Whole lotto love for Kay
BACK tonight after an absence of goodness knows how long is Kay Mellor’s fabulous drama THE SYNDICATE (BBC1, 9pm). Remember it? It’s the show where each series focuses on a different bunch who’ve scooped a huge lottery prize.
The previous series seems so long ago now, I’m fairly sure the winners got their payout in thruppenny bits, although admittedly I may be saying this purely in a lame attempt to be amusing.
This time around it’s a group of kennel workers who’ve struck lucky. But is dodgy local newsagent Frank (Neil Morrissey) about to scupper their dreams?
Not if gambling addict Keeley (Katherine Rose Morley) has her way. Keeley, it appears, will stop at nothing to ensure that she and her fellow syndicate members receive what’s rightfully theirs. Like the others (played by Emily Head,Taj Atwal, Kieran Urquhart and Liberty Hobbs), her financial future otherwise looks bleak.
Meanwhile, over on ITV, Ross Kemp’s new documentary, I have to say, is a tiny bit disappointing to begin with.
A glance at the billings beforehand had promised me that the presenter would be meeting a couple “with an enormous meringue”. Naturally, I couldn’t wait to see this.
Only when I actually sat down and watched the show itself did I realise I’d misread the word “menagerie” – be fair, it’s easily done – and that all this couple really had were some monkeys, zebras, serval wild cats, lions, bears and a tiger.
Still, I guess that’s still pretty weird, right? Certainly weird enough for them to qualify for an appearance on BRITAIN’S TIGER KINGS – ON THE TRAIL WITH ROSS KEMP (9pm), a rather unsettling but eye-opening two-parter about Brits who keep wild animals in their back gardens.
Also tonight, on BBC2, Fred Sirieix is back on the telly (phew, call off the search, guys, we’ve finally tracked him down) with a third series of REMARKABLE PLACES TO EAT (8pm).
Of course, what’s changed since series one and two is that a “remarkable” place to eat would now describe pretty much anywhere that isn’t your kitchen, but Fred is staying true to the programme’s original brief by venturing a little further afield.
Admittedly, not quite as far afield as Vienna, say, or Marrakesh, or some of the more exotic places whose restaurants Fred has previously forced himself to visit for this show, but certainly as far as Harrogate.
It’s there that he’s kicking off his latest face-filling jolly (sorry, I mean “where he embarks upon his latest voyage of culinary exploration”) in the company of Nadiya Hussain.