Cath Carry On Game show 50 a bit iffy really grates
CHANNEL 4’s The Great should really have been called The Woke.
It reimagines the story of Russia’s Catherine The Great as a heavyhanded feminist comedy.
The blokes are mostly divs, especially her horrible husband Peter III, played by Nicholas Hoult as a dimmer version of Lord Flashheart from Blackadder.
With Tsars in her eyes, naïve Cath dreams of a Mills &
Boon wedding night –
“The man caresses you softly… your bodies meld, your souls mesh… you fall into a black sky full of stars… and end spent and unified.”
In the event, Peter throws her on the bed and quickly pumps away while chatting about duck-hunting with his
Email me at: garry.bushell@ dailystar.co.uk or write c/o Daily Star Sunday, One Canada Square, London E14 5AP best mate Grigor. Then he tells her: “Let’s hope my seed has found purchase. I must empty myself into you again soon.”
Smart, idealistic Catherine finds herself lumbered with a bullying man-child who burns down the school she opens to educate la-di-da court ladies and says things like, “Women are for seeding, not reading”.
It’s as subtle as a Carry On film but nowhere near as funny. His first words to his bride-to-be are: “You smell funny.” There’s no punchline.
After their first breakfast, he orders a servant to “take the Empress to the other women to speak of hats”.
Peter gives her a bear and shoots it dead for fun, forces her into a threesome and, when she tries to escape in a crate, has it dumped in a lake.
These are the highlights, by the way. Billed as “an occasionally true story”, it’s largely untrue and disappointingly lame.
The real Peter was 6ft 8in, pox-scarred, German and encouraged education.
And Catherine’s remarkable 18th Century rise to power deserves to be told properly. Or at least in a way that’s less lazily reliant on swearing for cheap laughs.
NEW Cobra Kai (Netflix) and Vanessa Rubio, right… Spiral (BBC4)… Would I Lie To You?
POOCH Perfect, left – dog rough … The Great – history for snowflakes… Doctor Who – exterminate.
RE C5’s Fifty Years Of Game Shows: Bruce Forsyth wasn’t the first host of Sunday Night At The London Palladium. That was Tommy Trinder (followed by Hughie Green and Robert Morley). And Beat The Clock was only a segment on it, not a standalone game show. They missed six of those. SPINACH gives you better orgasms, we’re told. No wonder Olive Oyl was happy.
ONE a wild-haired good-fornothing who rarely makes much sense. The other was a Father Ted character.