Radio Times

This may seem even more unlikely than a talking blowfish, but I just can't get enough of Torchwood's Owen Harper. When the good doctor was shot and killed recently, I spent many an hour fretting about his ultimate fate. As a fan of sci-fi, I know that deceased cast members rarely stay dead for long – but damn it, it all looked so final, didn't it?

And judging by the postings in a lot of online forums, some people would have been happy if it was. Allow me to put the case for the defence.

At first glance Owen's a selfish, unpleasant git, but to accept that...

4 comments

Read more...

I'm not sure if this is a confession or a boast, but I have never watched Jackass, MTV's extreme stunt show, and I've avoided both of its feature-length spin-offs, including jackass number two.

I don't believe that this is a dereliction of my film critic's duties as I know it's not aimed at me. As far as I understand it, Johnny Knoxville and his cohorts throw themselves off things and attach other things to parts of their body, in a kind of ever-spiralling game of dare.

"Gross" is the name of the game in an age when comedy aimed at a young demographic is increasingly characterised...

Read more...

Some say that seminal TV series The Sopranos has made the Hollywood gangster movie redundant. But the popularity of Ridley Scott's recent hit American Gangster suggests the genre still has a home on the big screen.

Beginning this week, Sky Movies Modern Greats presents a season of some of the very finest Mob films, together with a new documentary American Mafia: from Street to Screen. Highlights include The Departed, GoodFellas, Scarface and The Godfather, as well as Sergio Leone's Once upon a Time in America.

These are brutal stories by definition – and don't go looking for a surfeit...

Read more...

"There's no 'I' in team, but there is an 'I' in winner" says business liaison manager Lindi, cleverly subverting a classic of management speak. There are also three 'I's in "irritating", Lindi. Hmmm…and two in Lindi. What can it all mean…?

Irish marketing consultant Jennifer will get a lot of stick for proclaiming herself "the best salesperson in Europe," but she has the evidence to back it up. "I can sell pieces of paper for £50," she says. They wouldn't be red, oblong pieces of paper, would they Jennifer, with the Queen's head on them?

Claire, a self-proclaimed "rottweiler" (or German Shepherd, depending on what mood she's...

1 comment

Read more...

When series four of Desperate Housewives opened with Edie alive and kicking, it was a huge relief. For at the end of series three disturbing signs of sentimentality were creeping in. Even if we could accept a soft-focus wedding for Mike and Susan, neither of whom offer many thrills dramatically, it would have been horribly awkward if we were required to cry over Edie, Wisteria Lane's villainess-in-residence.

We don't want to feel sorry for these women. We want to revel in their insecurities and vices - and we can do so because their wealth, good looks, fabulous outfits and the apparently interminable sunshine that beats down...

Read more...

It's the music that gets me every time - the jangling, nerve-shredding guitar then the barbed, black, yet strangely sinuous lyrics "When I am through with you, there won't be anything left"…over and over. It's like being slapped around the face as your hair is being pulled. But in a good way. That's Damages for you (Mondays, BBC1), and its fabulous Simple Mindsy-New Ordery theme tune by the LA-based band The VLA. Listen for yourself at MySpace.

As the weeks have rolled by Damages has burrowed under my skin like a painful, bloodsucking insect. I simply cannot miss it. We even have our own little Damages...

1 comment

Read more...

Those concerned that today's BBC Radio 4 has sacrificed most of its pomposity and intellectual rigour in favour of fanciful notions of "fashion" and - nurse! The monocles! - "progress" need fret no more. For this week, cantering into the daily 3:45pm slot like a thoroughbred in tweed plus fours is Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen's History of Home (Monday to Friday, 3.45pm, BBC Radio 4), a short, sharp, bellowingly brainy trot through the history of modern British housing.

There's none of your youthful "interactive" nonsense here; no phone-in discussions; no Marcus Brigstocke; no press-your-red-buttons-now and no irreverent looks at the week's headlines from a panel of adolescent braggarts...

Read more...

There's a crucial scene in the final episode of Ashes to Ashes (Thursday 27 March, 9:00pm, BBC1) that I guarantee will have Gene-ettes - devotees of the mighty DCI Gene Hunt - lactating and picking out curtains for the imaginary nursery that will soon be filled with many similarly imaginary tiny tow-haired Hunts. I will say nothing more, except that it is surely aimed squarely at a woman's atavistic urge to nurture children and - yes, it has to be said - to find protection from a big, strong, capable man.

