Variety’s the spice of life
OVER the years, whenever an entertainment show has promised us “something for everyone”, my heart has had a tendency to sink. I believe this impulse dates back to my teens, when Top Of The Pops on a Thursday night would frequently begin with such a boast from that week’s presenter (Peter Powell or Simon Bates or Kid Jensen or whoever).
“Something for everyone…”, I swiftly came to realise, meant that the next half-hour (pretty much the whole of our week’s ration back then when it came to pop music on TV) would feature precisely one band that I loved – The Specials, perhaps – with the remainder of the show pandering to fervent admirers of, say, the Goombay Dance Band or Stars On 45. In other words, cloth-eared idiots.
However I am now a grown-up, sort of, and so I’ve learnt to react more positively when a TV show delivers its own we-havesomething-for-everyone boast. After all, television doesn’t exist just to please yours truly, does it? Of course it doesn’t. Even though it obviously should.
A fine example of something-foreveryone TV which I’ve come to recognise as being Actually Quite A Good Thing is THE ROYAL VARIETY PERFORMANCE (ITV, 7.30pm). I appreciate that it is one of those programmes at which it’s enormously fashionable to sneer, and once upon a time I’d have been more than happy to conduct that sneering in person, but in truth I defy anyone to sit through one of those shows and fail to enjoy at least a reasonable chunk of it.
The line-up for this year’s, presented by Greg Davies (right) and recorded a few weeks ago at the London Palladium, includes acts as varied as Rick Astley, George Ezra, Andrea and Matteo Bocelli, Cirque du Soleil, Jimmy Tarbuck, Rory Bremner, Rhod Gilbert, cellist Sheku KannehMason, the cast of Tina: The Tina Turner Musical and whatever’s currently left of Take That.
Harry and Meghan, this year’s royal guests of honour, loved the whole thing so much that I gather they even stayed until the end.
Elsewhere tonight, Lego Masters is back, even though it’s only just finished. That’s because this is CELEBRITY LEGO MASTERS AT CHRISTMAS
(C4, 8pm), a one-off special in which some of the talented young modellers from series one and two are paired with people who aren’t very good at building things with Lego but are at least quite well known for having been in something or other on TV.
These “big kids” are Warwick Davis, Joe Swash, Spencer Matthews, Joel Dommett, Rob Beckett, and Tattoo Fixers’ Alice Perrin.
The trophy for this one is, ooh, yum, a Lego Christmas pudding. Also, THE APPRENTICE: THE FINAL FIVE (BBC1, 10.45pm) heralds the point in Lord Sugar’s business challenge when we’re suddenly expected to start taking these people seriously, having spent 10 weeks chuckling at their mindboggling ineptitude. This year’s finalists, of course, are Camilla, Sian, Khadija, Daniel, Sabrina and the Goombay Dance Band. Something for everyone.