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Hit & Miss, Sky Atlantic, Tuesday Harlots, Housewives and Heroines: a 17th-Century History for Girls, BBC4, Tuesday

Sun, 27 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

The premise of Hit & Miss – a transsexual hit (wo)man finds she's fathered a son with her ex-girlfriend, now dying of cancer – is not only an original one, but one that's been well publicised. Thankfully, the first episode gets on with the exposition brusquely: here's Mia, our pre-op transsexual assassin, dispatching someone with cold, unglamorous efficiency; now she's applying lipstick in the mirror, because she is a glamorous lay-dee after all. We get some would-be gratuitous nude shots of offbeat Hollywood star Chloë Sevigny (playing Mia, with a dodgy Irish accent) ... except that there's a penis hanging between her legs, for clarification.

The Barlow-Morgenstern Method, Radio 4, Saturday Reading Between the Lines, Radio 4, Tuesday

Sun, 27 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

It was a surreal image: Gary Brooker, lead man of Procol Harum, playing a grand piano in the middle of a court room and singing 'A Whiter Shade of Pale'. The forensic musicologist Peter Oxendale was there. "It was staggeringly beautiful," he fondly recalled.

DVD/Blu-ray: Grandma's House: Series 2 (15)

Sat, 26 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

"Do you need more acting lessons?" Rebecca Front's fame-hungry mum asks her struggling son (Simon Amstell).

Last Night's Viewing: The Fish Market: Inside Billingsgate, BBC2 Grandma's House, BBC2

Fri, 25 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Can I commend to you an adjective I'd never encountered before? It's "skulduggerous" and the OED citation would run something like this: "2012 Roger Barton The Fish Market: Inside Billingsgate – 'I've never dealt with such a skulduggerous bunch in all my life and I've dealt with some real villains'."

Last Night's Viewing: Hitler's Children, BBC2 24 Hours in A&E, Channel 4

Thu, 24 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

"Many people tell me I look like my father," said Monika in Hitler's Children, "but I'm not Amon... I have nothing in common with him either." Well, nothing but a big chunk of DNA, without which, one assumes, Monika would have found Schindler's List a far less troubling experience than she did.

Last night's viewing: Hit & Miss, Sky Atlantic; My Big Fat Fetish, Channel 4

Wed, 23 May 2012 10:00:01 +0100

You can tell that Hit & Miss is going to be a cut above from what it chooses to surprise you with. The central character, Mia, is a hired killer. She’s not the first female assassin we’ve seen on screen by a long shot, but this combination of gender and profession is still unusual enough that a more conventional series might tease you with the reveal. We’d see Mia touching up her lipstick first, say, and be allowed to coast with our preconceptions for a while before she stepped out of the car and shot her first victim. Here, it happens the other way around.

Last night's viewing - The Fall of Singapore: the Great Betrayal, BBC2; Gok Cooks Chinese, Channel 4; Great British Menu, BBC2

Tue, 22 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

You are a thriller writer, working on a tense scene in which an ex-Etonian toff, hugely knowledgeable about naval airpower and suspected of sharing his knowledge with a foreign power, is being questioned by intelligence officials. Present at the meeting is the Director of Public Prosecutions, presumably on hand to put the fear of God into the suspect. So, what do you name this important figure?

The Weekend's Viewing: Off by Heart Shakespeare, Sat, BBC2 Episodes, Fri, BBC2

Mon, 21 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Here are the rules. Nine young finalists from something like 2,000 original entrants memorise and perform a short speech from Shakespeare in front of an RSC audience.

Robin Scott-Elliot: Holding's honeyed growl drowned out by Sky's Chelsea cheerleaders

Mon, 21 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

It's a personal suggestion for sporting heaven. The Saturday morning of the first Test of the summer, newspapers, coffee and David Gower caressing you into the day. Above all it is the sounds of a Test match morning that allow gentle waves to wash away the week.

56 Up, ITV1, Monday The Hoarder Next Door, Channel 4, Thursday

Sun, 20 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Reading the TV schedule is like gazing into space: you pick out the familiar blobs and pass over a lot of unknown emptiness. Occasionally, a comet leaps out and surprises you, like The Killing. And then there's Up, a TV asteroid, which comes round every seven years.

Kind Hearts and Coronets, Radio 4, Saturday Strap In - It's Clever Peter, Radio 4, Wednesday Beryl and Betty, BBC Radio Humberside, Saturday

Sun, 20 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Tricky though the film Kind Hearts and Coronets must have been for the many-roled Alec Guinness, it was almost certainly a doddle compared with Alistair McGowan's feat of portraying seven members of the Gascoyne family by voice alone, in yesterday's sequel. That there was never any doubt as to who was supposed to be whom was a tribute to his rightly lauded mimetic powers.

Last Night’s Viewing: Tales of Television Centre, BBC4 The Great Euro Crash with Robert Peston, BBC2

Fri, 18 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

When the BBC revealed that it would be moving out of Television Centre and handing over its doughnut building to a developer, the announcement was followed by a brief Twitter storm as various actors and media types shared their indignation.

Last Night’s Viewing: Secret Eaters, Channel 4 Felicity Kendal's Indian Shakespeare Quest, BBC2

Thu, 17 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

According to Anna Richardson, "we each make about 200 eating decisions a day". Judging from the ballooning of the national waistline, pretty much all of those decisions are "Oh go on then. I shouldn't but I will".

When leaving it all to the listeners can be a turn-off

Thu, 17 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

"I'm relying on your wit because I've left mine in a caravan in Altrincham," announced Liza Tarbuck at the start of her new show on Radio 2. Alas, she wasn't joking. Listener interaction was certainly a priority for Tarbuck – either that or the show's running order had been carried away in a gust of wind. Because while acknowledging the individuals who make up your audience and are indirectly responsible for keeping a roof over your head is all well and good, there's a limit to how much the rest of us want to hear about Joe and Josephine Public's plans for a swinging night out.

Last night's viewing: The Town Taking on China, BBC2; Silk, BBC1; Cardinal Burns, E4

Wed, 16 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

He's a versatile actor, Bill Paterson, with a nice line in dry top-spin. But there are phrases that even he finds hard to rescue from bathos. Such as this one, for example, from The Town Taking on China: "Anyone who's anyone in the world of cushions, curtains and bedlinens is here."

Last night's viewing - 56 Up, ITV1; Chatsworth, BBC1

Tue, 15 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

If you didn't shed at least one or two tears during 56 Up then you might want to check your pulse. It is, by some stretch, among the most affecting television programmes ever made, even when – as with last night's opening episode – it begins in determinedly upbeat style.

Robin Scott-Elliot: David Beckham trots towards the Olympics but what of his sporting afterlife?

Mon, 14 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

It's not a good time for Stuart Pearce, what with going from scrupulously planning the laundry schedule for JT, Lamps and the gang in Krakow this summer to Roy Hodgson deciding to leave him at home to sort his sock draw on his own.

