Homing in on lockdown
RIGHT now we’re getting an awful lot of unrepeatable TV. By that, I mean shows that are fine for the time being, as we muddle through the weirdness of the here-and-now, but which we’re never going to want to sit through a second time.
Bearing in mind the extent to which TV traditionally relies on repeats to pad out its schedules, I’d imagine that’s going to pose something of a problem a few months down the line.
I’m talking, of course, about lockdown television, with its heavy dependence on iffy internet connections and people gawping back at us down their laptops.
That, or on the filming being done at the presenter’s house, as is the case with GROWYOUR OWN AT HOME WITH ALAN TITCHMARSH (ITV, 8.30pm, except Wales, don’t ask me why but there’s always the ITV Hub), being expertly filmed by none other than Mrs Alison Titch. Programme makers are doing their best, I know, but the technically limited programmes they’re able to deliver are surely not the kind we’ll want to revisit in months and years to come.
Those programmes seem to be falling broadly into two categories. There’s Titch’s kind, the instructional sort, which has also included the likes of Richard and Judy’s reading thing and Kirstie Allsopp’s crafting thing and Jamie Oliver’s cooking-up-scraps-in-whatlooks-like-a-cellar-where-you’rebeing-held-hostage thing.
And then there are the lockdown shows whose purpose, you feel, is as much about keeping the performers sane as it is about entertaining the viewers.
Shows, that is, such as COMEDIANS: HOME ALONE
(10pm), a new series starting tonight on BBC Two (except Northern Ireland, don’t ask me why but there’s always the iPlayer), where comics currently starved of an audience are at least able to carry on performing, if only to their iPhones.
The latter does have its moments. I particularly love tonight’s sketch featuring satirist Michael Spicer as an exasperated adviser to Priti Patel, frantically feeding her cues via an earpiece as she stumbles through a Covid press briefing. (This is Spicer’s comic shtick, as featured in his online hit The Room Next Door.) And the random musings of stand-up Rhys James are always a joy.
But for obvious reasons its quality control is a bit patchy, so the fact it comes in mere 15-minute chunks is probably for the best.
Six times the length of that is HITCHED AT HOME: OUR LOCKDOWN WEDDING
(Channel 4, 9pm), in which First Dates’ Fred Sirieix helps Londoners Louise and Patrick push ahead with the big day they thought they would have to postpone.