And therein lies the appeal of DCI Gene Hunt (Philip Glenister). Yes, I fully appreciate that...

2 comments

Read more...

Saturday night on BBC1. Graham Norton flaps his way through another busload of inept warblers. Duncan from Blue, coathanger in mouth, "releases the balls" to confirm that, although it could be you, it never is. Episode 482,571 of Casualty. Football. A sophisticated comedy about how the massive unlikelihood of finding true love dooms intelligent people to live alone in a mad, vulgar world.

Hang on, what was that last one? That's Love Soup, lurking on the worst TV night of the week, but still the pinnacle of David Renwick's already Himalayan writing career.

One Foot in the Grave saw Renwick master visual set pieces and cruel comic...

Read more...

There's a smug "truth" oft-cited by lazy film critics that, no matter how successful, TV actors are congenitally unable to cross over to movie stardom.

The most oft-cited example of this is David Caruso, who was poised for Hollywood success after wowing us in NYPD Blue and, er, TJ Hooker, only to bomb with Jade et al to return to what he must have always known he did best – starring on the small screen, in CSI: Miami. Then there's the curse of Friends (the odd Scream excepted, have you ever seen Breast Men? The Shrink Is In? I rest my case).

But hang on...

7 comments

Read more...

I'm in pretty safe diplomatic territory stating that the most enduring action man in the whole of cinema is British. James Bond, played for the last 46 years by six different actors (seven if you count David Niven in 1967 spoof Casino Royale), rules the world.

Well turned out, urbane, chivalrous (even when dispatching female double agents after sex) – and, since Daniel Craig took over the role in 2006’s “proper” version of Casino Royale, a gym-toned hunk.

So why does the phrase “action hero” instantly conjure up an American? And why was Sydenham-born Jason Statham required to Americanise his accent into a transatlantic mush when...

Read more...

Salt. What is it? Why is there so much of it? And what in the name of inexplicably fashionable table accessories are you supposed to do with the stuff? The Food Programme (Sundays, 12:30pm, BBC Radio 4) approached the topic with caution, distracting it with a bout of napkin origami while experts backed it into a corner and began poking at it with their wooden spoons.

Not that it was giving much away. When it comes to weird white stuff that ends up scattered over plastic tabletops in regional community centres, salt is easily as inscrutable as dandruff. It's an enigma, wrapped in a riddle and...

Read more...

There's something splendidly reassuring about consumer investigation telly, and Watchdog in particular.

While the ping-pong style of presenting between Nicky Campell and Julia Bradbury is almost indistinguishable from that of Nick Ross and Fiona Bruce on Crimewatch, at least Watchdog doesn't give you nightmares featuring balaclava-wearing, spanner-wielding mechanics intent on bludgeoning your skull in return for your iPod.

It allows you to slumber peacefully, satisfied in the knowledge that a team of BBC researchers are amassing huge filing cabinets full of our consumer complaints, and tomorrow their intrepid reporter will march purposefully down a suburban high street, carrying a microphone and barking at a fat...

1 comment

Read more...

It’s an image with the potential to ruin your bank holiday: the entire family gathered around the television belting out the likes of Make ’Em Laugh, We’re a Couple of Swells and Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead.

Or perhaps TCM’s Easter Extravaganza season (which starts on Good Friday) will provide much-needed social glue during the inevitable bad weather, with classic MGM musicals, including The Wizard of Oz, Singin’ in the Rain and Easter Parade, showing in sing-along versions (with the lyrics up on screen).

It’s the kind of karaoke experience that would be frowned upon in public, but – assuming you wait until tone-deaf...

Read more...

Ever since the box stole a large chunk of its available audience in the 1950s, Hollywood has been examining the motives behind the TV industry – think Peter Finch in Network and Alan Alda in Crimes and Misdemeanors, or even Divine as vile producer Arvin Hodgepile in Hairspray. But what happens when it holds a mirror up to itself?

Christopher Guest’s 2006 spoof For Your Consideration did for the Oscars season what This Is Spinal Tap did for heavy metal. Satirising the chaos that ensues when a low-budget Jewish drama is tipped online for Oscar glory, the film makes great capital out of...

Read more...