The Weekend's Viewing: The Lost World of the Seventies, Sun, BBC2 Starlings, Sun, Sky1

Mon, 14 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

"Universal history...is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here," wrote Carlyle.

Prisoners of War, Sky Arts 1, Thursday Episodes, BBC2, Friday Cardinal Burns, E4, Tuesday

Sun, 13 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

A lone woman speeds along a dusty road in Iraq; she's a CIA operative; she hits a queue, abandons the car and calls Langley to try to get an execution stayed; she bribes a man to get her into a prison and moments before she's bullied away by guards, the executed-to-be whispers something incendiary to her.

Believe It! Radio 4, Tuesday Word of Mouth, Radio 4, Tuesday

Sun, 13 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

I never feel comfortable when fact is mixed with fiction. I spend the whole time trying to figure out what's real and what's made up and usually end up vaguely irritated if it's not clear which is which. And then, I usually say to myself, the truth is usually more interesting anyway, so why bother?

Grace Dent on Television: The Hoarder Next Door, Channel 4

Sat, 12 May 2012 11:00:47 +0100

Just as Channel 4's de-clutter series, Get Your House in Order, ended, their new one, The Hoarder Next Door, began, quickly followed by BBC1's Britain's Biggest Hoarders.

Last Night's Viewing: Prisoners of War, Sky Arts 1

Fri, 11 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Anyone watching Prisoners of War because of Homeland, the Showtime series that was notionally based on it, may need to adjust their clocks for a shift in dramatic time zones. In keeping with convention and Hollywood imperatives, the latter began with frantic action.

Last Night's Viewing: The Apprentice, BBC1 Metalworks!, BBC4

Thu, 10 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Spot test and no cheating. Name three of the current Apprentice contenders. Too hard? Then just name one. If you managed either, I'd be impressed. I couldn't and it's my job to know these kind of things. But the truth is that we're eight weeks in now and nobody has emerged as a distinctive character.

Last night's viewing - Great Ormond Street, BBC2; Celebrity Exposed, Sky Arts 1

Wed, 09 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

A documentary about children with cancer can only mean one thing: tears, in bucket-loads. I braced myself for an hour of overwrought emotions as I sat down to watch Great Ormond Street, so it was surprising, even unnerving, that this first episode in a new documentary series following the treatment of children with cancer at the famed London hospital, didn't make its audience cry. That's not to say that it didn't make us feel – it did – but not at the expense of taking us through the complex intellectual, medical and moral choices the adults around these ill children face.

Last night's viewing - Small Teen Turns 18, BBC3; Britain Beware, ITV1

Tue, 08 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Jazz has a lot of people in her life who seem eager to big her up, which is handy because there are several reasons why she might need a boost. The very least of them curiously is Jazz's size, the result of an unspecified form of dwarfism.

A Civil Arrangement, Sunday, BBC4 Nuts in May, Sunday BBC4

Mon, 07 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Alison Steadman is one of those actresses whom it's easy to take for granted. She keeps so busy and gives such dependably professional performances that you can forget that when she is excellent she is really, memorably excellent – and last night, in a BBC4 soiree dedicated to her, we got two such examples, separated by 36 years. Colin Hough's new drama, A Civil Arrangement, was school of Alan Bennett's Talking Heads, a chatty monologue embedded with a twist, featuring Steadman as Isobel, the mother of the bride. We first meet her while she's buying an outfit six weeks before her lesbian daughter's civil ceremony. Isobel herself is unhappily married to Robert, who is having nothing to do with his daughter's big day, being strongly resistant to walking up the aisle to Katy Perry's "I Kissed a Girl".

Robin Scott-Elliot: The greatest cup competition in the world – it takes up half of the weekend

Mon, 07 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

It's David Bernstein I feel sorry for. After the week he'd had, a Saturday morning lie-in would have been something to savour. Instead he had to get up at the crack of dawn to let Rebecca Lowe, Jason McAteer, Pat Nevin, Craig Burley and all into Wembley. "Where in just over nine hours' time..." said Lowe, as part of her introduction to ESPN's exhaustive and exhausting coverage of the FA Cup final. This was a job for a workaholic midfielder rather than the prima donna striker, which is perhaps why Robbie Mustoe was included.

Last Night's TV: Homeland, Channel 4 (9pm)

Mon, 07 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

We've all been there, I'm sure. You've plotted for years to get yourself to the heart of the American establishment, enduring captivity and torture. You've passed lie-detector tests, fooled an obsessive CIA agent and persuaded your family that you're back with them for good. The first half of your very complicated plot has gone perfectly and then, as success – and Paradise – is in sight, the trigger for your suicide vest fails. How do you get over an anti-climax like that? And, before you protest that you don't have anything at all in common with a suicide bomber, just remember that any devoted viewer of a serial thriller such as Homeland has also put in a lot of preparatory groundwork and is also hoping for a climactic blast.

The Weekend's Viewing: A Civil Arrangement, Sunday, BBC4; Nuts in May, Sunday BBC4

Mon, 07 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

The Digital Human, Radio 4, Monday Tom Wrigglesworth's Open Letters, Radio 4, Thursday

Sun, 06 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

There was a television documentary recently about the Costa Concordia – the ship that hit the rocks off the Italian coast – consisting of 90 minutes of passengers' footage from camcorders and mobile phones. Even as the vessel was slipping beneath the waves they carried on filming.

The Killing, C4, Wednesday The Hunt for Bin Laden, ITV1, Tuesday

Sun, 06 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Though it has long been established in the vernacular of popular television, it is less common than you might think for a programme to suddenly "jump the shark". What is more likely to happen is that there will be a long, drawn-out decline in standards and a stretching of ridiculous plotlines and subplotlines until the viewer is left with little more than the programme as brand, a shadowy symbol of its former self kept in the schedules more to satisfy advertisers than anyone left watching.

Grace Dent on Television: The Bridge, BBC4

Sat, 05 May 2012 00:00:37 +0100

Like me, you've possibly been cajoled by friends to watch BBC4's Scandic crime series The Bridge.

Last Night's Viewing: The Hoarder Next Door, Channel 4 Playhouse Presents: King of the Teds, Sky Arts 1

Fri, 04 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

"They're not freaks," said the psychotherapist Stelios Kiosses about the subjects of The Hoarder Next Door.

Last Night's Viewing: Lucy Worsley: Antiques Uncovered, BBC2 Metalworks!, BBC4

Thu, 03 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Does Lucy Worsley have to be so bloody cheerful all the time? I know the answer to this question already, of course. It's "yes", since it's one of the fixed dogmas of television producers that any line of script is improved by being passed through a broad grin on its way to the audience.

Last night's viewing - William and Kate: the First Year, ITV1; The Hunt for Bin Laden, ITV1

Wed, 02 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

It must be a strange life being a member of the Royal Family, essentially condemned by birth to live in an open-air lunatic asylum. Every time you go anywhere, people temporarily go mad, and though their mania takes the form of uncritical adoration it must still be a little disconcerting.

