TV Preview: The Graham Norton Show gets the party started on New Year's Eve

Norton goes head to head with Alan Carr and Jools Holland in the battle for New Year... but Sean O’Grady will be taking in a Hammer horror as the bongs bong

Sean O'Grady
Friday 29 December 2017 11:41 GMT
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If you're not going out for New Year, some light banter from Graham Norton might be just the tonic
If you're not going out for New Year, some light banter from Graham Norton might be just the tonic

Strange to say, New Year doesn’t seem to be quite as popular as before. Time was when the schedule would be filled up with various cheesy Scots acts doing their routines until the bongs bonged, and indeed way beyond.

These days the telly folk seem to just want to turn in early. The nearest we get to some old-style celebration for the arrival of 2018 is BBC2’s Jools’ Annual Hootenanny, something of a venerable tradition itself now. Apart from that we’re treated to a Nile Rogers and Chic concert either side of Big Ben on BBC1, and, well, that’s about it I’m afraid, unless you count some light banter with Graham Norton and Alan Carr in the long hours preceding.

If you can be bothered to do the red button thing, you can get more of what’s occurring live in London and Edinburgh, but it’s really not the same. Viewers in the capital, however, will enjoy the great compensation of the film Frankenstein Created Woman (1966) on London Live at midnight – Peter Cushing, Thorley Walters and Susan Denberg reminding us of the glory days of Hammer horror. Pure evil. Magnificent.

Chris Packham and friend, here to bring some zoological correctness

I’ve no doubt that the highlight of the week will be The Real T-Rex with Chris Packham. Packham has something of a thing about accuracy and zoological correctness, and there are way too many lazy myths and legends out there about T rex (the dinosaur that is, though it’s also be true of Mac Bolan and his band as it happens). You’ll probably have seen a few in the various Jurassic Park films shown over the festive season.

Anyway, Packham gets to grips with what Tyrannosaurus Rex actually was, what he/she looked like, ran like and ate like, and how they used to unwind at the end of a busy day chasing small mammals. It’s not the end of the T rex debate and the telly shows, movies and animatronic museum displays devoted to this charismatic reptile, but like all small boys everywhere of whatever age, that’s just fine by me.

I am most intrigued to by A House Through Time, which is a kind of property version of Who Do You Think You Are?. It traces, in this case, the various occupants of a Victorian home in Liverpool, and I think it is just fascinating to see how one dwelling can reflect social change, and contain so much personal history, happy, sad and tedious, within those four walls. By the way, I once looked through an old local directory to see who lived in the house I grew up in and was greatly heartened to see it was once occupied by a chap named Percy, living by himself. I dunno, it tickled me.

‘Robot Wars’ is very much the British at their barmy best

I’m hoping that Robot Wars – which veers a cheerfully as a drunk coming home on New Year’s Eve between innocent fun, self-parody and social embarrassment – is going international, so that the true genius of the British in making biscuit barrels and bits of Hoovers into fighting machines can be tested, as in past conflicts, with the best the rest of the world has to throw at them. Or will it be a Dunkirk?

For movies I’d recommend Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971), which is one of the earliest examples of a film-maker (Disney here) combining real actors with animated cartoon figures, and to great fantastical effect, David Tomlinson and Angela Lansbury starring in a tale of Nazis being defeated by magic. What more could you want?

Television has not yet invented a cure for hangovers, and the best it can offer this year is a substantial compilation of clips from Blue Planet II in a special edition for anyone who managed to miss out on this visual feast. Very soothing viewing for the afternoon after you’ve emerged from your pit.

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By the evening of New Year’s Day you might be ready to tackle McMafia, which, as you might guess, is based on modern day international gangsterism, and based on the works of Misha Glenny. For those with very strong stomachs for smut, I can only remind you of the existence of the now usual second seasonal instalment of Mrs Brown’s Boys.

And finally…Will & Grace returns after a gap of a decade or so, thanks to Channel 5, with some bang-up-to-date skits about Donald Trump, who, I am sure, will feature prominently in all our lives during 2018.

Happy New Year.

The Graham Norton Show (BBC1, New Year’s Eve 10.20pm); Alan Carr New Year Specstacular (Channel 4, New Year’s Eve 9pm); Jools’ Annual Hootenanny (BBC2, New Year’s Eve 11.20pm), Frankenstein Created Woman (London Live, New Year’s Eve midnight); The Real T-Rex with Chris Packham (BBC2, Tuesday 9pm); A House Through Time (BBC2, Thursday 9pm); Robot Wars (BBC2, New Year’s Eve 7pm); Bedknobs and Broomsticks (BBC1, New Year’s Eve 1.40pm); Blue Planet II, Oceans of Wonder (BBC1, New Year’s Day 3.30pm); McMafia (BBC1 New Year’s Day 9pm); Mrs Brown’s Boys (BBC1, New Year’s Day 10pm); Will & Grace (Channel 5, Friday 10pm)

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