The Herald - The Herald Magazine
TV review It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas out there
ALISON ROWAT
THERE are two types of people when it comes to snow and ice. One regards the white stuff and thinks “winter holiday, apres ski”. The other thinks “A&E”. Fair to say, most of the contestants on
were in the second chalet, fearing what lay ahead of them as they learned to do a striptease on ice. Yes mum, Christmas TV has changed.
But this jolly two-parter had the ultimate get out of jail free card. The celebrity contestants (including ex-Woman’s Hour doyenne Jenni Murray, captioned “broadcasting royalty”) were doing it to raise awareness of cancer and the importance of self-checks, either because they had had that wicked disease, or they knew someone who had.
The card was needed several times, for this was the TV equivalent of the office party/hen night/stag do you thought you had escaped: best to grin and bear it (fnar, fnar) for the sake of a bigger cause.
By the second evening, such was the sweat and tears the group put into the effort (almost everything that could go wrong, did), it would have taken a heart of ice not to cheer them on when it came to the big “reveal”.
Well done everybody, hats and other stuff off to the lot of you. Now, as Detective Inspector Jack Regan of The Sweeney almost said, get your trousers on or you’re nicked.
came to the kind of gentle close you might have expected. Of all the programmes to work in lockdown year, those dealing with art have been among the more successful, and none more so than this competition. I say competition; in reality it was some nice people displaying genuine talent for the sheer pleasure of it.
Three artists made it to the final, two of them amateurs. It has been a measure of the skill on show generally that you would be hard pushed to tell the professionals from the rest of them.
For the last portrait the subject was Eddie Izzard, who rocked up in killer heels as tall as the average paint brush. Just as well they gave her a chair to sit on during the four hours it took paint her portrait.
The winner seemed obvious, but as one of the judges said, it was never wise to declare a victor until you saw the commissioned portraits. Featuring friends, relatives and partners as subjects, these paintings showed what could be done given enough time.
It duly became a closer run thing, but the first assessment held good. The winner received a £10,000 commission to paint Carlos Acosta, the ballet dancer. It definitely won’t be the artist’s last paid gig.
The Vanishing of Suzy Lamplugh (Channel 5, Wednesday) should be part of the curriculum on any documentary-making course. In managing to balance respect for the victim and her family, with a quiet anger at justice not being served, it was a masterclass in its field.
To think of all those leads not followed up by police, the chances squandered. The most shocking moment came when the London estate agent’s disappearance was put into context. At the time of her disappearance there were 800 women’s bodies lying unidentified in morgues.
looked like a rum do on first examination. Were the grand old geezer of the Fast Show and Vic Reeves’ oppo trying to full a fast one? Did they think the inclusion of the word “Christmas” was enough to make a routine episode a Christmas special? Never fear. The boys did not let us down.
Yes, it was Paul and Bob out fishing as usual, shooting the breeze, and staying over at some reasonably priced accommodation where Mortimer took care of supper, but there was something very special, maybe even magical, about this hour. It began with Paul asking Bob if he liked Christmas. “Honestly Bob, not really,” came the reply from the grumpy Cockney. Shockerooni or what?
Bob set out to show Paul that Christmas was more than just an orgy of eating, drinking and spending, that it did mean something.
It was touch and go whether he would succeed, especially when the pair went back to Bob’s childhood home in Middlesbrough, where he recalled learning of his dad’s death. If you were not in a puddle of tears big enough for carp to swim in at this point, see a doctor.
Yet what do you know, the titchy northerner with the heart problems and the sarky southerner, ditto heart problems, had a most wonderful time of the year together.
I won’t say how Bob managed it in case you are saving the show to watch, but it did not involve an angel called Clarence or showing Paul how awful the world would be had he never lived.
Bliss. If there is a better Christmas special to be had this year I’ll muck out the reindeers for the next six months.
At the beginning of the year, you may have predicted that the 67th edition of the annual awards show would be dominated by the Olympic Games and Euro 2020. However, with the outbreak of Covid-19 cancelling or postponing those and many other sporting events, that won’t be the case. Nevertheless, we have had some great action in the latter part of the year, and there should still be more than enough for presenters Gabby Logan, Gary Lineker, Clare Balding and Alex Scott to chew over at Media City in Salford.
Royal Antique Repairers (C4, 8pm)
Think of this one-off programme as The Crown meets The Repair Shop and you’ll be along the right lines. Hosted by Victoria Coren Mitchell, it follows three royal repairers as they restore some incredible objects. The items include a rare and beautiful Broadwood piano, previously owned by two famous monarchs, and a Humber Super Snipe Mark III car that claims to
Russell Beale as Lavrentiy Beria, the vicious sexual predator who headed up the secret police.
If you know your history you’ll know Khrushchev did considerably better out of Stalin’s death than Beria. Buscemi plays the future Soviet leader as a slightly bumbling if quick-witted character who comes back from drinking sessions with Stalin and has his wife write down everything that raised a laugh and everything that didn’t, just so he can be sure he won’t find his way onto one of Beria’s dreaded ‘lists’.
Russell Beale gives Beria an avuncular exterior and then delights in throwing off the mask as we see him at work torturing prisoners, picking out young girls to rape – “Have her washed and sent to my
have the Queen Mother’s fingernail marks on its interior. Victoria discovers what the objects tell us about both their former owners and the people who are returning them to their former glory.
Michael Palin’s Himalaya: Journey of a Lifetime (BBC2, 8pm)
Following the success of his four-part look back at his series Around the World in 80 Days, Pole to Pole, Full Circle and Sahara, Michael Palin is back with a one-off insight into another of his BBC travelogues. In 2004, he embarked on a six-month tour of the Himalayan mountain range in a series aptly titled Himalaya. It was an often difficult yet rewarding and exciting trip, which