Radio Times

According to the research oracle BARB just over 1.4 million viewers tuned in to BBC4 for an average of nine minutes last week. This amounts to a massive 0.5% audience share. Not a statistic to be proud of, to be sure; but the sad truth of the matter is that the rest of you really don't know what you're missing.

BBC4 is television for grown-ups. By opening its doors at 7pm it has the good grace not to indulge in the mindless pap that habitually pads out the daytime schedules. Rather than the relentless pursuit of ratings it seeks out the discerning viewer who requires stimulation, variety and...

2 comments

Read more...

This isn't so much "hate mail", more a sigh of exasperation at just how stale and repetitive EastEnders has become. That might seem a tad mean when many at the Beeb must be patting themselves on the back for the 14.38 million ratings success on Christmas Day. But how many of those viewers actually enjoyed what they saw?

Did they actually relish all that aggro on the happiest day of the year, as the long-drawn-out Stacey/Bradley/Max betrayal storyline reached its unpleasant dénouement? At new year, we were treated to the tragedy of Kevin's car crash death with only Shirl, his face-ache ex, for comfort. OK, EastEnders...

20 comments

Read more...

I don't want to get into a fight about it, but I'm no fan of boxing. I've no interest in watching two men beat the hell out of each other in front of a baying crowd. (Mind you, people watching fast cars going round and round a track baffles me just as much.) So explain this: why do I enjoy boxing movies so much?

Clearly, anyone with a passing interest in the grammar of cinema will appreciate the slow-motion grace of Martin Scorsese's boxing scenes in Raging Bull. And I think we all accept now that Rocky is a worthy inclusion in the 1970s "New Hollywood"...

Read more...

What a week! There's Vera Duckworth's funeral in Coronation Street (28 January, 7:30pm, ITV1), Monty Don, a comfortably baggy middle-aged man in the Michael Palin mould, looks at plant pots in Cuba (Around the World in 80 Gardens, 27 January, 9:00pm, BBC2) while in CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (29 January, 9:00pm, Five), there's a freezer full of hermaphrodite carp.

Bless CSI. Even at times like these, when the new television season is well under way and viewers are dabbling around, wondering if Echo Beach (1 February, 9:30pm, ITV1) has robbed their life of meaning, or whether they can really spend the next few weeks...

1 comment

Read more...

Ah, Bob Harris. Or rather: mmm, Bob Harris. What a guy. Or rather: mmm. What a (turns slowly to camera, smiling sheepishly) guy (sighs, leans forward slightly in swivel chair and rests clasped hands in lap, thus causing mild flapping of corduroy lapels and vague disruption to weft of beard).

In the epiglottal, bellow-driven world of the modern radio broadcaster, his is a voice without peer. In terms of brand recognition, Harris's leisurely, ale-brown murmur is as instantly identifiable as Wogan's twinklesome brogue or Moyles's nasal roar. It's a voice that immediately puts the listener at ease: a gentle, humble thing that speaks, quietly, of politeness; sincerity;...

2 comments

Read more...

No football tournament is more entertaining than the Africa Cup of Nations. It's got all the swagger, recklessness and naivety that was squeezed out of our game about the time goalkeepers stopped wearing roll-neck, woollen sweaters.

In the wide-open spaces of the African tournament, players have the freedom to express themselves and ball skills flourish. It makes you want to eavesdrop on the coaches' final instructions as teams take the field. You can just hear them saying "Have fun, guys" or possibly "We've got the juju over this lot," but never, "Remember, lads, keep your shape".

The result: players are free to bound like antelopes across...

4 comments

Read more...

How many Church of England vicars do you know who've confessed to thinking about breasts while meditating with a Shaolin kung fu monk? I know of only one such holy man. Peter Owen Jones: philosopher, warrior, priest. Anyone hoping for an ode to a certain purveyor of ecclesiastic comedy twaddle (that means you, Vicar of Dibley), kindly go and eat your dog collar.

I stumbled across the Reverend back in 2006 when he presented The Lost Gospels on BBC4 - a rousing exploration of the missing New Testament texts. I liked his fedora, his weather-and-strife-lashed under-eye area and those dusty, matted locks. But most of all I drank...

2 comments

Read more...

My initial reaction was dismay that the magnificent Sue Johnston was persuaded to ally herself to such meretricious dross. That a second run was commissioned also beggars belief. Jam & Jerusalem just doesn't know what it wants to be. As comedy it’s mirthless, as drama it's unengaging and as "gentle cosy entertainment" it's constipated.

