Iris fiddled while London burned
The piano accordion comes direct from my childhood. Great aunts used to play it at school picnics or RSA concerts. It was called a squeeze box and had a sound to match. It defied change. It was never going to enrich an orchestra or rock band or the Sweet Adelines. Beethoven never composed for it.
So when the Brierley family brought a faulty accordion to The Repair Shop (TV One, Monday to Thursday), it stirred a memory. The instrument was vivid, almost garish, with colours that matched the lid of a city council wheelie bin.
Accordion to The Repair Shop, Roger Thomas is a craftsman restorer. The instrument made a sound like a ‘‘strangled cat’’, he said. Less strangle, more meow and it would be good as gold. But gold never sounded like a squeeze box.
He took it to pieces, tested the 448 individual reeds, repaired the ‘‘leather and felt sandwiches’’ and realigned the keys. Then he played it and it sounded exactly like the instrument great-aunty squeezed, part melody, part moggy. His restoration was fascinating. The
Repair Shop is Menz Shed stuff. In the case of the piano accordion, it was returned to the Brierleys, where teenage Sarah riffed the ivories for its legendary owner, 94-year-old Iris.
But this instrument has pedigree. Iris played it in underground shelters during the Blitz. Imagine it lifting the spirits of hundreds of Londoners as they sang She’ll
Be Coming Round The Mountain. You could forgive the sound it makes.
There’s a TV commercial that starts with the words ‘‘me and you’’. Yes, it’s awful. I know English is an evolving language so ‘‘me and you’’ could become the benchmark of the future. But let’s hold on to ‘‘you and I’’ until the Queen delivers her Christmas message. If she opens with ‘‘me and you go back a few years’’, I’ll resign.
I gave lots of latitude and probably longitude to Your Honor (Soho, Tuesdays). The series addresses a strong moral dilemma and comeswith plenty of credentials. Adam, the son of New Orleans judge Michael Desiato, looks for his inhalerwhen driving and takes his eye off the wheel. He crashes into a motorcycle, kills the rider, panics and drives away.
When Dad (Brian Cranston) comes home, he confronts Adam and they agree to confess to the police. But, when they reach the police station, they recognise the slain motorcyclist’s grieving parents, who happen to head the most vicious crime family in the city. Whoops. And they are out for revenge. Suddenly there’s little honour in Your
Honor. Father and son drive away to reconsider. It sounds like a good story, but the pauses are longer than the traffic lights at Rangitı¯kei St. Adam is either delirious or dozy or both at the same time, and any sympathy generated is heaped on Judge Desiato.
If there’s a Cecil B demille award for over-acting, then Adam would win it.
Your Honor is a drama series but, if it were a court case, the jury would still be out.
The Celebrity Chase (TV One, Monday) brought laughs to a toughmonth that’s ending a tough year. Contestant Rev Kate Bottley admitted she played rugby before entering the church. ‘‘I was a hooker before I was a vicar,’’ she said.
She did know being hornswoggled was to be cheated.
Georgia Toffolo (Toff), another obscure TV personality, knew small owls were called pygmy owls, but Bradley went one further. He’d heard of a teat owl that hooted while it wiped dishes.
In the end the contestants beat the Dark Destroyer and shared their £90,000 with four charities. Christmas is alive and well.
With so many waifs and strays on TV, it’s a relief to view an actual drama series, even a cancelled one. In Beecham House
(Prime, Wednesdays), John Beecham starts a new life in a grand mansion in Delhi. It’s the chicken vindaloo version of
Downton Abbey, set in 1795.
John may have left the ruthless British East India Company behind, but the company hasn’t left him.
He attracts friends, family and flunkies as he tries to seek a licence from the emperor to trade. But his enemies are within and without, almost omnipresent.
Sadly, the storyline, like the acting, lacks vitality but watch the landscape. The scenery and sets are superb.