers who have run out of ideas; they string together loosely related output under a cleverly non-specific season title when any old dross gathering dust in the cupboard is given an airing. So I read the notes of BBC’s The Call of the Wild season - with its mix of repeats and new material, and the dread phrases “the great British love affair with the countryside”, “nostalgic exploration” and “a light-hearted look at”- with a sinking heart. But fear not, because one of the first programmes in the season (and the first of a six-part series) was Britain by Bike, presented by all-round good egg Clare Balding.
fisun.guner
No-nonsense Hayley Taylor is to the terminally unemployed what Jo Frost, aka Supernanny, is to the attention-seeking, tantrum-prone pre-schooler – but without the naughty step. In this reality three-parter she attempts to do what whole governments have so far failed to: to get members of the long-term, unskilled unemployed (what some might unkindly term the "Jeremy Kyle generation" – aka the underclass) back into the labour market. This she attempts to do, not by sprinkling magic Fairy Jobmother dust over the British economy, but by addressing the “negativity” of those she’s come to rescue from the jaws of the “The System” – aka the benefits system. And yesterday, in Part Two of the series – which, despite all we’ve come to expect from the format, is surprisingly low on trash and high on genuine insight – it was pretty clear that even benefits-busting Taylor had her work cut out.
David Nice
Two birthday parties kept me away from the Albert Hall yesterday (though I'll confess that in the end I treacherously skipped the second and stayed glued to the TV's delayed relay). That, and a slight fear that the concert performance of Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg from the BBC Proms couldn't match up to the original Welsh National Opera production of the decade.
theartsdesk
JasperRees Not long now till @SweetingAdam and I start tweeting our live Friday Night @Wossy review here. 10.35 sharp.
SweetingAdam @JasperRees you could cut the atmosphere with a rolling pin
JasperRees I won't miss those bubbles. Or that music. It's sort of a bit rubbish
JasperRees BTW We are now reviewing Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, live on Twitter. He's said he's not going to cry
JasperRees Are you there, @SweetingAdam? I'm doing this on my tod. (My daughter: 'Are they all gay?' She's 17)
SweetingAdam Are the 4 Poofs employable in a post-Woss world?
JasperRees I believe they charge a mint for personal appearances. No doubt they're upping sticks for ITV1 too.
JasperRees Not long now till @SweetingAdam and I start tweeting our live Friday Night @Wossy review here. 10.35 sharp.
SweetingAdam @JasperRees you could cut the atmosphere with a rolling pin
JasperRees I won't miss those bubbles. Or that music. It's sort of a bit rubbish
JasperRees BTW We are now reviewing Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, live on Twitter. He's said he's not going to cry
JasperRees Are you there, @SweetingAdam? I'm doing this on my tod. (My daughter: 'Are they all gay?' She's 17)
SweetingAdam Are the 4 Poofs employable in a post-Woss world?
JasperRees I believe they charge a mint for personal appearances. No doubt they're upping sticks for ITV1 too.
Adam Sweeting
There was a gnawing suspicion that The Silence wouldn’t amount to much, since it was dumped in a four-night splurge in the middle of the mid-summer doldrums, and even the normally docile Radio Times had decided to stamp its foot and pick holes in it. One’s apprehension proved ill-founded, however. It turned out to be taut, tense, well acted and smartly written, and carried enough pace to lift it over the more credulity-stretching passages.
gerard.gilbert
So was it nice to see him (to see him nice)? Actually nice is probably the wrong word for Bruce Forsyth on the evidence of the opening documentary in a new series of Cutting Edge – tetchy, obsessive in his habits and (as we shall see) sometimes downright unpleasant, may be nearer the mark, as director David Nath gains access to Forsyth’s two palatial homes (both on the edge of golf courses, it almost goes without saying) in Wentworth, Surrey, and Puerto Rico.