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Better Off Ted, FX

Adam Sweeting Tuesday, 27 July 2010

Ted (Jay Harrington) and Veronica (Portia De Rossi) locked in a power-meeting at Veridian Dynamics

And first the bad news. The ABC network in the States has already declared Better Off Ted dead, after a paltry two seasons. Which is a pity, since acerbic, mildly surreal satires about the workings of corporate America don’t come along very often.

Who Do You Think You Are? - Rupert Everett, BBC One

Fisun Güner Tuesday, 27 July 2010

Rupert Everett knows who he is: he is English, he’s a toff and he’s a poof, thank you very much. And that’s just about all you need to know to tell you that, as a breed, they’re pretty damned sure of themselves, these English toffs, poofs or not. But he’s also a pretty memorable actor. Yes, really. Let me try to convince you.

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Sherlock, BBC One

Adam Sweeting Sunday, 25 July 2010

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).

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Amish: World's Squarest Teenagers, Channel 4

Jasper Rees Sunday, 25 July 2010

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.

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Would I Lie to You? BBC One

howard Male Friday, 23 July 2010

The crew of the Starship Deception about to lie as no one has lied before

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...

The Hotel Inspector, Five

Adam Sweeting Friday, 23 July 2010

Cruella di Polizzi resumes her quest to hunt down Britain's surviving Basil Fawltys

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...

Britain by Bike/ Britain Goes Camping, BBC Four

Veronica Lee Wednesday, 21 July 2010

'Britain by Bike': Part social history, part travelogue on two wheels with Clare Balding

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...

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The Fairy Jobmother, Channel 4

Fisun Güner Wednesday, 21 July 2010

Hayley Taylor's 'Highway Road to Success': A crash course for winners - or a dead end?

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...

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Die Meistersinger at the Proms, BBC Four

David Nice Sunday, 18 July 2010

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.