Radio Times

I saw Joe Wright's sumptuous 2005 adaptation of Pride & Prejudice (showing on Tuesday 2 December as part of ITV3's Jane Austen Week) the afternoon it opened. It was in a small Surrey town and I was the only man in the cinema, surrounded by the very keenest ladies of a certain age. Filing out afterwards, I heard a group of them agree: "Well, he was no Colin Firth." I kept my mouth shut.

I hesitate to use the well-worn phrase, but it is a truth universally acknowledged: Colin Firth is the definitive Darcy. Anyone who saw the classic BBC adaptation of Jane Austen's novel is united...

9 comments

Read more...

ITV have confirmed rumours that Stephanie Beacham is to join the cast of Coronation Street.

The 61-year-old actress is probably best known for her role as scheming vixen Sable in glamorous 1980s US soap The Colbys. She'll play eccentric theatre actress Martha, who lives on a canal boat and meets Ken Barlow while he's out walking Eccles the dog.

A shared passion for literature and the theatre brings the pair together and Ken finds Martha's boat a tranquil haven from the rigours of sharing a home with Deirdre, Blanche and Peter.

It starts off innocently enough, but could Martha and Ken's friendship...

Read more...

Pass me that gown and those wellingtons will you, please, I'm about to watch some telly. While you're at it, a pair of goggles might not go amiss. How about protecting the living room carpet with a few old newspapers? And some plastic sheeting on the sofa, maybe?

I'm making a fuss, because watching mainstream dramas recently has had what I can only describe as a certain abattoir dimension. Blood, dear readers, is everywhere. Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with that, but when did things get so very, very gory, with extreme, graphic, gagging violence?

No adult with an ounce of common sense who watches grown-up,...

23 comments

Read more...

Start planning your Christmas TV viewing now, with our guide to what's on over the festive season. We'll update it as new programmes are announced or as transmission dates and times are confirmed.

DRAMA

Doctor Who (Christmas Day 6pm BBC1) Christmas special The Next Doctor features two Doctors - Davids Tennant and Morrissey - a snowy Victorian London and new monsters the Cybershades.

Lark Rise to Candleford (Sunday 21 7:45pm BBC1) A feature- length episode launches a new series of the genteel period drama. Expect Christmas card settings and a ghostly visitor.

The 39 Steps (Sunday 28...

50 comments

Read more...

I've developed a minor fixation with the X Factor choreographer Brian Friedman, the man with the impeccable eyebrows and the assiduously tended beard-ette; the man who doesn't have a good word to say for anyone.

In those little video inserts in every show, Brian is very fond of conjuring up doom-laden scenarios for the ill-dressed X Factor contestants before they come pattering on to the stage. "If Daniel/Rachel/JLS/whoever loses confidence, they will fall headfirst into a vat of boiling oil/spiral into the deepest pits of Hell/be dragged across hot coals by evil elves."

It's great fun of course, and roughly ten million people a...

Read more...

The burning question is this: am I becoming a Shane Meadows bore? I realise I bang on about Britain's most talented young film-maker rather a lot. I can hear myself doing it. But what am I to do? I really do genuinely think he is a national treasure, on a par with Ken Loach and Mike Leigh.

I am not alone. This Is England (Monday 24 November Channel 4), his hymn to life as a teen skinhead in post-Falklands-conflict Britain, finally saw him collect a Bafta after 12 years of making semi-autobiographical films in his home county of Nottinghamshire. I was cheering from my...

2 comments

Read more...

Yes, two new contestants are to debut on tonight's edition of I'm a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! Former children's TV presenter Timmy "Wacaday" Mallett and David Van Day, one half of 80s pop duo Dollar, will enter the jungle this evening.

But as the two eager celebs hurry to meet their new camp mates, there are some surprises in store. Sweet-toothed Timmy bends down to pick up a cup cake from the jungle floor and finds himself hauled up in a net suspended from a tree. And David is soon caught in the same trap.

The two captives are then locked...

2 comments

Read more...

John Sergeant's languid ballroom performances on Strictly Come Dancing have made him a favourite in living rooms across the country. But after a judges-defying run to the later stages of the competition, the former political journalist has decided to pull out of the show.

