And here is the (fake) news
BRITAIN TODAY TONIGHT CHANNEL 4, TONIGHT, 10
AH, TV pranksters, don’t ya just hate ‘em?
There are different types of pranksters, of course.
Indeed, I’m old and decrepit enough to vaguely remember Jeremy Beadle, the one-handed menace who used to pretend to demolish people’s homes or subject them to a fake alien abduction on ITV every Saturday night.
There was a degree of delighting in the sheer cruelty of the presenter that simply wouldn’t pass muster these days and that, on balance, is probably a good thing.
British comedian Kayvan Novak made his name with
Fonejacker, a sporadically amusing prank show featuring unsuspecting members of the public and while there were some decent sketches, the whole thing suffered from the unavoidable law of diminishing returns – how many times can you laugh at someone looking perplexed?
But while Fonejacker and its successor, Facejacker, may not have been my cup of hemlock, Novak is undoubtedly an exciting talent and Britain Today
Tonight (Channel4, 10pm) holds plenty of promise.
A kinda sorta fake news show which features the presenter adopt the guise of an American news network, this seems to owe more to Chris Morris and Armando Iannucci than Beadle or Dennis Pennis.
His main character will be veteran news anchor ‘Digger’ Daley, obviously based on Bill O’Reilly, who has become a household name this side of the pond in the last few weeks.
Tonight sees a double bill kick off the new show.
Whether people bother staying for the second episode is a different question entirely...
The Graham Norton
Show (BBC1, Tonight, 11.05pm) is undoubtedly the best chat show on the box.
A combination of the host’s rather waspish charm and the willingness of the guests to recognise that they are, ultimately, just props for Norton’s gags, it has thrown up some remarkable example of celebs behaving daftly.
The rather lavish, erm, ‘hospitality’ budget seems to encourage an environment rather looser than you find on most other similar efforts and nobody who saw Mark Wahlberg’s infamous (and brilliant) appearance on the couch will ever look at the actor in quite the same way again.
It’s unlikely we’ll see such antics from tonight’s main guest, the serene Diane Keaton, but the presence of Kevin Bacon certainly adds to the potential for madness. Having revived his cult status through a combination of the barkingly bonkers The
Following, combined with his ads for a mobile phone company, he seems to have recovered from being ripped off by Bernie Madoff.