WHAT’S HOT TO WATCH TODAY
I DON’T know if I’ve mentioned this before but I’ve got this weird thing about TV dramas with dogs in them. Dramas where a dog suffers some horrible illness, calamity or worse.
I know these shows aren’t for real but it makes no odds. Show me a dog in distress, even if it’s just acting, and sensitive wuss that I am, I punch the off switch.
And it’s worse when it happens in a comedy, because it tends to mean the writers think it’s funny.
So here’s something even weirder. Despite the fact that it does the very thing I hate – ie. include a gag about a dog being ill – I actually laughed my socks off at my preview of BACK, the new Mitchell and Webb sitcom on Channel 4 tonight (10pm). Because despite that lousy gag, it’s just incredibly funny.
Mitchell plays a sarky guy called Stephen, whose dad, a pub landlord, has just died. Webb plays Andrew, a bloke who turns up unexpectedly at the funeral, a right old smug-arse who the family briefly fostered in the 80s – but who Stephen has absolutely no recollection of.
It’s dark, ultra-sweary, but impossible not to laugh at. Apart from the dog bit, obviously. No animals were harmed in the making of tonight’s CELEBRITY MASTERCHEF (8pm, BBC1), although I assume several chickens came a cropper beforehand. Hence their appearance in the box of ingredients the latest celebs have to work with.
Those celebs being Union J’s Jaymi Hensley, Corrie’s Brian Bovell, ex-Goggleboxer the Rev. Kate Bottley, actor and stand-up Abdullah Afzal and singer Patti Boulaye. Don’t miss Mike’s exclusive column at www.dailystar.co.uk/columnists. Follow him on Twitter @mikewardontv.