Sergeant's lack of technical skill on the dance floor, and his trademark laid-back style, angered Strictly's judges, who are determined the competitors should be rated on their dancing ability. But 64-year-old Sergeant's personal charm won him the viewers' vote, keeping him in the competition week after week.

Sergeant has always maintained that it's the view of the audience that matters,...

27 comments

Read more...

As Doctor Who fans will be aware, outgoing Doctor David Tennant has not left the Tardis behind just yet. He's set to star in five more specials, starting with this year's Christmas episode The Next Doctor. In it, Tennant comes face to face with a man also calling himself "the Doctor", played by David Morrissey…

But in the meantime, Tennant is swapping science-fiction for science fact in Einstein and Eddington. The one-off BBC1 drama charts the relationship between Albert Einstein (Andy Serkis) and British astrophysicist Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington (Tennant).

And continuing the Doctor Who theme, BBC1 has also filmed a...

5 comments

Read more...

Towards the end of The Commander, which cast a long shadow across three nights on ITV1, Commander Clare Blake of New Scotland Yard shook her head as tears filled her eyes: "Why did I do it… why did I do it?" I'll tell you why you did it, Clare. You did it because you're an idiot.

Clare Blake must be the daftest TV police officer in history: previously, she's had sex with suspects in murder investigations; in this opus she snatched back a child she thought was stolen, only to find - hey ho, what do you know - it wasn't stolen after all.
Read more...

Forget the historic US election and the ever crunchier credit crunch. Forget, if you will, the Ross/Brand furore and Laura White being booted out of The X Factor. What everyone's talking about is this: how come John Sergeant's still in Strictly Come Dancing?

Admit it. When the series started, you thought he'd be the first to go, didn't you? I certainly did. Poor John, I thought, as I scanned the list of would-be twinkle-toed stars. Who's going to vote for a chubby, retired political correspondent when there are all those muscly sportsmen, hunky actors and long-limbed lovelies in the line-up?

But what do you know? The...

16 comments

Read more...

Nearly 40% of viewers polled in a recent YouGov survey for The Sunday Times want to see a complete ban on swearing on TV.

And while nearly half of those who took part believe there's a place for some swearing on our screens, 30% think the F-word should be cut out completely and 55% think the C-word is utterly unacceptable. On the other hand, 40% also feel that the BBC should reflect the language we hear in our day-to-day lives.

In May this year, we conducted a survey for Radio Times magazine, in which 69% of readers said there was...

4 comments

Read more...

You have been abducted by masked gunmen and imprisoned in a grubby Walthamstow flat. Your sabre-wielding captors will show no mercy unless the British government concede to all their demands. Never mind, anytime soon golden-haired Adam Carter and his snappily dressed team of top MI5 agents will come sashaying up the garden path. Feeling reassured? No, me neither.

Time was when you had to be pretty ruthless to work for the secret service. But all that must have changed when tender-hearted Harry Pearce took over. Ceaselessly kind and compassionate towards his staff, he takes their safety personally, retiring to his gloomy little glass cubicle to fret whenever...

37 comments

Read more...

Here's what director John Moore and I have in common: we both love 1970s horror classic The Omen. And here's how we differ: only one of us loves it so much he felt the need to make it again.

Moore, whose previous film was a remake of 1965 desert-crash adventure Flight of the Phoenix (is anyone spotting a trend yet?), remade The Omen (Saturday 15 November C4) in 2006, showing his respect by pretty much copying the original, scene for scene.

Replacing the original film's stars (Gregory Peck and Lee Remick), Liev Schreiber now plays US diplomat Robert Thorn who makes the fateful decision to...

2 comments

Read more...

Leeches, snakes, rats, cockroaches, and spiders with a bite even deadlier than that of last year's runner up Janice Dickinson - they're the dangers usually associated with I'm a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! But even deadlier can be Mother Nature herself…

The jungle of Upper Dungay in New South Wales, where the show is filmed, is "dense rainforest, set in an old volcanic crater… It's a dangerous environment," warns series editor Becca Walker. And she was proved right last January when the creek that runs through the plot burst its banks and swept away the camp site.

Of course, no celebs were...

1 comment

Read more...