A week in TV

It's just an experiment, I don't know if it will last. But for as long as the enthusiasm lasts, I shall publish a list, plus capsule review, of everything I watched on TV. Properly watched that is, not multitudinous glimpses of news screens at work, or TV programmes that happened to be on while I was in the room doing something else.

January
1

• Midsomer Murders: delightfully predictable and whimsical; it's carnage out there
• Jam and Jerusalem - reminds me to be grateful I don't live in the sticks and have to join these ghastly 'guilds' to get a social life. Not actually comedy, but rescued as light character drama by the excellent Sue Johnston, and potentially Jennifer Saunders who would be a very good actor if she dropped the delusion of comedy

2

• Time-shifted Sense and Sensibility dull and worthy, safe and unchallenging, no expectations of action or profound insights or chacterisation; bring back Elizabeth Gaskell, wondering if any Brontës have been serialised in my lifetime

3

• Lead Balloon
second series has gone steadily downhill; no need for a third. Bored of the self-centred Spleens, but feel there might be scope for a spin-off featuring Michael and Magda, the more fascinating characters

4

• All the Presidents' Men (time-shifted) - fascinating glimpse of history (Watergate); almost as fascinating to witness the 1970s way of working, and wonder if there is any scope nowadays for tenacious diligent investigation, and how does 'fact checking' fit into a 24 hour news agenda
• Jam and Jerusalem - some excellent character portrayals sitting on a top of a tedious unfunny narrative; wondering if TV-people would be brave enough to commission work that portrays characters without either (intended) humour or catastrophe/tragedy
• Ladder 49 - lame drama and a missed opportunity to make something worthwhile, could have done without the sentimentality; think that John Travolta always looks and sounds like he's about to burst into tears. An over-rated one-dimensional actor

5 showed me to be an inveterate Couch Potato. Bizarrely, I missed Manchester United beating Aston Villa but devoted the evening to three very different films

• Five Easy Pieces...this was on the curriculum of the ridiculous 'Film Studies' course I took at University. Watching it nearly 20 years later, I can't help thinking it is pretentious 'w*nk'. Sure, Jack Nicholson is good, when is he ever not, but I think the 'concept' of the five easy pieces was a conceit, and I had an uneasy feeling it actually related to the women that Nicholson shagged (with two left on the cutting room floor)
• Raising Arizona - I can't believe I have never seen this before, but I found it delightful - difficult to pigeon hole, comedy, but one that does not need lame puns, witty one-liners, slapstick or zany escapades, rather creating comedy from the situation and the characters
• Cocktail is quite possibly the worst film I have seen in years. Tom Cruise is wooden, hammy and hysterically histrionic all at the same time, I can't believe that at the time he was being spoken about in hushed tone as an actor of significance; hon mensh to Bryan Brown for looking like a dickhead impersonating someone's embarrassing dad dancing at a family wedding; cardboard cut-out paint by numbers characters, narrative with far too many howlers, and a mise en scene that was just gruesome in its mindless celebration of late Eighties vacuity. A convincing performance by Elizabeth Shue who I have otherwise not heard of, but actually seems to have a decent CV despite Cocktail

6

• Sense and Sensibility - more tedium disguised by sumptuous costumes, lavish settings and decent acting. Nothing happens. Impossible to feel any sympathy for the characters. Clearly, there is something amiss with me, because it is a truth universally acknowledged that Jane Austen is a great writer. Her books are excellent cures for insomnia and the TV adaptations are just drivel and an excuse for Middle England to aspire to intellectuality while wallowing in soap predictability. Coming so soon after the brilliantly written and superbly produced and acted Cranford just underlines the inanity of the story. 'Roll on, Echo Beach', I say.
• The Devil Wears Prada Damages, where Glenn Close takes up where Meryl Streep left off in a convincing portrayal of an appallingly misogynistic stereotype of 'if a woman is successful, it stands to reason she must be a bitch'. Dated, clichéd, unimaginative... Still, on the evidence of the first episode, it is tautly written, and with it conducted in two separate time lines, it makes one eager to find out what led to the events in the flash-forward. The Sky+ is set...

7

• Time-shifted West Wing Not one of the better episodes, and one that I watched first time round. I'm not sure where I get to see new stuff that I missed because of idiot scheduling decisions.