It’s the witching hour on Channel 4
TRUE HORROR CHANNEL4, 11.05pm
HAVING Halloween fall in the middle of the week can often be a rather disconcerting experience – if only because the build up seems to go on for ages.
If you’re a grown up, most of the fancy dress parties and general revelry will have been done and dusted by now and you just want to get back to normal.
If you’re a kid, then you’ve probably just spent the weekend itching to get the bangers going but don’t want to use them all up before the big night on Wednesday (I even had a load of sweet and treats on standby in case any urchins called in on Saturday night. They didn’t. I ate them all. And now have to buy a new batch all over again.)
But the Halloween period – it stopped being just the one day a long time ago – usually throws up some cracking TV.
Perhaps the best spooky option on terrestrial television tonight is Channel 4’s True Horror.
Its much underrated strand of horror ‘documdramas’ has thrown up a few decent chills in the past and tonight’s episode The Witches’ Prison (Channel4, 11.05pm) is not quite brilliant, but a lot better than average.
Former EastEnders star Michelle Ryan plays Vanessa Mitchell, a young woman who buys an apparently ideal house that nobody else seems to want.
That’s perfectly understandable, given the fact that it’s located above an infamous former witches’ prison where all sorts of atrocities were committed (if this was an American show, they probably would have used the old-Indian-burialground trope rather than a former prison).
It probably won’t have you checking your closet and cowering under the duvet when you go to bed, but it’s well worth a watch...
Quizzers of the world rejoice because two of the best examples are on tonight.
Only Connect (BBC2, tonight, 8pm), presented by the brilliant Victoria Coren Mitchell, is a genuinely baffling creation which sees two teams using their general knowledge and powers of lateral thinking to make connections between apparently disparate subjects. Frankly, it’s the kind of show that can teach even the most determined quizzer the value of humility. It really is nearly bloody impossible at times, but remains intriguing.
Rather more established is University Challenge (BBC2, 8.30pm), which is now half way through the 25th season of the current iteration. Paxman remains a fine, wry host and the fact that two of last season’s team captains have even been given their own reality show road trip indicates that the nerds may not inherit the earth, but they have a good chance of getting their own TV gig...