Last night's viewing - Escape from the World's Most Dangerous Place, BBC3 The 70s, BBC2

Tue, 01 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Escape from the World's Most Dangerous Place! The title might have made the viewer buckle in for an action-adventure B-movie featuring a snake-pit and a woman dangling above it.

The Weekend's Viewing: Silent Witness, Sun, BBC2 The Bridge, Sat, BBC4

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

I decided to conduct an experiment with the latest episode of Silent Witness – to watch it as if it was a subtitled Danish crime drama.

Robin Scott-Elliot: Titillating Basques get Channel 5 excited ... and it's not hard to see why

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

As perverse as this may sound, in some ways last week was a good one for La Liga. In part that is down to a splendid set of basques, as perverse as that may sound. Channel 5 have gone from being mildly titillated by Athletic Bilbao to becoming engulfed in a full-blown affair, undergarments strewn all over the studio as they cast off English inhibitions to let their passions run free, at the risk of sounding like a scriptwriter for one of Richard Desmond's other publications.

Meet the Romans with Mary Beard, BBC2, Tuesday The 70s, BBC2, Monday The Plot to Bring Down Britain's Planes, Channel 4, Thursday

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

I think A A Gill might fancy himself as a patrician. Google his image: the hairline, the vulpine grin ... stick him in a purple-edged toga and sandals and he'd make rather a good conspiratorial senator.

Book of the Week, Radio 4, Tuesday Archive on 4: Lunch is for Wimps, Radio 4, Saturday

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

One of the principal functions of the poet is to ask big questions that have no easy answers, and it became clear that the fêted Scots poet Kathleen Jamie subscribes to this notion in the second reading on Book of the Week from her second collection of essays, Sightlines.

Grace Dent on Television: Very Important People, Channel 4 / Girls, HBO

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 00:00:58 +0100

On Channel 4's new impression show, Very Important People, Bear Grylls – well, a very fine mimic, Terry Mynott – is off on another macho adventure. One of his turbo-outdoors, willy-waving, twigs'n' bear-wee freegan buffet expeditions.

Last Night's Viewing: The Plot to Bring Down Britain's Planes, Channel 4

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

You're sure it was Thursday night, and not Sunday? There were moments last night when you wondered if you were watching Homeland on Channel 4. Glib as it may seem to compare that confection with an important documentary about a plan to kill 2,000 people, the makers of The Plot to Bring Down Britain's Planes had evidently plundered the terror-thriller playbook to create a film that was as challenging to the fingernails as anything Sergeant Brody has delivered.

Last Night's Viewing: Queen Victoria’s Last Love, Channel 4 Justified, 5USA

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Every year at the court of Queen Victoria, the royal household amused itself with "am-drams": costumed aristos created tableaux inspired by well-known paintings and stories.

Last night's viewing - Hidden Talent, Channel 4

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

What are your hidden talents? Mine are jumping and an inhuman tolerance for listening to inane football chat on BBC Radio 5 Live. One man good at punctuating that station's bursts of banality from Mike on the M23 is Richard Bacon, who used his excellent late-night show to fling himself back to the world of telly via the likes of, er, Richard Bacon's Beer & Pizza Club on ITV4. Bacon's latest outing is as the host of Hidden Talent on Channel 4, a show with a format that can't seem to decide whether it's flimsy or not. In it, 900 members of Her Majesty's Public were given a load of tests to work out if they have a heretofore unnoticed aptitude for, well, any old rubbish. The top performers in each category were then tasked with honing that talent and putting it to use.

Last Night's viewing: The King and the Playwright: a Jacobean History, BBC4 Scott & Bailey, ITV1

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

In Jacobean London, a city of just 200,000 people, there were eight theatres. By my calculation (a phrase that, it might be worth saying, is not an unimpeachable guarantee of mathematical accuracy), that would mean that we'd need more than 300 theatres today to match them, in per capita terms, for the eagerness of their theatre-going. Some qualifications are necessary, though. They obviously couldn't stay in and watch Scott & Bailey instead of heading off to the Globe for Shakespeare's latest. And if they wanted a commentary on contemporary events they couldn't turn to Newsnight. The players were, as Hamlet said but James Shapiro did not, "the abstracts and brief chronicles of the time". What James Shapiro did say in The King and the Playwright: a Jacobean History, the first of his series on the Shakespeare of James I's reign, was this: "Forgive the prop. It's visual shorthand for news." He waved the newspaper he'd been discovered reading at the camera, as if mildly testy at the theatricals to which the modern scholar-presenter has to submit himself.

The Weekend's Viewing: The Bridge, Saturday, BBC4 Vera, Sunday, ITV1 Smash, Saturday, Sky Atlantic

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

It's beginning to get a bit silly, this belief that anything with a Scandinavian setting is automatically going to be a cut above the home-grown product.

Robin Scott-Elliot: Marathon lifts the soul – if only the Jose and Pep Show could run and run

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

There is one area that BBC Sport rarely get wrong; they know a catchy tune. From Match of the Day, to the steel drums of the cricket, to Fleetwood Mac and the Grand Prix (the original choice of which revolves round an unprintable story involving a 70s dance act, a sofa and a gramophone) these are evocative numbers that have become anthems.

Shakespeare's Restless World Radio 4, Monday-Friday / Shakespeare's Playlist, Radio 4, Saturday

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 00:00:42 +0100

In 1596, one William Waite was allegedly set upon by four thugs on the south bank of the Thames, an area notorious for its boozing, brawling and whoring. The case was eventually settled out of court. We know for certain the identity of one of the four. His name was William Shakespeare.

Smash, Sky Atlantic, Saturday / The Bridge, BBC4, Saturday

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 00:00:06 +0100

Are you looking for something a bit different on TV for Saturday nights? Are you sick of audition shows in which mildly talented singers stand on stage and belt out "You Got the Love" at four chair-backs or (worse) David Walliams? Do you sometimes wonder if there's anything more interesting happening on Planet TV than Simon Cowell telling a palpitating septuagenarian chanteuse, "You're a little tiger, aren't you?"

Last Night's Viewing: Louis Theroux: Extreme Love, BBC2 - Grandma's House, BBC2

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

In his new documentary, Louis Theroux told us, he would be exploring "the pleasures and strains of one of the most extraordinary kinds of relationship".

Last Night's Viewing: Elizabeth Taylor: Auction of a Lifetime, Channel 4
Great British Menu, BBC2

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

It's a strange day when you find yourself grateful to Mickey Rooney for providing moral compass but, after 90 long minutes of Elizabeth Taylor: Auction of a Lifetime, that was where I found myself uttering an enfeebled cheer that someone, at last, had offered a tiny counterpoint to the programme's dazzled infatuation with glamour. Mickey, who was in at the start of Taylor's career on National Velvet, said that he thought her obsession with expensive trinkets was a bit "sad". A truly beautiful woman, he observed, doesn't really need precious stones. A truism, I guess, and not what I really hankered for, which was some Old Testament howl of rage at the shallowness of the rich (preferably backed up with a flame-thrower). But in the absence of anything better it had to do.

