Sorry BBC, sex-free Les Mis fails to sing
without knowing what happens next. For me, that’s a real treat.
Which TV show would you take to a desert island?
Grandstand, every episode, although if I had to narrow it down, the Des Lynam years. It would be handy if the island commissioned new episodes so I could keep up with my beloved QPR.
What TV show would you like to put out of its misery?
MasterChef. I’m not a foodie so I’ve never heard of half the things they cook. If they showed us how to make a decent omelette, it’d be very helpful.
Guiltiest TV pleasure?
Jeremy Vine’s Channel 5 morning show. I have it on while working but get dragged into it. Jeremy has a light touch, better than Matthew Wright.
What are you up to at the moment?
Hunted, series four. And my new book, To Catch A Killer. And I still track down people who committed murder and think that they’ve got away with it.
GARRY BUSHELL
Hunted starts on Thursday, 9pm, Channel 4. To Catch A Killer: My Hunt For The Truth Behind The Doorstep Murder is out now (John Blake, £8.99).
THERE’S a terrible crisis at the BBC. They can’t find any more Victorian novels to adapt. They’ve searched high and low, and on really old bookshelves made of wood near where they keep copies of Dennis Potter’s The Singing Detective, marked “never to be repeated”. But it’s true – no more Dickens, Trollope, Thackeray or Eliot. Even a Stevenson would do.
So in the spirit of our continuing and now historic entente cordiale with Europe, we’re helping the French with an adaptation of one of their own, Victor Hugo’s
(BBC One, Sunday).
I can’t imagine ever saying this again but it could really use the odd song or two to break up the grinding, relentless tempo. Has anyone ever tried that? I could even see Les Miserables as a full West End musical possibly running for years and breaking records, or maybe a memorable film, with top stars. I do hope it happens.
In the meantime, we have Andrew Davies’s take on this classic French house brick of a book sans song. This writer is known for sexing up his stories. Tipping The Velvet was his and he found sex in War And Peace, too, even with all that trouble – and tea drinking – going on.
But here he’s gone serious on us which will, of course, have all the French complaining from the barricades – “Where is our sex then?” closely followed by “Who’s taken our herring?”
It’s all terribly well done and has a sound cast but I’m not sure it’s either entertaining or enthralling enough. It rather trundles along, not really grabbing you off the sofa. It doesn’t compel, more confound. But there were two parts that diverted me from my Quality Street box. The first was when I thought Britain momentarily appeared to lose the Battle of Waterloo. Until I was reminded that the wounded soldier lying among the corpses and wondering, “Who won?” was on Napoleon’s side. Silly me. It’s a story about the French. Don’t get too excited.
My other excitement was found in Sir Derek Jacobi reprising his Cadfael with some aplomb. When he’d finished bestowing all his silverware on the petty thief Valjean (Dominic West), I too felt a tiny degree of absolution. Indeed, I might try knocking on the doors of a few monsignors when I’m next in France. As it is, the French will be stopping us all at Calais, wondering why we made every Les Mis character sound like a Cockney.
ILes Miserables
S THERE room for another TV celebrity chef? If you’re Tom Kerridge, yes. He appears to have lost an incredible amount of weight which is clearly why he has been chosen for (BBC Two, Wednesday), the most patronising show since Delia showed us how to boil an egg.
This time, eight families who “know they need to change their eating habits” but can’t be bothered to look on the internet for a healthy recipe would like to be filmed on national television to “turn their life around”.
Why isn’t this show on BBC One? I defy anyone to decipher the difference between the two main BBC channels now. BBC Two is stuffed with food, including a Tom Kerridge recipe for “sausage and mash”, only the mash is made from a swede. Or as one volunteer put it, “What’s that in the corner [in a basket of healthy food]?”
Tom Kerridge’s Fresh Start Back In Time For School
(BBC Two, Thursday) was a little better although again the audience were treated as airheads who know nothing about history. This series is simply another saccharine nostalgic trip and inevitably a way to bash the Empire which, yes, was far from perfect but has now become a plum target for TV producers or anyone who wants to grumble about the current state of affairs.
I imagine most of those would have been apoplectic during the discussion about Empire Day 1904. They would also have shrieked at hearing Australian aborigines being described as “savages” in a late-Victorian English textbook. That’s not news, BBC, or maybe it is for the snowflake generation. But I’m afraid, they’re no longer watching. It’s just us.
FLuther
INALLY, (BBC One, TuesdayFriday) continued the festive horrorfest with one of the creepiest scenes ever, a serial killer stealthily pursuing a young woman on a bus. Where was the clippie? On The Buses’ Jack would have sorted him – “Wot’s your caper, sunshine?” Biff! The killer’s wife, played by Hermione Norris, was past coping with him. What she would have done for a quiet night in with Robert Bathurst’s troublesome David in Cold Feet.
Simultaneously, we had the return of femme fatale Alice Morgan (Ruth Wilson) who has always had a particular hold over our hero Luther (Idris Elba).
Two key questions remain for me, having seen all of the fifth series. Firstly, why did Luther’s phone never go flat over four days? Secondly, in all five series, not once have I seen him do any paperwork.
Perhaps next season, his incredibly forgiving boss will finally sit him down for a few days to write up a report on what happened over the past four days. Luther was definitely getting rather careless with his sidekicks. Will there be a season six? Only once he’s released from prison... although Luther in maximum security is sounding like a superb spin-off.