With an impressive, predominantly female ensemble, J&J is reminiscent of Victoria Wood's superior dinnerladies, but it wastes all comedic talent at its disposal. Characterisation is minimal - one or two oddballs stand out but, frankly, they'd be more at home and get better material in Royston Vasey. There are even echoes of Last...

4 comments

Read more...

Writing/directing brothers Joel and Ethan Coen have rediscovered the spark that rocketed them to indie glory 25 years ago with their modern western No Country for Old Men (currently in cinemas).

Set in Texas and revolving around money and bloody murder, it shares a common theme with the Coens 1983 neo-noir debut, the blistering Blood Simple.

Their leftfield success continued with wacky comedy Raising Arizona and 1930s gangster homage Miller's Crossing, before the Coens struck gold with multi-award-winning snowbound crime thriller Fargo.

Although less of a commercial hit, The Big Lebowski, in which ten-pin bowling met the art world and some Nazis,...

Read more...

If you work in brand marketing, you'd probably call it "cross-promotional synergy". The xenomorph (aka Alien) first met the yautja (aka Predator) in a 1989 comic. This led to a series of titanic clashes played out in a series of computer games and sci-fi novels.

A movie adaptation – AVP: Alien vs Predator – followed in 2004, now joined by a sequel, A V P R – Aliens vs Predator – Requiem (currently in cinemas).

In the interim, comics publisher Dark Horse have pitted Predator against Batman, Aliens against Superman, RoboCop against the Terminator, and, last year, Batman and Superman versus Aliens and Predator – every one a...

Read more...

If the first rule of chat-show hosting is "Don't embarrass your guests", and the second is "Don't embarrass your audience" (and I have to confess that I've got no means of verifying these, as neither Jonathan Ross or Terry Wogan would return my calls), then you might imagine the Pub Landlord's attempt at the genre in Al Murray's Happy Hour to fall flat on its face in a puddle of weak lager.

The jovial, bullet-headed bigot has made front rows of comedy audiences across the UK writhe in discomfort for well over a decade, as he cheerily rips into anyone who fails to conform to his...

4 comments

Read more...

Sunday night on BBC1 throws up one of those divinely barmy conjunctions of television programmes. At 8:00pm we have Lark Rise to Candleford, a dainty soap opera based on Flora Thompson's novels that uses the 19th-century postal service as a metaphor for social division. It's well-mannered and nicely dressed, everyone knows their place and the heroine is the prim postmistress (played by Julia Sawalha). It's Cranford-lite, but fills the gap for anyone who yearns for more bonnets in their lives.

Then comes the 9:00pm watershed, when the gates are opened and a ravening beast is unleashed - Messiah. My nightmares are still troubled by the last...

2 comments

Read more...

The penultimate chapter of Suzi Quatro's bittersweet bedside memoirs (Suzi Quatro Unzipped, Fridays, 9:15pm, BBC Radio 2) saw the glam rock chronometer strike Disaster o'Clock. With 1975 pointing at its watch and making urgent "For God's sake, woman, wind it up!" gestures from the wings, the headlines invariably made for gloomy listening.

Bong! Quatro embarks on a knackering two-year world tour and returns to find glam rock dead in its platforms! Bong! Quatro's cold, disapproving mother all but writes her daughter out of the Quatro family album, but it doesn't matter, says brave/unnervingly positive/unfathomably ambitious Suzi, 'cos "it was a small price to pay for my success"!...

Read more...

I am a man. I have a car. It has four wheels and I quite like driving it. But, honestly, what else do you need to know? They go. Some faster than others. They come in different colours. Mine's blue and has got a CD player. They're also quite expensive. That's enough information, surely?

It would be altogether too easy and too obvious to devote the bulk of this piece to a character assassination of Jeremy Clarkson. But, hey, what's wrong with easy and obvious? The man's a prig, a smug boor who sports a ludicrous haircut and has an unfeasibly high opinion of himself. And that's just...

127 comments

Read more...

It's the show that takes Walking with Dinosaurs to its very extremes. There's no denying we're fascinated by the beasts that roamed Earth millions of years in the past. So as well as being rip-roaring entertainment, Primeval also challenges some dino-related preconceptions.

Chief among these must surely be the much-vaunted belief that the creatures were wiped out by some kind of natural disaster. Instead, it seems far more likely Professor Cutter and his pals are to blame for decimating the dinosaur population. To date, they have variously shot at, harpooned, machine-gunned and run down with a jeep the poor, unsuspecting, prehistoric beasts to cross their path....

11 comments

Read more...