IN MY VIEW
IF there’s one thing I can’t resist, it’s a mystery. I came across this item, 5@Home, which starts tonight on Fox
Life, Channel 126, at 22:15 and runs a 10-episode marathon into the small hours of Monday. After that it regularly shows the rest of the episodes, two at a time, weekdays at 18:10.
So what is it, exactly? Well, therein lay the mystery. Information about the show is extremely hard to find, although I did manage to figure out it’s a Ugandan drama series about the daily trials and tribulations of a well-to-do family.
The tiny episode synopses didn’t list actor names or anything, but they tell of things like kids getting into trouble at school, worrying medical diagnoses, love triangles . . . typical slice-of-life stuff. The earliest clips of the show I could find date back to 2015, so it’s at least that old.
Information about the production company that made it was slightly easier to find. Fast Track Productions is the Ugandabased studio behind the show. They made another series before this, a comedy drama called The Hostel — which, according to their website, was their current big show with 5@Home upcoming. I think you need to update your website, guys. Still, it could make for a nice curiosity if you’re looking for something unusual.
IALMOST couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw this item on the listing for the week: Open All Hours. It’s on BBC Brit,
Friday at 18:32. Now, the show is old, OK, it’s from the mid-’70s — but I promise you, it’s worth a watch.
It’s a light-hearted comedy series set in and around a Yorkshire corner shop owned and operated by the miserly Arkwright (Ronnie Barker) who employs his less-than-enthusiastic nephew Granville (David Jason) as an errand boy.
Arkwright is engaged to nurse Gladys Emmanuel (Lynda Baron), who lives across the street and spends most of her time taking care of an ageing mother we often hear about but never see. A good deal of the comedy comes from Arkwright’s Porky Pig-like stutter, and the show frequently makes naughty jokes by way of doubleentendres and allusions without coming across as crass.
AND if you’re looking for something to play, well, there’s plenty out at the moment, but my two most recent acquisitions are Tekken 7 and Wipeout: Omega Collection. Tekken 7, below, is the latest iteration of the popular Versus fighting series, bringing back a bunch of old-favourite characters and introducing a few new ones for a big ol’ punch-up.
This game features a guest star, Akuma, from the Street Fighter series — and developer Bandai Namco did a far better job of making him feel more or less like his Street Fighter self than Capcom did with any of the Tekken guest stars in their own game, Tekken X Street Fighter.
Anyway, Tekken 7 features all the usual offerings, a Story Mode, the online and offline modes, and the ability to customise the characters’ outfits, but the online modes are where it’s at. The network performance for Africa is near perfect and there are loads of local players at the moment, but they’ll peter out eventually, so get it now on PS4, Xbox One or PC if you want to get some matches in.
The Wipeout: Omega Collection is on the PS4 only, and it contains remastered versions of Wipeout HD, Wipeout HD Fury and Wipeout 2048 — but all you really need to know is it’s futuristic anti-gravity racing goodness at blinding speed.
Well actually it starts out at a fairly manageable pace, but as you progress to the later leagues the speed picks up to a point where you need either perfect rote memorisation or clairvoyance to get through the tracks.
You can also play against a friend in split-screen or go online and race against multiple human opponents, if you want to humiliate yourself further. It’s great.