Radio Times

Every now and then a performance comes along that jumps up, grabs you by the throat and won't let go. Tom Hardy's 1980s gangster Freddie Jackson in the opening episode of Martina Cole's The Take was like that.

You couldn't take your eyes off him. It was like watching an angry bull-mastiff let loose in a petting zoo: whatever he did next, you knew it wouldn't be pretty. In every scene, Freddie gave off waves of brutal charisma: you try doing that in a spangly suit and grey loafers.

Early on, after being released from prison, he...

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No-one expects a soap wedding to be a fun occasion, least of all in Holby City, but TV's most dismal medics excelled themselves when they celebrated - no, that's not the right word, so let's say marked - the marriage of Faye and Joseph.

It was a rivetingly joyless affair. An air of gloom seemed to hang over proceedings like a damp duvet. Stilted conversations, broken glasses, unfunny speeches - it had it all.

Grim-faced groom Joseph (Luke Roberts) was determined not to be late - and who can blame him: Faye already...

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The right act won, of course. Diversity, the thrilling, exhilarating, endlessly inventive dance troupe thoroughly deserved to take the Britain's Got Talent crown in Saturday's final. They were breathtakingly good, their routines packed with humour and endless imagination.

They were nice boys too. My weary middle-aged heart fluttered at the decency and good manners of Diversity's choreographer and driving force, Ashley Banjo. My faith in human nature was restored by Banjo's politeness and charm, and the fact that there was no X Factor-y sobbing, pleading or over-emoting about "journeys". Banjo was the rarest of...

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Consider this: we live in a world where the risible Two Pints of Lager… exists and where the uniquely brilliant Pulling doesn't. Not any more, anyway, not since it was axed by BBC3, home of Two Pints. Even the baffling Ideal is still rumbling along on the same channel. Why?

But Pulling was allowed a swan song, an hour-long special (on 17 May). In this case special means "last one ever", an unpalatable fact made all the more difficult to swallow by the announcer, who did the introduction and called it "home-grown comedy genius". Rub it in, why...

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Watching Reggie Perrin had a necrotising effect - I realised I was dying slowly when Reggie (Martin Clunes, left) made a joke to his wife's female friends about how he admired women because: "Anyone who can bleed for five days without dying deserves a bunch of flowers every now and again."

I wasn't sure I'd heard that correctly, so I had to watch again on iPlayer, just to make sure. No, I wasn't wrong, I really had heard a pathologically abysmal gag about menstruation on a primetime BBC1 "comedy".

Now, there's absolutely...

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Katie & Peter: the Next Chapter Stateside began with a tautological fanfare from the excitable narrator: "Britain's number one celebrity couple in the UK are back!"

It was at this point that I could feel my brain cells draining away, like scum down a plughole. It's my own fault - the fumblings of Katie Price and her husband, Peter Andre, always have this effect on me, yet I keep going back for more.

This time, the couple are off to America, where Peter hopes to revive his music career - though Peter, who looks like a shocked Action...

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Britain's Got Talent always arrives like a circus train blowing into town. Ring the church bells! Hang out the bunting! Oddballs with groundless faith in their own talents are making fools of themselves! "Finally the wait is over!" Dec kept yelling.

The same panel of judges was back: Simon Cowell, still with the blinding teeth, the loo-brush hair, the winking; Amanda Holden with the hyperbole ("I just want to say that it was a complete privilege listening to that"); Piers Morgan looking suspiciously younger than he did in the last series.

But the...

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The idea behind the new BBC1 reality series The Real Swiss Family Robinson is for British families in crisis to be "marooned" on a desert island, where peeing into a hole in the ground presumably puts all of their woes into perspective.

I'm not convinced. It didn't do much for the Dyes from Essex (below). Dad Andy's building firm had collapsed so he, wife Vicki, daughters Courtney and Charlotte and Charlotte's boyfriend Tom tootled off to the Pacific island of Kiribati for three weeks.

They might just as well have gone on a camping...

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You'd be hard-pressed to come up with a programme title less tempting than Kevin Whately on Dementia (23 March ITV1), but let's try, shall we? How about Giles Brandreth on Shingles or An Audience with Martin Shaw?

No, I think Mr Whately edges it. No offence to him, but we know to our cost that actors make dreadful presenters. I hate to drag up Extreme Fishing with Robson Green again, but it's an obvious whipping boy, and short of Five commissioning Extreme Embroidery with Trevor Eve, likely to remain in a class...

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I know a number of women - sensible, level-headed ones at that - who've blushingly admitted that they found Robert Webb's winning turn on BBC1's Let's Dance for Comic Relief powerfully erotic.

On any level, this is impossible to analyse. This was, after all, a man dressed as a woman, wearing a hideous black wig, full make-up, a high-cut leotard, legwarmers and shiny tights. And he has sensational legs, the kind of pins that wouldn't disgrace a supermodel. Yet there was no mistaking Webb's, ahem, masculinity, and not just because that leotard left little...

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There was a lovely moment in a recent Coronation Street when Deirdre Barlow surveyed her life of serene domesticity during a happy bout of ironing. All chez Barlow was perfect, but for one little wrinkle in the checked tablecloth of Deirdre's existence: "If only our Tracy was out of prison, it would be just perfect." No sadness attached itself to this particular sentence; it wasn't weighed down by the ballast of sentimentality. Deirdre simply went back to ironing husband Ken's shirts.

Ken looked pained, and not because Deirdre had so carelessly mentioned his incarcerated stepdaughter. No,...

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It wasn't the explicit gore-fest we've come to expect from the modern British serial killer drama, but Red Riding was just as brutal and far more disturbing than most.

Set in 1974, this first of three two-hour episodes adapted from David Peace's quartet of novels plunged us into a world where almost the entire police force of West Yorkshire (not to mention the journalists!) were corrupt and murderous.

So violence and malevolence pervaded the story, rather than being delivered in measured doses of blood and guts. Emotionally draining, yes. But tremendously gripping...

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"It's a waiting game," said Robson Green's fishing guide as they tried to hook a sturgeon in the waters of British Columbia. A waiting game, you say? On TV? I know it's fishing, but that doesn't sound great. If I had to choose between, say, a football game and a waiting game, I know which I'd watch.

But this wasn't just fishing, it was Extreme Fishing with Robson Green. This was Five. They weren't about to make us sit and watch waiting. No, they edited out the waiting and instead gave us the bits where...

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If ever a woman's body language shouted, "I'm clever, but I'm rather shy and I don't want to be seen as a show-off", it was that of Gail Trimble, intellectual Panzer and captain of the Corpus Christi College, Oxford team on University Challenge. Acknowledged as the quiz's highest-scoring competitor ever, Trimble laid waste to opponents with her sweetly nervous smile and breathtaking general knowledge.

It was Pollyanna-ish of me not to realise until the day of the grand final (23 February BBC2) that not everyone thought, as I did, that she was terrific - immensely...

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