IAN HYLAND
On last night’s telly
The Wall Versus Celebrities, BBC1
W★★★★ ith the absence of firework displays and neighbourhood parties, New Year’s Eve was always going to end up a damp squib.
We shouldn’t have been too surprised, then, at how readily the TV schedulers accepted that fate.
The distinct lack of a party vibe was most keenly felt at its traditional
NYE home, BBC1 – which offered up celebrity versions of weekend gameshows, a brief trip to ‘Enders, celebrities on sewing machines, and Paddy McGuinness chairing some glorified Zoom quizzes.
And for some viewers, a double dose of Danny Dyer may have been a fitting way to end a miserable year.
But I was in the other camp, particularly when it came to The Wall
– a show billed by the BBC as “the ultimate game of risk and reward”. Hiring Dyer certainly looked risky. He was great at it, though. The soap star seemed to be channelling the spirit of Runaround era Mike Reid, with his tone of voice swinging between a Cockney geezer ordering you outside and the same Cockney geezer later explaining why he’d had to fight even though he hadn’t wanted to.
The civilian version of
The Wall had been my guilty pleasure for a
while, but the celebrity version really takes it up a notch.
I loved how contestants Sally Lindsay and Alex Brooker were so consumed by the game last night.
I also enjoyed Alex’s response when he discovered one of Britney Spears’ marriages lasted only 55 hours.
“What?! I’ve had hangovers longer than that,” he quipped.
Which reminds me, Happy New Year, everyone! Here’s to some proper fireworks on the telly in 2021.
The distinct lack of a party vibe was most keenly felt at BBC1