Things That Have Happened Recently But Are Unimportant

Let’s run down some of the titular events, shall we?

First up, Terry Wogan’s announced his retirement from commentating on Eurovision. Now, I know some of my (former?) readers are not so keen on old Tel, but I for one will miss him very much, his blend of sardonic wit and genuine affection for the competition a big part of why I’ve enjoyed watching it so much. He clearly doesn’t think it’s much of a contest any more – at least not the kind he’s been used to – and that’s a pretty fair criticism. The Eurovision organisers did reveal a few months ago, though, that juries were coming back to help make the result fairer, although they haven’t yet said what weight their vote will carry in relation to the public’s choice. I sincerely hope that goes a way to levelling the playing field (although as long as the public are involved there will always be some bias – obviously the juries aren’t going to be squeaky clean either, they weren’t last time they were in use). And so Graham Norton is going to take the job  – well, I can certainly think of far worse people to do it, though wouldn’t it have been brilliant if they could have persuaded Simon Amstell to do it? He’s a riot on Never Mind the Buzzcocks, BBC2’s consistently hilarious music quiz, although that particular show is missing Bill Bailey more than it wants to admit.

Another thing that happened recently but is unimportant is that Pushing Daisies is now pushing daisies. I have mixed feelings on this – while I mostly enjoyed the first season (season two hasn’t made it to the UK yet), I have serious doubts about its potential longevity and actually two seasons seems an about fair shelf life to me. I will miss Anna Friel and Chi McBride – I won’t miss the shoveling of honey down my throat and Jim Dale insisting on calling Lee Pace’s character ‘the pie-maker’.

And of course who could forget that this is the time of year for that annual triumvirate of reality TV behemoths – Strictly Come Dancing, The X-Factor, and I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here? Sadly, I didn’t forget, despite no longer really having the excuse of ‘well, my family were all watching it’ to hide behind, and I’ve tried my best to keep up with them all. Unfortunately, the most entertaining of all of them, I’m A Celebrity Etcetera, was the one I was able to watch the least of, as its every-day-at-9pm format was clashed spectacularly most days with my student lifestyle, so I missed out on such great TV moments as eventual winner Joe Swash having his bottom felt up by Mr. Sulu, Robert Kilroy-Silk threatening Timmy Mallett for laughing at him (good on you, Timmy), and Boobs (pen name: Nicola McLean) being voted out of the jungle. It’s the only show in its genre that successfully pulls off the not-taking-itself-seriously vibe, and as such is vastly more fun than any talent contest.

Meanwhile, over a far longer and therefore more boring time period, the reliable Strictly overblew itself completely on the John Sergeant “controversy” (for Pete’s sake…) and has now gotten to the stage where the audience was tonight booing judges who scored anything lower than a 10. The feeling that anyone would probably be a deserving winner at this point has sucked a lot of the interest out of the competition – I don’t have a favourite like I usually do, they’re all very nice people and they all dance very well. At least with Sergeant there was an excitement over who would win – the judges or the public? Now there’s nothing.

And, finally, the X-Factor. Oh, God, the X-Factor. Never have I been more mystified to find myself watching a programme as I am watching the X-Factor these days. It’s weird – unlike Strictly I do have favourites (specifically, anyone who isn’t that godawful talentless loofah-haired brat Eoghan Quigg) yet I do not care one iota.  This is probably because of the ITV effect – Harry Hill showed up the all-hype no-actual-excitement approach on his brilliant TV Burp by showing how hardworking, sad-to-see-him-on-a-show-this-annoying host Dermot O’Leary not once, not twice, but eight times announcing to the audience that BRITNEY SPEARS IS HERE IN THE STUDIO OH MY GOD IT’S BRITNEY PINCH YOURSELVES THIS IS THE MOST AMAZING THING SINCE TAKE THAT CHRIST WERE THEY ONLY HERE LAST WEEK IT SEEMS LIKE ALREADY THEIR APPEARANCE ON THIS SHOW HAS PASSED DOWN INTO BRITISH FOLKLORE BY THE WAY BRITNEY IS HERE WOW! and each time the audience exploded in cheers like the hideous, mindless robots they are. Typical. And don’t even get me started on the ever-more-transparent “tension” between the judges…

Yet I still watch. It’s because of the auditions – they’re funny TV, and I somehow get into an unbreakable routine because I too am a hideous, mindless robot – but don’t get sucked into them like I did. Only suicidally-bad television that way lies. It’s too late to save me, but you can still escape!

A Saturday night in

Okay, so by one day I meant over a week. These things happen. Now, I was planning to do a blog reviewing the first episode of the fourth season of Doctor Who a week ago, but circumstances conspired against me – however, I don’t think that’s been such a big problem. I feel a lot better being able to write about the first two episodes than the one on its own, and that’s because, like last season, the season opened with a slightly more comedic first episode before getting down to a serious drama in the second.

