Sunday Times

HOW TO GET AHEAD IN ADVERTISIN­G, IN DETROIT

- By Matthew Vice

They’re not the only ones who do it, but the Brits sure like to make Christmas specials of their shows. For example, every year Paul O’Grady does a Christmas special of his For the Love of Dogs series, in which he visits the Battersea home for abandoned pets. The 2017 version will probably be more of the same — showing us cute pups dressed up in scarfs, Santa hats and plastic reindeer horns, making it all the harder for potential adopters to resist them. I’m still waiting for the

Christmas special in which he dons drag and does Lily Savage again. Anyway, if you want to see the cute pups, catch this on itv Choice, channel 123, Saturday at 8pm.

After that, at 10pm on the same channel, the Canadians have a Christmas special for us with Once Upon a Murdoch Christmas. In this special episode of the period procedural crime drama, Murdoch and Brackenrei­d investigat­e a series of robberies of prominent Toronto businessme­n days before Christmas. This special episode will run two hours

If Christmas isn’t your thing, there’s a pretty good comedy series that’s just started on Comedy Central, channel 122, Thursday at

9pm. It’s called Detroiters and stars Sam Richardson and Tim Robinson as Sam Duvet and Tim Cramblin, a pair of best buddies who are trying to hack it in Detroit’s competitiv­e and exclusive advertisin­g industry.

PITCH IMPERFECT

The problem is, they suck and they don’t have any resources, but they’ve got a plan involving bone-headed ideas like being seen in the right who’s who restaurant­s and sucking up to industry giant Carter Grant (Jason Sudeikis), trying to pass themselves off as enormously successful.

There’s a bunch of other stuff in the trailer that I can’t quite see relating to their quest, such as the two of them getting high on speed and trying to break a bulletproo­f window for kicks, and jokes about mutual masturbati­on — but it must be quite funny in context because a second season is on the cards for next year.

And what is up with M-Net and animation lately? M-Net, channel 101, has been running obscure animated features on weekday mornings for quite a while, and now M-Net Movies Smile, channel 105, seems to be running animated features all day, every day — perhaps because the kids are on school holiday. Well, the hell with it, since this might be my last Picks section for the year, I’ll go ahead and recommend Zootopia again, on Saturday at 7pm — a movie I probably wouldn’t have watched of my own accord, but did so on a recommenda­tion and was surprised to find my new gold standard for what an animated film should be . . . maybe.

RATTLESNAK­E JAKE

I still haven’t decided if it’s better than The Incredible­s, but it’s a tightly written tale of the “follow your dreams” variety on the outside, dealing with so many more mature themes under the surface. Immediatel­y after that, at 8:49, is Rango, an unusual animated feature from Nickelodeo­n that I enjoy for its pure grit, both in the writing and the visual style.

It’s surprising­ly black-humoured for a movie aimed at kids, and tells the story of a chameleon who cons his way into becoming the sheriff of a drought-stricken town. You’ll surely agree with me that the villain Rattlesnak­e Jake is the coolest, most hellish looking thing in animation.

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