Radio Times

There have been many, many times during Long Way Down, the filmed record of Charley Boorman and Ewan McGregor's fundraising journey by motorbike from John o'Groats to Cape Town, when I've wanted to pat Boorman on the head and put him in a basket by the fire.

Boorman is adorable, a bit like a rather sweet but untrained puppy. I love his (and McGregor's) stock response to some of the mightiest feats of some of the world’s ancient and glorious civilisations (the pyramids at Giza, for example) – "Wow! Amazing!" But I also love The Thoughts of Charley...

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Some television dramas rear up and slap you hard around the face, just begging you to take them on. "Want to come outside? Are you hard enough?'" they might as well be saying. Others, though, are supine yorkshire terriers, snuffling and looking at you with limpid eyes that demand "love me, love me".

Learners (Sunday 11 November, 9:00pm, BBC1) falls into this latter category. It's "comedy drama" (an expression that usually means the makers can't make up their minds what it is, because it's not much of either) centred on a driving school.

Now, many years...

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I always feel like an impostor when I watch E4, as if a 15-year-old with a bellybutton ring and footless tights is going to tap me on the shoulder and insist: "Madam, would you move along please, there’s nothing for you here."

Or perhaps she’d just punch me in the mouth, dump me headfirst in a skip, record it and upload the whole sorry episode to YouTube - you know what kids today are like. (I must apologise for using the word "upload", one of the greatest offences against the English language of the past ten years.)

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You can see Channel 4’s marketing department faced a big problem when it poured itself a glass of sparkling mineral water and sat down to decide how to promote Britz, its huge two-part drama (Wednesday 31 October and Thursday 1 November). The nights are drawing in, the committee would have pondered, the temperature is dropping and your audience’s trip home from work is probably going to be chilly and bleak.

So, then, after your viewers have turned up the central heating, had a warming evening meal and sat cosily on the sofa, waiting to be entertained,...

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First I must declare a slight, and maybe even a bit of a tragic personal interest – I’ve liked Russell Brand ever since he very politely held the door open for me, a total stranger, in our local newsagent’s. I told you it was tragic. But come on, well-mannered young men are hard to find these days.

He’s a curious, polarising figure. There are those who think he’s a preening, prancing, bejewelled, nest-haired twerp or others who see him as a quixotic, unpredictable and treasureable comic talent. Brand’s cause hasn’t been helped by the fact that television hasn’t...

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Do you remember that episode of Extras, where a lascivious Patrick Stewart outlined his idea for a film to Andy Millman (Ricky Gervais)? Its premise was straightforward – women’s clothes would simply fall off, anytime, anywhere.

I’m irresistibly drawn to this memory when I watch The Tudors (Fridays, BBC2), a roisterous new series made for the anything-goes Showtime network in the US. (Showtime is the parent of Five’s new import, the excellent, mucky and blackly funny Californication on Thursdays.)

The Tudors isn’t The Six Wives of Henry VIII. The lead actor isn’t padded and wheezing. Oh no, here...

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I watch telly, all day and every day, for a living. Great, isn’t it? Particularly when you consider what else I’d be fit for. I wouldn’t be able to earn my living in light engineering for instance, or herding donkeys. Thus my colleagues and I, this tiny band of brothers and sisters, watch DVDs of forthcoming programmes for previewing purposes. (It’s a deadline thing, we couldn’t do our jobs if we had to watch programmes in what we in Radio Times Land call “real time”.)

Thus we watch these DVDs in our various offices and the hurly-burly of...

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It’s impossible not to love Bruce Parry, Tribe's vomiting pixie and the neatest, sweetest and most pocket-sized of all of the TV explorers. Ladies, he is the perfect TV Boyfriend.

If you accompanied Bruce on a camping trip, you just know he’d be far too charming and courtly ever to insist you carried on to the next rocky outcrop if your feet were hurting. In fact, he would fashion you a sedan chair from coconut husks while wafting you with palm fronds.

And if you wanted to find somewhere to plug in your hairdryer – no...

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It’s always easy to spot murderers in Silent Witness. So easy, in fact, that they might just as well wear T-shirts with the words “I Am the Murderer” picked out in sequins. But even an explanatory colouring book, a set of flash cards and a trail of bright red glitter leading to the culprit wouldn’t be enough for Dr Nikki Alexander, Silent Witness’s daft forensic pathologist.

You see, Dr Nikki (Emilia Fox) has a problem. She’s obviously a highly trained professional, but she is also an idiot. Think about it. A murderer is on the loose and you...

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Every week, I hope it will happen. Just once, after detective Horatio Caine delivers one of his daft pre-title sequence one-liners, moments before The Who leap in with Won’t Get Fooled Again, will someone, anyone, thump him?

I’d rather like it to be Frank, that plodding sap of a detective who trails in the wake of the sleek CSI personnel like a whipped dog after a cruel master. Nothing too vicious, just a smart punch to the smug Caine face, accompanied by a “take that, you dismal, sanctimonious windbag”.

I feel so strongly because Detective Horatio...

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