What will ring my bell now Takeaway is wrapped up?
Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway
Virgin Media One/UTV, Saturday
Feud: Capote vs The Swans
Disney +, streaming
The Apprentice Final
Thursday, BBC1
Officially, Ant And Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway is being rested after 20 series over 22 years and, as those numbers attest, it was rested once before, and brought back. Nonetheless, it’s hard not to feel that the decision now is more permanent, and it’s a shame. The last episode was broadcast live, as always, last Saturday night, too late to make the deadline for me to write about it here, but it feels remiss not to have a look back at what always was one of my favourite shows.
Its strength lay in its shameless love for the shiny-floor Saturday night shows of many of our youths, The Generation Game, Noel’s House Party, even Morecambe & Wise to an extent. The key word here is ‘variety’, because you never knew what was coming next, and I fear that the death of Takeaway will be the death of variety too, to be replaced by endless reality shows such as Britain’s Got Talent, which returned last night, and Strictly Come Dancing, and quiz shows such as The Wheel.
They’re enjoyable in their own way, but also very predictable, whereas Ant and Dec never really were. Yes, any 90-minute show (two hours for the finale) depends on what you might call the furniture, regular segments on every week, or alternate ones. On Takeaway, they included ‘The Happiest Minute Of The Week’, in which audience members and people at home, all of whom usually had done something selfless, were given free holidays.
There was ‘Win The Ads’, in which a lucky contestant could take home every product advertised in a single break during a hit show during the week, and that often meant cars, new kitchens, and exotic holidays – the woman who won in the final show got £250,000 worth of prizes.
Some segments didn’t work. I’m not a fan of hidden camera stunts that prank the public, but modern camera technology was used to introduce genuine originality. In recent series, one of the highlights was ‘Ring My Bell’, which cut live to video doorbells belonging to members of the audience. When their neighbours watching at home recognised the location, they had to rush to the door to ring the bell and win £500.
The tension was unbearable as the streets often remained empty, before there was a sighting of some poor middle-aged man pretending he was Usain Bolt and dashing to the door. It actually is such a clever concept, they should turn it into a show all of its own.
The great thing about variety shows is that if there’s one segment you don’t like, you don’t have long to wait for another, but the really vital element is presenters who can keep the show on the road. Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly are the absolute masters of live television, and it was no surprise to see them choking up a little when they thanked the audience before launching into their last ‘End Of The Show Show’.
Television has become such a lone pursuit nowadays, with people watching the latest streaming service on tablet of phone as they travel to work. Takeaway was that great unifier, there to be enjoyed live by all generations of the family. I fear it won’t return, but I hope it does. There’s too little on television that is truly wholesome.
The same cannot be said of feud: Capote vs The Swans, on Disney+. It comes from Ryan Murphy, who was behind Glee and the first series of Feud, about Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. Now, we get the story of how author Truman Capote fell out with his ‘swans’, the fabulously wealthy women of New York society in the 1960s and ’70s. He wrote a short story, La Cote Basque 1965, that revealed all their secrets, especially about their philandering husbands, and became persona non grata.
Murphy has assembled an astonishing cast – Tom Hollander, mimicking the waspish Capote to a T; Russell Tovey as his often abusive lover, and Joe Mantello as his loyal
long-term partner Jack Dunphy.
It is the female cast that is truly stellar, though. Naomi Watts is Babe Paley, wife of the boss of the CBS television network, Bill Paley (Treat Williams, in one of his final roles before he was killed in a motorcycle accident last year), and Diane Lane, Chloe Sevigny, and Calista Flockhart play her friends. Molly Ringwald is Joanne Carson, ex-wife of chat show host Johnny, and Jessica Lange plays an apparition of Capote’s mother.
Even that line-up can’t save the show from torpor. It is a simple story – man betrays his friends and his friends shut him out. Three episodes in, I’m already bored, and I have no idea how they will stretch it to eight.
Finally, Rachel Woolford won BBC1’s The Apprentice, and the £250,000 investment in her gym chain by Alan Sugar. She beat hapless Phil, who scuppered his own chances of investment in his family’s piemaking firm by telling Sugar that there was more to business than profit.
Alan Sugar is not known for being sentimental, and that contribution from Phil saw him come second. If only there still was a variety show in which he could be consoled, during the happiest minute of the week.
Feud: Capote vs The Swans
Even an astonishing cast, including Naomi Watts, can’t save this