Radio Times

Has there ever been such a classic sporting event with such feeble commentary? More than 12 million people were gripped by the climax of the men's Wimbledon final (6 July, BBC1), one of the best tennis matches ever played. But all commentators Andrew Castle and Tim Henman could manage, when they bothered to speak at all, was the occasional limp platitude or hesitant aside.

As one exquisite rally followed another we got revelatory insights from Castle along the lines of "This is top tennis now," or "You have to take your hat off to Federer." Or my own favourite: "They wouldn't have had a rain delay...

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David Butcher on the dangers of indigestion from binge surfing.

The red button was a gift watching Glastonbury (BBC3), where TV coverage struggled, inevitably, to do justice to all the acts on the bill. Touch the magic button and you could take your pick from five bands at once or, even better, flit between them.

It's wonderful to have that choice, but hard to resist it, like one of those all-you-can-eat buffets where you end up piling flavours on top of each other because you don't want to miss a treat. At one stage I flicked restlessly from the chilli crab claws of the Ting...

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Stanley Kubrick was the greatest American director this country ever produced. Although born in New York, he found England more to his liking than Hollywood and was based here for almost 40 years – hence, one of ours.

A season of his films airs on More4 from Tuesday 15 July, beginning with the documentary True Stories: Stanley Kubrick's Boxes.

Aside from his rarely seen 1950s documentary shorts, Day of the Fight and Flying Padre, we're talking big, bold, headline movies. He made just 13 features in 46 years, but their sheer thematic breadth marks him out as a mould-breaker.

Having shot both the moral-panic-inducing...

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New housemates 4/5

When Big Brother "let slip" that three new females would be entering the house this week, I was excited. Not because the prospect of ogling new women has the significance for me that it does for poor incarcerated Dale, Rex and Stu (I live in the outside world and can ogle women whenever I want). No, I was intrigued by the claim that one of the new arrivals would be an Angelina Jolie lookalike. And, sure enough, Australian Sara has largish, vaguely pouty lips, a face, arms and legs.

I'll tell you what, though, Sara does remind me of someone. Could it...

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Daleks, Doctors, Donna and always someone shouting out the plot until you bought them a beer: this was event drama, this was party television. Everyone watched this, everyone. Pubs that usually are locked to Sky Sports were tuned to BBC1 and if you didn't get to watch it with friends and food, get 'em all round for the BBC3 repeats.

You did have to feel a bit cheated about the regeneration but it was done with such a knowing laugh - Russell T Davies gleefully enjoying all the fuss he helped create last week. It's going to be extraordinarily hard for the show to bring us back...

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Q In 21 June's Feedback you said Meridian's digital switchover would take place in 2011-12. What about my TV region, Westcountry?
Di Taylor, Plymouth

A For you specifically (the Caradon Hill transmitter), switchover will be July-September 2009. Westcountry as a whole makes the change from April 2009.

The full list of TV region switchover is as follows:
Border Nov 08-Jun 09
Central 2011
Westcountry Apr-Sep 09
Anglia 2011
Granada Oct-Dec 09
Yorkshire 2011
Wales Jul 09-Mar 10
Meridian 2011-12
West 2010
London 2012
STV North 2010
Tyne Tees 2012
STV Central 2010-11
UTV 2012

For more detailed information, go to Read more...

Q On Virgin cable I can only VHS-record a programme if my TV is switched to the same channel. On terrestrial TV I could watch one and record another. On Freeview, I can't VHS-record at all. Not what you'd call progress, is it? Or is there a way round this? And I don't mean "chuck away your video recorder and get a hard-drive recorder"!
Barry Hyman, Bushey Heath, Hertfordshire

A Sorry, but the obvious solution here is…chuck away your video recorder and get a hard-drive recorder.

However, you can record Freeview onto VHS. If your video recorder and Freeview box both have Scart sockets, connect the digibox to...

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When Kathy Bates decided to direct herself in the 2005 adaptation of Jane Stern's book Ambulance Girl, she was candid about why: "I didn't want anyone else telling me what to do."

She sums up the seemingly eternal desire among actors to get behind the camera while simultaneously staying in front of it. They've had enough of being ordered around and wish to give the megaphone and monitor a go without actually depriving the adoring public of their face.

It's not always egomania, though. Charlie Chaplin's first short films were directed by other people but, as creator of the winning Tramp character, Chaplin quickly took over. By...

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Controversy 4/5

"You-wouldn't-like-it-if-I-went-an'-put-your-stuff-in-the-bin-so-can- you-go-an'-get-my-stuff-out-of-the-bin-that-you-put-in-the-bin- 'cos-you-got-no-right-to-touch-my-stuff-and-put-it-in-the-bin".

Gah! Bex's Vicky Pollard-style verbal machine-gunning is enough to make you want to put her in the bin (preferably just as the dustcart is pulling up outside). And the vengeful mutilation of Mohamed's lovely pink belt after he supposedly smoked her last scrap of tobacco was going a bit far.

But at least it's something happening - that would be what Bex and Jen would say. They've been bitching incessantly about how boring everyone is and how they want the fun people back. You know, like that infuriating child Sylvia, or Dennis, who spat in a fellow housemate's...

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It's one of the most famous silhouette profiles in history: the aquiline nose, the meerschaum pipe and the deerstalker hat. But of all the actors to shed light on Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle's most famous creation, who can best lay claim to that bohemian consulting room in Baker Street?

Basil Rathbone portrays him as a smooth sophisticate, while Peter Cushing - in emphasising the sleuth's scholarly bent - ends up downplaying his wilder excesses. It is really only Jeremy Brett, in the Granada television adaptations of the 1980s and 90s, who fully captures the master detective's periods of listlessness, intense engagement when absorbed in...

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Now, only on BBC1…" said the continuity announcer bizarrely, "…it's the brand new series of Top Gear."

They wish. BBC1 would love to snaffle this show but no, it's staying on BBC2 and the BBC2-ness matters because, despite being a hit all over the world, on BBC2 it can still slope around behind the bikesheds and behave like a naughty schoolboy.

And sure enough, here come the scabby-kneed gang of Richard Hammond, Jeremy Clarkson and James May, looking as shifty as ever. Straight out of the opening titles and Clarkson roars, "Tonight: can an Austin Allegro fly?" over a shot of a 70s...

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