Host of original features
YOU probably won’t be surprised when I tell you that LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION: 20 YEARS AND COUNTING (C4, 8pm) is a compilation series, where Phil Spencer and Kirstie Allsopp will be reflecting on their all-time favourite house-hunts.
And you probably won’t be surprised when I also tell you that I love Location, Location, Location and will lap up every second of it.
This first episode, including clips so old that Phil had actual hair, remembers some of the first-time buyers the show has helped. But it’s also intriguing to see how earnest Phil and Kirstie were to start with, a far cry from the fabulously bickering pair they’ve matured into.
Over on BBC One, tonight’s CELEBRITY MASTERCHEF: A RECIPE FOR SUCCESS (8pm) is subheaded Bring On The Critics, an expression I can assure you not a single human being has ever used in real life.
In MasterChef, of course, the food critics fall into three categories. First, there are people who’ve been fed in vast numbers as part of a location challenge, pretty much unfailingly polite.
Then there are the ex-contestants, who’ve leapt at the chance to pop back and pontificate about the latest lot’s efforts.
And finally, of course, most respected of all, there are those critics whose actual job is to eat out and drone on about it. Tonight’s show celebrates them all, recalling some of their kindest and harshest verdicts.
Elsewhere, we have a 10-year-old repeat of MIDSOMER MURDERS
(ITV, 8pm). Or, if you prefer, the chance to reacquaint ourselves with John Nettles’ legendary DCI Tom Barnaby, another contender for Britain’s Favourite Detective.
Oh, sorry, have I not told you about Britain’s Favourite Detective? Forgive me.
It’s a thing going out on Sunday on ITV, a two-hour space-filler – oops, I mean a two-hour special (I really must get this keyboard fixed) – where we’ll find out who we’ve voted our top telly sleuth of all time, even though I actually have no recollection of doing any such thing.
It’s why ITV has also shown prime-time, feature-length re-runs this week of Poirot, Morse, Frost etc.To whet our appetites. No other reason. Absolutely not.
I can’t help feeling Morse has been given an unfair advantage in this countdown (I don’t know the result, by the way), because the episode they showed of his was his final case, where the poor chap breathed his last. Surely that’ll have won him a huge sympathy vote. Doesn’t seem right somehow. Should Ofcom not investigate?
Do please let me know if ever I take this stuff too seriously.