Radio Times

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".

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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...

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In shows like Property Ladder, enthusiastic amateurs with no experience buy a house, knock a wall through and do up the bathroom in the hope of turning a quick buck. In contrast, Grand Designs follows projects that begin life as muddy plots, or involve reconstruction beyond the realms of mere "renovation". They're the brainchildren of people with know-how and skill, or those pursuing such a unique and original passion that they have to invent cutting-edge technologies or revive lost skills to make it a reality.

Grand Designs is also an example of great storytelling. But it...

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Mornings are for cricket, afternoons are for football, but late, drunken, solitary, post-pub nights in well-loved armchairs are for snooker. The exquisite serenity. The leisurely strolls around the table. The referee's immaculate white gloves polishing balls to a gleaming iridescence. The tranquil, understated commentary by Clive Everton or Dennis Taylor. "The table is playing well this evening, Clive." "Yes, it's a responsive cloth." Of course it is. It's a highly responsive cloth. But above all, the attraction has to be…well, it's the trigonometry.

Look, maybe it's a bloke thing. After a few beers in the pub, the...

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No guns, no car chases, no rushing to hospital. Part of Cranford's appeal is that it's different to every other drama, but I'm stuck to it like glue because it's alive. Vivid characters trying to be all English and polite while their fists are clenching from rage. Every nod of the head is perfectly correct etiquette but every eye is envious, plotting, snide.

It's the story of one year in a Cheshire market town of the 1840s - and it looks like every town in every BBC costume drama, chiefly because it is. Filmed in Lacock, Wiltshire, it's...

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I'm a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! has got a lot to answer for. For starters, I now haven't been to the pub for 16 nights. And in the absence of your regular correspondent Grace Dent, I thought you would like to know why men like me are tuning in night after night for more bickering, sniping and subtropical subplots.

Firstly, I'm a Celeb… is that rarest of things - an ITV programme packed with tiny pleasures. And I'm not simply talking about Ant and Dec.

The cheeky Geordie funsters have, as always, been baiting of the...

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The news isn't funny, is it? Not with Iraq festering away? Not with the renaissance of Al Gore and Hillary Clinton, the world's least comedic double act? Not with California in cinders? Oh, yes, it is. The news is funny, very funny indeed and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is there to prove it.

Often to be found on More4, The Daily Show is America's funny bone and conscience rolled into one laugh-out-loud, but thought-provoking, whole. The format is simple and recognisable to anyone familiar with Newsnight: a loquacious but authoritative host, a selection of overearnest correspondents...

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Weary of Strictly Come Dancing's waltz, or Paul O'Grady's schmaltz? John Turode skewering a Masterchef student isn't your scene? OK, you get the idea. If you come home exhausted from work and can't face hard news, soft soap, or your kids bingeing on Tracy Beaker re-runs, there is an alternative. Bubbling away in the stranded backwaters of the early-evening Freeview schedules is Takeshi's Castle, a game show of two halves with numerous guilty pleasures.

Japan has long excelled at this kind of shiny, disposable programming - Clive James frequently showed extracts of Japanese game-show contestants enthusiastically...

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It's last orders down the pub. Much of the known world is retiring to bed.

You've had a busy day. You have awakened to the Today programme, read a daily paper, caught the lunchtime news. You might have come home to the six o'clock bulletin and surfed through BBC News 24. You may even have snatched the occasional news summary throughout the day on Magic FM. You're tired but well-informed. Under such circumstances, it is perhaps not unreasonable to ask, what exactly is the point of Newsnight?

For over 25 years this bastion of news and current...

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There will be people who'll read the title of this blog in disbelief. How can you love ITV's Rebus, they'll be asking - probably wearing a frown that wouldn't disgrace the eponymous hero himself.

Most of the dissenters will probably be dyed-in-the-wool fans of Ian Rankin's original novels. I write as an aficionado myself - Exit Music (the last Rebus novel) is still sitting on my bookshelf waiting to be read because I can't quite bring myself to say goodbye to the bloke just yet.

It's certainly true to say that the scripts aren't doing justice to the...

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Doc Martin looks at first glance like dull, patronising pap. It's got simple plots, an absurdly beautiful rural setting - Port Isaac in north Cornwall, renamed Portwenn for the show - and a supporting cast who talk in Somerset accents, as do all TV actors asked to play people from Cornwall, or Norfolk for that matter. (Nobody ever uses authentic Cornish idioms, either: "teasy"; "hell-er"; "bleddy"; "he in't daft" etc.) In short, it seems perfect for Sunday nights on ITV1.

Thankfully, someone noticed that despite its cosy medical-drama trappings, it's too edgy and, frankly, too good for...

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Well, it's not because there aren't enough sightings of Gordon Ramsay on television. There was a time, not so long ago, when the former Rangers footballer seemed more ubiquitous than Santa at Christmas. And, Gordon, I say that in the spirit of light-heartedness - please don't hit me.

See, there's one of the points. Ramsay's a hard-looking bloke, which makes for palpable tension. He's powerfully built - we know that because for some reason he changes into his chef top at the start of each programme, when surely he has a changing room at home - he sneers...

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Watching one of Channel 4's The 100 Greatest… shows is the TV equivalent of a tube of Pringles: once you switch on, you can't switch off. They're tasty and addictive, yet somehow leave you feeling bloated and slightly guilty.

Let's face it, there are far more constructive things to be doing of an evening than consuming visual junk food for the brain. Like doing your laundry, for instance, or taming the weekend's accumulated hangover with an early night.

Instead, you turn on the TV only to be sucked in by a celluloid vortex cataloguing The 100 Greatest…Musicals of...

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America's Next Top Model gives a whole new meaning to fashion roadkill. It doesn't so much assault the senses as whack you over the head with a heavyweight handbag and beat you into submission.

It is television that shows no mercy; a production that cares neither for its contestants nor its audience but is taking both of you bitches down. It is, in the words of its creator and host Tyra Banks, FIERCE.

Sure, the viewer has a sense of taking part, joining in with the unchanging script each week, repeating Tyra's mantras ("Twelve beautiful girls...

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