Five reasons to tune in
HERE’S a sentence I don’t get to write very often: There’s an excellent new homegrown drama starting tonight on Channel 5. But that’s not as snide a remark as it might appear. Homegrown dramas are simply a thing Channel 5 has rarely made. But they’re starting to make more, and PENANCE (9pm, nightly until
Thursday) bodes rather well. Julie Graham and Neil Morrissey star as bereaved parents Rosalie and Luke, pretty much torn apart after losing their teenage son.
Tallulah Greive plays daughter Maddie, who for some reason blames herself for her brother’s death.And Nico Mirallegro is Jed, the charismatic chap Rosalie encounters at bereavement counselling.
Jed is destined to become an integral part of this troubled family’s life, with consequences no one could have predicted…
Elsewhere tonight, episode two of THE GREAT CELEBRITY BAKE OFF FOR STAND UPTO CANCER (C4, 8pm) features Patsy Palmer, Scarlett Moffatt, The Inbetweeners’ James Buckley and Hollywood legend Richard Dreyfuss.
Several different levels of celebrity there, I think we’d agree. So it’s interesting to gauge the extent to which each participant feels they deserve that label.
When Scarlett Moffatt, for example, tells us: “If I can bake, or at least give it a go, then you lot can…”, the fact she addresses us as “you lot” tells me plenty.
James Buckley, on the other hand, soars in my estimation when he describes himself as “barely a celebrity”.
Unfortunately, he then plummets when the subject turns to Swiss rolls (tonight’s first challenge). “You get them from Asda and stuff,” James remarks. “They’re, like, 25p or whatever.”
So clearly he’s lost in showbiz after all.A Swiss roll atAsda costs £1. Everyone knows that.
Finally, BBC2’s living history series BACK INTIME FORTHE CORNER SHOP (8pm) seems to lose a little of its focus as it enters the 1970s. Either that or it’s my mind that’s gone a bit fuzzy. It’s just that I don’t recall many Seventies corner shops having snooker tables installed. When I say “many”, what I mean, of course, is “any”.And yet that’s precisely what happens at the tiny make-believe store that’s the setting for this series, run by the affable Ardern family.
All right, it does happen to be situated on the outskirts of Sheffield, and 1977 is when Sheffield’s Crucible Theatre began hosting theWorld Snooker Championship, so maybe this show’s producers figured that would make it plausible enough, even though it doesn’t.
Lord knows what they’d have done had the shop been in Wimbledon.