Last night's viewing - I Woke Up Gay, BBC3; Meet the Romans with Mary Beard, BBC2

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Ystrad Mynach in south Wales isn't a big place but even so I doubt that Chris Birch is the only gay in the village. He may well be the only gay in the village who thinks he got that way by accident, though. After rolling head first down a grassy slope, Chris had a minor stroke. When he came round, he claims, he immediately knew that he was different. Gone was the rugby-loving hetero bloke he had been. In his place was a young man with an eye for the lads and a strong interest in hair-care products. "My life changed at the bottom of that hill," said Chris, when he revisited the fateful incline for the cameras. Sadly, although tabloid newspapers have been eagerly trusting of Chris's account, others (including his current boyfriend) are a bit more sceptical. They believe that Chris did a forward roll out of a state of denial.

Last night's viewing - The 70s, BBC2; Ceramics: How They Work, BBC4

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

I got a bit worried about The 70s when Dominic Sandbrook started talking about that period "shattering the cosy post-war consensus". What cosy post-war consensus would that have been then? The one that united the entire country behind the government during the Suez Crisis? Or the one that meant that the satire boom of the Sixties fell on such stony ground? If he was going to be this wildly broadbrush about the Fifties and Sixties, I thought, then we're in trouble. It's true of course that all history is a trade-off between generalisation and mere transcription. And also true that television history much prefers the former to the latter, and has an almost morbid fear of detailed evidence. But even so, this seemed to be pushing things.

The Weekend's Viewing: Titanic, Sun, ITV1 Words of the Titanic, Sun, ITV1

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

In every sense, Titanic has been a little lower in the water each week, the viewing figures for Julian Fellowes' ocean-going drama almost perfectly reflecting the downward slip of its subject.

Robin Scott-Elliot: If you can keep your head when all about you the Beeb is losing the National

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

We're big on the whole recycling thing here at The Independent, so many thanks to the BBC for allowing this column to re-use a line from last year. Here it is: "To BBC Sport the Six Nations finale is a Big Event so on Saturday they did what they always do to mark these occasions; poetry." All you have to do is replace "Six Nations finale" with "Grand National" and we're there.

Jack London's People of the Abyss, Radio 4, Monday Wireless Nights, Radio 4, Thursday

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

There's been a bit around lately about the contemporary relevance of George Orwell's The Road To Wigan Pier. He was directly inspired by an earlier exploration of poverty in Britain, and in Jack London's People of the Abyss the historian Dan Cruickshank, East End resident for 35 years, retraced London's steps – and examined the veracity of his gripping account, published in 1903, of the lower orders.

Game Change, Sky Atlantic, Saturday Derek, Channel 4, Thursday

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Famous as I am not, I can only imagine what an existential cortex-screwer it is seeing yourself portrayed on screen. And, doubtless, nobody knows that better than Sarah Palin. After all, during her gaffe-laden 2008 run as the Republicans' vice-presidential candidate, the humiliation she endured was catastrophically amplified by Tina Fey's career-making impression of her on Saturday Night Live.

Last Night's Viewing: Derek, Channel 4

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Ricky Gervais has insisted that Derek, the titular lead of last night's comedy "pilot" is not in his view disabled. Then again, Ricky Gervais thought there was nothing wrong in using the word "mong" to accompany comic gurning on Twitter, so you might not want to rely too heavily on his judgement of fine distinctions in this area. You might reasonably be a little wary about Channel 4's bona fides, too, given the promotional marketing (if not the actuality) of its current series The Undateables. Hardly surprising really that Derek has already stirred up a minor fuss over its propriety. Is this a comic exploitation of a group already subject to far too much callow mockery, or is it, as Gervais would have us believe, an empathetic account of an oddball outsider?

Last Night's Viewing: The Sinking of the Concordia: Caught on Camera, Channel 4
Divine Women, BBC2
Beautiful Minds, BBC4

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

We've had a lot of ersatz maritime disaster over the last few days, what with the Titanic centenary, but The Sinking of the Concordia: Caught on Camera could proudly boast that it was the real thing. "No director, no camera crew, no reconstructions," promised the voiceover at the beginning of this collage of home videos of the event. It relied for its raw material on two features of modern life: the ubiquity of hand-held video cameras in the age of smart-phones and the readiness of some people to experience their entire holiday from behind a view-finder. As this film proved, some of them won't even press the pause button when their own children are weeping with fear in front of the lens.

Last Night's Viewing: The Matt Lucas Awards, BBC1 Horizon: Defeating Cancer, BBC2

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Was Matt Lucas a bit nervous about his new series? He prefaced the preview copy of The Matt Lucas Awards with a little personal message to reviewers, carefully explaining that "it's a little bit different to the stuff I do with David". That'll be just fine with me, Matt, I assure you, though I think I could have worked out for myself that it wasn't a sketch show.

Last Night's Viewing: Kelly and Her Sisters Grow Up, ITV1 Great British Menu, BBC2

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

When ITV first visited Kelly and her sisters, in 2000, Britain had survived the millennium bug and the deflation of the dotcom bubble.

The Weekend's Viewing: Crucifixion, Sun, Channel 4 Titanic, Sun, ITV1

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Crucifixion, Channel 4's film about Gunther von Hagens' latest exercise in human taxidermy, was like one of those fairground chimeras mocked up in the 19th century to milk the gullible of their pennies.

Jack Pitt-Brooke: That sinking feeling as Beeb are out of their depth covering the Boat Race

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Who expects drama at the Boat Race? Not the BBC, clearly. The rowing, on Easter Saturday, is meant to be one of the definitive middle-class sporting events of the year. Having long ago lost Test cricket, and last month admitting that horse racing is galloping that same path to Channel 4, the BBC is left clinging desperately to the Boat Race as if it were one of the last outcrops of the British Empire.

Game of Thrones, Sky Atlantic, Sunday The Undateables, Channel 4, Tuesday Marrying Prince Harry, Channel 4, Friday

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Fantasy is not a genre for the lazy. Nor, arguably, for those with better things to do than memorise labyrin-thine imaginary family trees and maps of fictional countries. In the run-up to the start of season two of Game of Thrones – HBO's award-winning adaptation of George R R Martin's epic sword-and-sorcery novels – there was certainly plenty of homework to do. The GCSE-worthy crib notes, recapping the first series for newbies, were for me a reminder of precisely why I hadn't tuned in last time.

The Reunion, Radio 4, Friday La France, Maintentant!, Radio 4, Monday

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

There is probably no programme on radio more cherished than Desert Island Discs, which means that the shows that have to fill its slots when DID takes a break are under special pressure to deliver. The Reunion does it so well that it has now acquired the kind of specialness that – like DID – derives only from a combination of unbeatable format and consummate presenter.