I came into the first episode, Partners in Crime, trying to shed my mind as much as I could of the preconceptions I had of Catherine Bloody Tate (as you can see, I was not entirely successful). I was really disappointed upon learning that she was returning after her less-than-stellar Christmas special in 2006, and Partners in Crime didn’t really do anything to change my perception. She’s still shouty and annoying, especially as there is a constant fear while watching her that she may say “am I bovvered?” as a little writers’ joke, although she was good for the minute or so where she didn’t have to speak – her through-a-window conversation with the Doctor was great. Other than that, I wasn’t so keen on the episode as a whole, mainly because as Who is primarily a kids’ show, the humour is a little underdeveloped for my tastes, so I much prefer the hard drama and action episodes that make up the bulk of the 21st-century series. The whole thing was made worth watching, mind you, purely on the basis of that 5-second surprise cameo for Rose Tyler. Hooray! Billie’s back! I realised in those five seconds just how much I’ve missed her.

The second episode, The Fires of Pompeii, which aired yesterday, started an evening of TV which I am on the whole pleased to have watched, although the jury is still out on some of it (more on that later). I certainly preferred this episode to Partners in Crime – even Donna was slightly more watchable this week, Tate did a decent job with her reaction to the Doctor’s refusal to warn the people of Pompeii. I’m pretty sure neither Rose nor Martha would have made such a fuss about it (I shudder to think what Captain Jack would have tried if he’d told everyone they only had 24 hours to live) so that was a nice change. Some points of interest; that’s two for two so far in terms of episodes in which they’ve mentioned the Shadow Proclamation – to do with this season’s story arc maybe?; the excellent CGI throughout the episode, really impressive work on the fiery alien rock monsters in particular; and the warning that Donna “has something on her back”. I know there are rumours of her character’s story arc taking a turn for the sinister this season (it’s a comfort to think that Catherine Tate is the villain of the piece), and I’m looking forward to seeing how it’ll pan out.

Now, on to the rest of my Saturday night in. Unfortunately, my family, particularly the women in the house, are prone to falling into watching all of the inane talent shows like the X-Factor and (god help us) I’d Do Anything, or whatever Andrew Lloyd Webber’s latest PR scam is, but occasionally this works in my favour. Having been around while they watched the week-long festival that was last year’s Britain’s Got Talent, I have to say that it was a good laugh, if only because it deviated from the singers-only format that weighs down the entire genre. Obviously, it was won by a singer, but Paul Potts was at least not singing in English, and he was awesome. So this year I decided I’d put my dignity to the side and indulge myself again, starting yesterday with the first bunch of auditions. And while so far I’ve yet so see anything both really different and really good (such as my favourites from last year, the drink-juggling Bar Wizards), it was worth the time I put into watching it, and the 13-year-old at the end of the programme is surely Paul Potts’ test-tube baby. It’s totally uncanny their resemblence, and I’m quite sure he’ll be there in the final live show. As usual, there was a lot of cringe-worthy rubbish on the show, but that’s quite enough talk about Piers Morgan.

My evening concluded with the show that followed Britain’s Got Talent on ITV, the award-winning American import Pushing Daisies. My interest in the show was only slight, and I only really thought about watching it when I realised that it was about to come on next. I’d heard of it in various SF and TV magazines and knew it was winning awards for being slightly quirky, but I really was unprepared for quite how quirky it is.

If you’re unfamiliar with the show, and I wouldn’t blame you, the premise is as follows: pie-maker Ned (Lee Pace) has the ability to bring dead things back to life with a touch, as he discovers at the age of 9 when his mother bursts a blood vessel in her brain and he resurrects her. Unfortunately, as evidenced when she kisses him goodnight that evening, if he touches those things again they die for good. What’s more, if he keeps that thing alive for more than a minute, something else will die instead to keep the balance – in this case, his neighbour, whose daughter “Chuck” (Anna Friel) he is in love with, drops dead instead. In the present day, a private investigator called Emerson (the excellent Chi McBride, last seen being excellent on House) finds out about Ned’s power when a man he’s chasing falls from a roof to his death only to touch Ned on the bounce and return to life. They start a business claiming rewards from murder cases by talking to the deceased and solving the crime. Eventually they cover the case of a woman who was murdered on a cruise ship – it turns out to be long-time-no-see soulmate Chuck who’s kicked it this time, and as he speaks to her in her coffin, Ned can’t bring himself to kill her for good, so some fat funeral director takes the bullet instead (metaphorically). Much romantic awkwardness ensues as the pair can not touch each other lest she keel over like the cadaver she really should be.

The thing about Pushing Daisies is that it’s the brightest thing on television. Immediately you are assaulted by full-power yellows and blues in corn fields that I’m pretty sure can not physically be that colourful, and from then on the tone stays exactly the same. Everything is sweet and sugary and happy, including a faintly nauseating narration by former Carry On regular Jim Dale, who if he keeps referring to Ned as “the pie-maker” may cause me to break my TV in frustration by episode three. It may well be that as the season goes on the continuous sweetness may eventually stop me watching but I was intrigued enough to decide to watch the next episode in a week’s time. Much of this is down to the overwhelmingly-cute Anna Friel (yes, that Anna Friel, who will, to her great frustration, probably always be known as the 16-year-old on Brookside who participated in the first-ever-in-Britain screen lesbian kiss), who is just totally compelling as the born-again village girl who muscles her way into Ned and Emerson’s enterprise. It’s great to see another English import do well overseas.

The big worry for me with Pushing Daisies is whether it can continue being interesting over more than one season (Friel is contracted for six-and-a-half years!) as the central premise loses its novelty. But I think I’m looking forward to finding out.