A seamlessly nice show
FOR all its undoubted loveliness, somehow I’ve never fully warmed to THE GREAT BRITISH SEWING BEE (BBC2, 9pm). It’s hard to put my finger on why exactly. Could it be that sewing just seems, I don’t know, more of a niche activity to me than baking?
After all, nobody in my own family sews, at least not properly, whereas pretty much all of us have, at some time or other, created something you could loosely describe as a “cake”.
Alternatively, could it be that it’s all just too darned clever (pardon the pun)?
There are challenges on Bake Off, albeit the simpler ones, that I wouldn’t be entirely daunted by myself – come on, it’s only cooking – but there are no such challenges on Sewing Bee. From my own perspective it all looks hopelessly unachievable.
That, and an accident waiting to happen. When one of tonight’s contestants says sewing makes her feel “like I’m being transported to a different place…”, my instinctive response is, yes, it would most likely do the same to me, only in my case I’d be transported to that “different place” in a big white speeding van with a wailing siren. Needles, scissors and ham-fisted me, that’s just asking for trouble.
But as I say, there’s no doubting the show’s likeability. It’s ultimately nice TV and who can quibble with that? In fact, as we embark tonight on series five, there are signs it may be getting even nicer, now that comedian Joe Lycett (right) is in charge.
It’s not that I didn’t like Claudia Winkleman as host – I’ve always loved Claudia – but there’s a remarkably sweet, unsmarty-pants quality to Joe’s presenting style.
He looks as if he’s trying to have fun rather than poke it, as some of us may have feared when he landed the job.
He admits he knows precisely nothing about sewing but seems genuinely enthused as he engages with the contestants and observes the judges, Patrick Grant and Esme Young, going about their expert business. You don’t feel he’s just looking for his next wisecrack.
Elsewhere tonight, the return of SHETLAND (BBC1, 9pm) reacquaints us with dogged detective Jimmy Perez, played by Douglas Henshall.
Like Brenda Blethyn’s crumpled crime-solver Vera (I’m so sorry, I appear to have overdosed on my alliteration tablets), Jimmy was created by novelist Ann Cleeves but it has to be said he still has some way to go to match his ITV counterpart, efficiency-wise. While Vera has every case done and dusted in precisely two hours, Jimmy routinely needs six weeks. This new one will be tying him up until March 19.
It does look a complex affair, mind you, not to mention grisly. While out on a morning run, a jogger is horrified to find half an arm washed up by the tide.
Later, a dog takes a disconcerting level of interest in a holdall it’s discovered, the contents of which turn out to be further parts of the same body, including the head. Admittedly, I’m no expert, but I’d say this has all the hallmarks of a murder.