Tim Walker: Why Mad Men fans are not daft

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Everyone says James Murdoch stepped down as BSkyB chairman because of phone-hacking. But his resignation also came suspiciously close on the heels of the Mad Men series premiere on Sky Atlantic. When the first episode of Mad Men's fourth series was broadcast on BBC4 in 2010, it was watched by an average audience of 355,000, rising to 1.5m with the BBC2 repeat. The recent double-bill debut of series five – its first since being poached by Sky – got just 72,000. When the next episode aired on Tuesday, viewer figures fell to 47,000.

Last Night's Viewing: Fraud Squad, ITV1
White Heat, BBC2

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

I don't know whether you've ever examined your bank account to find an unexplained cash withdrawal from an ATM in Chigwell, but if you have you might find it comforting to know that the unpleasant shocks can travel in the other direction. In one of the more gratifying moments in Fraud Squad, two Romanian card skimmers arrived back home halfway through a police search of their flat. Alerted to their arrival outside, everyone inside suddenly hushed up, as if they were throwing a surprise birthday party. No sooner had he put his key in the door than the guest of honour found himself face down on his kitchen floor with two burly men on his back. By the look on his face, his heart and his stomach were still outside on the landing: "Fuck! You scared me, guys!" he said in aggrieved tones, as if they'd taken a prank a little too far. "I just came from work, guys, I'm a floorlayer." You are now, sir.

Last Night's Viewing: Kids in the Middle, BBC4 - Our Food, BBC2

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

I thought of Tolstoy watching Kids in the Middle, Brian Hill's grim and engrossing account of the wreckage of a marriage, and specifically of those famous lines about how all unhappy families are unhappy in their own way. It's one of the questions that hovers behind pretty much every documentary about a social issue: is this film representative of a common experience? Or is it representative only of what you see in front of you? To be able to answer "yes" to the first question is to armour your film against all kinds of accusations, or at least to offer a rationale for some invasions of privacy. But very often it's the second kind of film that really stays with you. By the end of Kids in the Middle, I'm not sure you'd learned a great deal about the kind of contact centres that were its notional subject. But you'd been given a painfully vivid picture of how a bad marriage can rot a family and hurt children.

Last night's viewing - The Undateables, Channel 4

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

What a mare's-nest The Undateables is. I wasn't entirely sure what I thought of Channel 4's latest provocation as I was watching it and am still not sure I know now. The show's premise is simple: a group of people with disabilities have signed up with a dating agency and we go along on their dates as voyeuristic gooseberries. Which doesn't really sound terribly complicated at all, does it? That awful title alone should settle the matter. But it turns out to be harder to hate than you might imagine. You follow a line of indignant attack and find that it has looped and curved in an unexpected way, so that you begin to wonder whether it's your own attitudes that are the problem rather than the programme. But exactly the same reversals happen when you want to defend the idea. With a sudden flip, you realise that what you experience as empathetic sympathy might simply be a kind of condescension. Or perhaps I'm just disabled by liberal anxiety.

Last night's viewing - Modern Spies, BBC2; Damien Hirst: Thoughts, Work, Life, Channel 4

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

In Modern Spies, Peter Taylor was at pains to make it clear to us that contemporary intelligence work isn’t a bit like film and television fictions would have us believe. This will presumably come as a relief to the parents of young people who find themselves intrigued by the increasingly open recruitment procedures of the UK’s intelligence and security services. One British intelligence officer here revealed that when she’d told hermother what her new job was, she’d replied, “Oh my goodness, you’re going to end up with your head in a fat-fryer!” her knowledge of MI5 having been largely gathered from watching Spooks. Her daughter assured Taylor that it isn’t really like that, just a little wistfully, I thought: “Unfortunately, I’m not running around the streets of London, chasing terrorists, being nearly blown up every week,” she said. Apparently, there’s a lot of paperwork. But, despite such testimony, Taylor had a problem with his project of de-glamourisation, which was the deep devotion of television to the visual rhetoric of the spy movie.

The Weekend's Viewing: Twenty Twelve, Fri, BBC2 Arena: Jonathan Miller, Sat, BBC2

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

When we come to tally up the profit and loss account for the Olympics, there's going to be a lot in the debit column: bloated costs, Lord Coe's corporate toadying and the runaway creation of eyesores (I have to rinse with Optrex if I even catch a glimpse of bloody Wenlock and Mandeville).

Robin Scott-Elliot: Greig's a tasty addition to Sky team but Beefy is a crusty curmudgeon

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Brian Blessed, I discovered last week while watching the 786th repeat of QI on Dave, once sparred with the Dalai Lama, apparently a keen pugilist. The two met after one of the actor's failed attempts to climb Everest. According to Blessed, the Brian one, they swapped numbers and have stayed in touch, conjuring images of a bruised Blessed leaving his new friend's mountain retreat, bunching his hand into the shape of a phone and yelling: "Dalai, call me." The second most rewarding pairing of the week came in Galle where Tony Greig and Ian Botham were rostered together in the Sky commentary box.

Titanic, ITV, Sunday Man Men, Sky Atlantic, Tuesday World Series of Dating, BBC3, Monday

Sun, 01 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Half-an-hour into the first of Julian Fellowes's four-part drama, Titanic, a woman appears, announces she is tired, and leaves. Quite who she was or where she was going I had little idea; all I knew was that her dress sported some darling lace brocade and her hair was delightfully chignoned.

It's My Story: The Long Walk, Radio 4, Monday The Spirit of Schubert, Radio 3, All Week

Sun, 01 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

It's hard to think oneself into the mindset required of a bomb-disposal expert. It must be something along the lines of "Que sera, sera. This may be the last few seconds of my life. Hey ho ...." Usually, according to Peter Gurney, former head of the Met's Explosives Squad, you have to be "cold and impersonal", but on one occasion, he told Mark Devenport in the extraordinary It's My Story: The Long Walk, he let anger take over.

Last Night's Viewing: White Heat, BBC2
Sex and Sensibility: The Allure of Art Nouveau, BBC4

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0100

The return of Mad Men this week should have left White Heat badly exposed, although the scale (if not the ambition) of the two dramas is so unequal as to make comparison almost meaningless. For a start, Mad Men has advanced a mere six years in more than 50 hours of television, a luxurious pace that has been able to absorb social change incrementally, while White Heat has so far encompassed 14 particularly tumultuous years in just four hours – a sort of Reduced Shakespeare Company approach to British post-war history – feminism, race relations, Irish nationalism, gay liberation and the implosion of the left (abridged).

Last Night's Viewing: I Never Said Yes, BBC3
The Apprentice, BBC1

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0100

I don't know what the demographic overlap is between Independent readers and the BBC3 audience, but if you haven't been watching you might be interested to learn that the Corporation's most frivolous channel has also built an impressive record for bringing serious social issues to a younger audience. It has produced reality formats that illuminate the true cost of the cheap goods we enjoy, it's used pop presenters to explore foreign affairs and it's done thoughtful documentaries about disability issues in which disabled people serve as reporters, not just the passive subject matter. This week alone you could have watched a drama documentary about an inner-city murder on Monday, Reggie Yates exploring the world of teen gangs on Tuesday and, last night, Pips Taylor's I Never Said Yes, a documentary about the worrying gap between reported rapes and convictions. And unfortunately the last of these was an example of how good intentions aren't all you need.

Last night's viewing - The Syndicate, BBC1; Horizon: Global Weirding, BBC2

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0100

What are the odds, eh? On one night, financial desperation persuades you to rob your own workplace, leaving a much-loved manager in intensive care, and then just hours later, you learn that you've scooped a massive win on the lottery and all that guilt and anxiety could have been avoided. Bit of a stretch? Then again, the odds on somebody winning the lottery are very good, indeed. It happens once a week, give or take a rollover now and then. So perhaps we can give Kay Mellor the long-shot coincidence that provides the stay cable for her new drama series, The Syndicate, one of those voguish ensemble affairs in which each episode concentrates on a particular character. You can barely hold your head up as a commissioning editor these days if you haven't got one in the schedules somewhere, and you're quids in if it also taps into cash-strapped Britain.

First Night: Mad Men, Sky Atlantic

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Given the advance hype in some quarters the only way the return of Mad Men wasn't going to be an anti-climax was if Elvis had come out of hiding to make a cameo appearance. And with a different kind of show all that over-excited anticipation – further worked up by a 17-month break between series – might have had a more damaging effect. But fortunately Matthew Weiner's Madison Avenue drama has always played with expectations in clever ways. He knows that if you make an audience wait for its gratification, and if you make it work a little to understand why it's gratified at all, the pay-off will be all the greater. So "A Little Kiss", the double-bill that kicked off Series Five, is perhaps best described in terms that would be paradoxical for a different kind of television programme. Reassuringly slow. Promisingly inconclusive.

Last night's viewing - One Night, BBC1; Just a Minute, BBC2

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0100

One Night is about how easily a simmering pan can boil over, particularly when the temperature is muggy and times are hard. It's then that the smallest thing may cause everything to well up and spill over the side of the pan – even a dropped crisp packet.

Jack Pitt-Brooke: Even Sky seem to give up as tawdry 'Glasico' lives down to expectations

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Sky spent the build-up paying tribute to Old Firm derbies of the past. The lustre of the match, they thought, would be increased by the backward look at legendary old games, and their reflected glory.

First Night: Titanic, ITV1

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Last night certainly wasn't the first time ITV has spent a fortune inducing a sinking feeling in the television audience, but at least this time it's what it actually planned to do. Four times, in fact, since Julian Fellowes' latest television drama, Titanic, looks at the disaster from a different perspective in each episode, allowing the ship to sink a little lower in the water each time.

The Weekend's Viewing: Perspectives: David Suchet – the People I Have Shot, Sun, ITV1 Being Human, Sun, BBC3

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0100

When The South Bank Show was axed in 2009, it seemed like the final swing of the wrecking ball into ITV as a home for the arts, and further evidence that high culture in general was not welcome on television.

Man on Wireless, Absolute Radio, Monday Just a Minute - in India, Radio 4, Monday

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

I wouldn't have wanted to be Christian O'Connell at two minutes to 10 last Monday night, waiting to go on stage for an unscripted live radio show. It must have been like one of those dreams where you find yourself about to give a piano recital then realise you can't play the piano.

Death Row, Channel 4, Thursday Hit The Road Jack, Channel 4 Tuesday

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

It seems the purgatory of awaiting the death penalty is a subject too painfully sprawling even for Werner Herzog to cover in one film. So Channel 4 is showing a sister project to his recent feature-length documentary, Into the Abyss, a four-part series entitled Death Row, in which the idiosyncratic German film-maker further explores the in-limbo lives of Texan prisoners.

Last Night's Viewing: Death Row, Channel 4
Get Your House in Order, Channel 4

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

"What we are doing here is not an instrument for proving your innocence," Werner Herzog told Hank Skinner at the beginning of Death Row. Hank's innocence, it should be said, is a fiercely contested matter. Hank and his lawyers strenuously assert it, but the state of Texas, which aims to execute Hank just as soon as they can get the final paperwork sorted, is stubbornly resistant to the idea that they got the wrong man for the 1995 murder of Twila Busby and her two mentally disabled sons. Anyway, Herzog was as good as his word. This gripping film offered very little evidence that cast doubt on Hank's original conviction. What it did do was confirm once again the strange and wonderful innocence of Werner Herzog.

Last Night's Viewing: The Apprentice, BBC1
Four Rooms, Channel 4

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

"I'm looking for a partner," Lord Sugar said, introducing himself to the contestants in The Apprentice, "the Marks to my Spencer, the Lennon to my McCartney." Comprehension stuttered briefly. Does Lord Sugar really think he's the sentimental, melodic one, the kind of man who would produce the corporate equivalent of "The Frog Chorus"? Does he really think that what he's lacked all these years is a bit of rock'n'roll abrasion? He said he was looking for "aggression" along with nous and business acumen, but he's hardly short of that quality as it is. It seemed more likely that he was looking for a Burke to his Hare, and the candidates, as usual, were very happy to run through their qualifications as trainee sociopaths. "When it comes to business, I'm like a shark," said Ricky. "I would call myself the Blonde Assassin," added Katie. "They call me the master puppeteer," boasted Azhar. Gabrielle, meanwhile, promised that she would "literally roar" her way to the top. Literally, Gabrielle? Not sure Lord Sugar's going to like that.

Last night's viewing - Rita Simons: My Daughter, Deafness and Me, BBC1; Hit the Road Jack, Channel 4

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Rita Simons: My Daughter, Deafness and Me began with a pinnacle of parental happiness. "Best. Feeling. Ever," said the EastEnders actress, describing the birth of her twin daughters. What she didn't say, but soon became clear anyway, is that there's always a corollary to such intensity of emotion. You feel your child's frustration and your child's sorrows with an equal power. All parents know that, but the parents of children with disabilities know it more consistently. Simons's daughter Maiya has a condition that seriously limits her hearing now and may take it away entirely in the near future, and this programme was about her parents' attempt to work out what was the best thing they could do for her.

The Antisocial Network BBC3, The Little Paris Kitchen:Cooking with Rachel Khoo, BBC2

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 12:55:46 +0000

The weekend's viewing: How God Made the English, BBC2, The Falklands' Most Daring Raid, Channel 4

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Why aren't all Englishmen circumcised? This wasn't really a question that had ever occurred to me before Saturday night but it became unavoidable halfway through Diarmaid MacCulloch's new series, How God Made the English.

Jack Pitt-Brooke: Old, familiar hands on the wheel keep Sky from veering off the road

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

On the first days of a new year for Formula One fans, Sky Sports balanced novelty with familiarity. If it felt like the first day at a new school, at least the favourite old teachers had moved too.

Alvin Hall in The Bonfire of the Vanities, Radio 4, Monday-Friday The Brontës' Piano, Radio 4, Tuesday

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Apart from being American, Alvin Hall, a TV livewire who sorts out people's money issues, seems to have no particular credentials to present a five-part examination of the changes in New York City since the publication 25 years ago of Tom Wolfe's magnum opus The Bonfire of the Vanities. But he made a thoughtful, engaging guide.

Reverse Missionaries, BBC2, Friday Storyville: Who Is Gorky? An Abstract Life, BBC4, Monday

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Alan Partridge didn't really do it for me, except in one memorable sketch. It's the one when he's sacked by a TV exec, then spends the rest of lunch desperately pitching ideas: "Youth-hostelling with Chris Eubank? Monkey Tennis?" I can't watch any clever new programme now without imagining the commissioning process.

MasterChef lacked one ingredient: suspense

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 01:33:32 +0000

You have to have a big appetite for superlatives if you're to consume an entire MasterChef final.

Last Night's Viewing: Love Life, ITV1
Mary's Bottom Line, Channel 4

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

I think one big problem for the couples in Love Life, ITV's new romantic drama, is that they're absolutely lousy at buying Christmas presents for each other. We got not just one but two flashback unwrapping scenes in last night's opening episode, neatly employed by the writer Bill Gallagher to fill out the relationship dynamics but unfortunately only at the cost of making the characters look like complete idiots. Here's Joe, for example, unwrapping his gift from long-term girlfriend, Lucy. What has he got? Oh, that's so thoughtful. A memory foam pillow and a book of pudding recipes. Is it possible that Lucy is trying to send a message about domestication and nest-building? Never mind, perhaps Joe will do a bit better with his present for Lucy. No, seems not. She's got a pair of high-altitude climbing gloves, which is very clearly what adventurer Joe wants her to want, rather than what she actually does. Then again, Joe is a paragon of selfless generosity when compared to Dominic, whose wife tugs aside the decorative wrapping paper to find a brochure on adoption. Nice one, Dominic. There was an outside chance that she might forget her traumatic childlessness for at least one day of the year, but you've blown that.

Last Night's Viewing: Rights Gone Wrong?, BBC2
Sri Lanka's Killing Fields: War Crimes Unpunished, Channel 4

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

I do hope someone kept the Wanted poster. At the beginning of Rights Gone Wrong – a rapid-response documentary about the controversial nature of some recent rulings from the European Court of Human Rights – Andrew Neil illustrated some of the wilder stories that had made it into the papers, including the suggestions that a kitten had prevented a criminal's deportation and that a police force hadn't publicised a suspect's picture for fear of breaching his human rights. Cue a mocked-up Police Appeal for Assistance bearing the features of the Daily Politics presenter, a man who has repeatedly breached his own right to dignity in the pursuit of televisual novelty. I still have sweaty flashbacks of him and Portillo doing a cover of "(Is This the Way to) Amarillo" for the 2005 election coverage.

Last night's viewing - Horizon: Out of Control? BBC2 Letting Go, BBC1

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

There was a startling moment at the beginning of Horizon: Out of Control? when it sounded as if the BBC's premium science strand had found God. "At every moment of our lives an unseen presence is guiding us," said the narrator.

Last night's viewing - This World: Interviews Before Execution, BBC2; China: Triumph and Turmoil, Channel 4

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Like any television presenter, Ding Yu takes a professional interest in how she's going to appear on screen. Early in This World: Interviews Before Execution, she could be seen sending a runner off to fetch her a purple chair that would go better with the blouse she was wearing. But she presumably hadn't thought at all about how she might appear on British screens, and so she was casually unguarded as she talked about the unlikely scheduling hit that she developed and fronts. The pitch is simple: Ding interviews death row inmates just weeks, days or, even, in some cases, minutes before their sentences are carried out. The show, a queasy mix of true crime and ostentatious moralising, is a big hit in Henan province. And nobody – not even the criminals themselves – appears to have questioned whether it might just be in bad taste.

The Voice may have to fight dirty to win the ratings war

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 00:01:17 +0000

Whatever expertise Simon Cowell and Louis Walsh bring to the talent-spotting process, you certainly wouldn’t want to hear them sing.

The Weekend's Viewing: Orbit: Earth's Extraordinary Journey, Sun, BBC2 The Secrets of Everything, Sun, BBC3

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

The Fast Show predicted the current state of BBC popular science nearly 20 years ago with a sketch that featured an excitable young man with a Northern accent striding through a landscape while enthusing ceaselessly about everything he could see around him.

Jack Pitt-Brooke: Just when it needed to run the ball into the corner, Five scores an own goal

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

For all the carping, all the snide jokes, the Europa League has become a rather better product than many expected this year. As well as England's two best sides, there are also excellent teams from Spain. And, on Thursday night, we were treated to one of the best games of the season at Old Trafford.

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Hit & Miss, Sky Atlantic, Tuesday Harlots, Housewives and Heroines: a 17th-Century History for Girls, BBC4, Tuesday

The Barlow-Morgenstern Method, Radio 4, Saturday Reading Between the Lines, Radio 4, Tuesday

DVD/Blu-ray: Grandma's House: Series 2 (15)

Last Night's Viewing: The Fish Market: Inside Billingsgate, BBC2 Grandma's House, BBC2

Last Night's Viewing: Hitler's Children, BBC2 24 Hours in A&E, Channel 4

Last night's viewing: Hit & Miss, Sky Atlantic; My Big Fat Fetish, Channel 4

Last night's viewing - The Fall of Singapore: the Great Betrayal, BBC2; Gok Cooks Chinese, Channel 4; Great British Menu, BBC2

The Weekend's Viewing: Off by Heart Shakespeare, Sat, BBC2 Episodes, Fri, BBC2

Robin Scott-Elliot: Holding's honeyed growl drowned out by Sky's Chelsea cheerleaders

56 Up, ITV1, Monday The Hoarder Next Door, Channel 4, Thursday

Kind Hearts and Coronets, Radio 4, Saturday Strap In - It's Clever Peter, Radio 4, Wednesday Beryl and Betty, BBC Radio Humberside, Saturday

Last Night’s Viewing: Tales of Television Centre, BBC4 The Great Euro Crash with Robert Peston, BBC2

Last Night’s Viewing: Secret Eaters, Channel 4 Felicity Kendal's Indian Shakespeare Quest, BBC2

When leaving it all to the listeners can be a turn-off

Last night's viewing: The Town Taking on China, BBC2; Silk, BBC1; Cardinal Burns, E4

Last night's viewing - 56 Up, ITV1; Chatsworth, BBC1

Robin Scott-Elliot: David Beckham trots towards the Olympics but what of his sporting afterlife?

The Weekend's Viewing: The Lost World of the Seventies, Sun, BBC2 Starlings, Sun, Sky1

Prisoners of War, Sky Arts 1, Thursday Episodes, BBC2, Friday Cardinal Burns, E4, Tuesday

Believe It! Radio 4, Tuesday Word of Mouth, Radio 4, Tuesday

Grace Dent on Television: The Hoarder Next Door, Channel 4

Last Night's Viewing: Prisoners of War, Sky Arts 1

Last Night's Viewing: The Apprentice, BBC1 Metalworks!, BBC4

Last night's viewing - Great Ormond Street, BBC2; Celebrity Exposed, Sky Arts 1

Last night's viewing - Small Teen Turns 18, BBC3; Britain Beware, ITV1

A Civil Arrangement, Sunday, BBC4 Nuts in May, Sunday BBC4

Robin Scott-Elliot: The greatest cup competition in the world – it takes up half of the weekend

Last Night's TV: Homeland, Channel 4 (9pm)

The Weekend's Viewing: A Civil Arrangement, Sunday, BBC4; Nuts in May, Sunday BBC4

The Digital Human, Radio 4, Monday Tom Wrigglesworth's Open Letters, Radio 4, Thursday

The Killing, C4, Wednesday The Hunt for Bin Laden, ITV1, Tuesday

Grace Dent on Television: The Bridge, BBC4

Last Night's Viewing: The Hoarder Next Door, Channel 4 Playhouse Presents: King of the Teds, Sky Arts 1

Last Night's Viewing: Lucy Worsley: Antiques Uncovered, BBC2 Metalworks!, BBC4

Last night's viewing - William and Kate: the First Year, ITV1; The Hunt for Bin Laden, ITV1

Last night's viewing - Escape from the World's Most Dangerous Place, BBC3 The 70s, BBC2

The Weekend's Viewing: Silent Witness, Sun, BBC2 The Bridge, Sat, BBC4

Robin Scott-Elliot: Titillating Basques get Channel 5 excited ... and it's not hard to see why

Meet the Romans with Mary Beard, BBC2, Tuesday The 70s, BBC2, Monday The Plot to Bring Down Britain's Planes, Channel 4, Thursday

Book of the Week, Radio 4, Tuesday Archive on 4: Lunch is for Wimps, Radio 4, Saturday

Grace Dent on Television: Very Important People, Channel 4 / Girls, HBO

Last Night's Viewing: The Plot to Bring Down Britain's Planes, Channel 4

Last Night's Viewing: Queen Victoria’s Last Love, Channel 4 Justified, 5USA

Last night's viewing - Hidden Talent, Channel 4

Last Night's viewing: The King and the Playwright: a Jacobean History, BBC4 Scott & Bailey, ITV1

The Weekend's Viewing: The Bridge, Saturday, BBC4 Vera, Sunday, ITV1 Smash, Saturday, Sky Atlantic

Robin Scott-Elliot: Marathon lifts the soul – if only the Jose and Pep Show could run and run

Shakespeare's Restless World Radio 4, Monday-Friday / Shakespeare's Playlist, Radio 4, Saturday

Smash, Sky Atlantic, Saturday / The Bridge, BBC4, Saturday

Last Night's Viewing: Louis Theroux: Extreme Love, BBC2 - Grandma's House, BBC2

Last Night's Viewing: Elizabeth Taylor: Auction of a Lifetime, Channel 4Great British Menu, BBC2

Last night's viewing - I Woke Up Gay, BBC3; Meet the Romans with Mary Beard, BBC2

Last night's viewing - The 70s, BBC2; Ceramics: How They Work, BBC4

The Weekend's Viewing: Titanic, Sun, ITV1 Words of the Titanic, Sun, ITV1

Robin Scott-Elliot: If you can keep your head when all about you the Beeb is losing the National

Jack London's People of the Abyss, Radio 4, Monday Wireless Nights, Radio 4, Thursday

Game Change, Sky Atlantic, Saturday Derek, Channel 4, Thursday

Last Night's Viewing: Derek, Channel 4

Last Night's Viewing: The Sinking of the Concordia: Caught on Camera, Channel 4Divine Women, BBC2Beautiful Minds, BBC4

Last Night's Viewing: The Matt Lucas Awards, BBC1 Horizon: Defeating Cancer, BBC2

Last Night's Viewing: Kelly and Her Sisters Grow Up, ITV1 Great British Menu, BBC2

The Weekend's Viewing: Crucifixion, Sun, Channel 4 Titanic, Sun, ITV1

Jack Pitt-Brooke: That sinking feeling as Beeb are out of their depth covering the Boat Race

Game of Thrones, Sky Atlantic, Sunday The Undateables, Channel 4, Tuesday Marrying Prince Harry, Channel 4, Friday

The Reunion, Radio 4, Friday La France, Maintentant!, Radio 4, Monday

Tim Walker: Why Mad Men fans are not daft

Last Night's Viewing: Fraud Squad, ITV1White Heat, BBC2

Last Night's Viewing: Kids in the Middle, BBC4 - Our Food, BBC2

Last night's viewing - The Undateables, Channel 4

Last night's viewing - Modern Spies, BBC2; Damien Hirst: Thoughts, Work, Life, Channel 4

The Weekend's Viewing: Twenty Twelve, Fri, BBC2 Arena: Jonathan Miller, Sat, BBC2

Robin Scott-Elliot: Greig's a tasty addition to Sky team but Beefy is a crusty curmudgeon

Titanic, ITV, Sunday Man Men, Sky Atlantic, Tuesday World Series of Dating, BBC3, Monday

It's My Story: The Long Walk, Radio 4, Monday The Spirit of Schubert, Radio 3, All Week

Last Night's Viewing: White Heat, BBC2Sex and Sensibility: The Allure of Art Nouveau, BBC4

Last Night's Viewing: I Never Said Yes, BBC3The Apprentice, BBC1

Last night's viewing - The Syndicate, BBC1; Horizon: Global Weirding, BBC2

First Night: Mad Men, Sky Atlantic

Last night's viewing - One Night, BBC1; Just a Minute, BBC2

Last Night's Viewing: Elizabeth Taylor: Auction of a Lifetime, Channel 4
Great British Menu, BBC2

Last Night's Viewing: The Sinking of the Concordia: Caught on Camera, Channel 4
Divine Women, BBC2
Beautiful Minds, BBC4

Last Night's Viewing: Fraud Squad, ITV1
White Heat, BBC2

Last Night's Viewing: White Heat, BBC2
Sex and Sensibility: The Allure of Art Nouveau, BBC4

Last Night's Viewing: I Never Said Yes, BBC3
The Apprentice, BBC1

Last Night's Viewing: Death Row, Channel 4
Get Your House in Order, Channel 4

Last Night's Viewing: The Apprentice, BBC1
Four Rooms, Channel 4

Last Night's Viewing: Love Life, ITV1
Mary's Bottom Line, Channel 4

Last Night's Viewing: Rights Gone Wrong?, BBC2
Sri Lanka's Killing Fields: War Crimes Unpunished, Channel 4