Jude Law as an atheist Pope? You can’t put a price on drivel like this
Rejoice! For all fans of lavish, lurid telly gibberish who have been inconsolable since the end of the ridiculous Versailles, there’s a towering new confection of dreadfulness on our screens.
The Young Pope (Sky Atlantic) defies all rational description. However bad you imagine it could be, it’s immeasurably worse.
Remember that plastic animatronic baby in Versailles, the one that was supposed to be the French queen’s illegitimate child? The Young Pope opens with a mountain of those fake babies — an 80ft heap of them, outside the basilica in St Mark’s Square, Venice.
A real, live baby is crawling over them! And then the baby turns into jude Law! He’s dressed in the pontiff’s robes — until he slips them off like a stripper to stand naked in front of his bedroom wardrobe!
Within moments he is levitating past crowds of adoring nuns and parting the rainclouds above St Peter’s in the Vatican, before urging the crowds in the square below to indulge in unnatural sexual practices.
All this turns out to be the Pope’s dream, on his first morning in the job. But what happens once he has woken up turns out to be even more surreal.
There isn’t a line of this demented balderdash that makes even a hint of sense. jude is the first American Pope, a New Yorker with jack Kennedy’s grinning charisma and Frank Sinatra’s cold eyes, who has been appointed from nowhere to be the Holy Father.
it seems the college of cardinals forgot to make some elementary checks on jude’s suitability. Too late, it dawns on them as they are standing around in a misty garden full of tortoises that they don’t know the first thing about him.
one cardinal, suicidal at the thought that he will never be Pope himself now, tries to slash his wrists with a blunt razor and is restrained by tiny nuns, who throw themselves at his legs like attack hobbits.
Meanwhile, their young pontiff is striding round the papal palace, chain-smoking and demanding cherry coke Zero.
To help run his global diocese, he calls for Sister Mary, the nun who raised him back at a New jersey orphanage.
Sister Mary is played by Diane Keaton, who swoops into the Vatican city by helicopter and spends the show scowling, like a woman daring anyone to breathe a word that, though she was once Woody Allen’s muse and starred in the sublime Annie Hall, this is how she pays the gas bill nowadays.
Silvio orlando is the devious cardinal Voiello. We know he’s the villain, because he has a mole that looks like a burnt marshmallow glued to his cheek.
Voiello isn’t swayed by the Pope’s cool glamour. But even he doesn’t suspect the worst: the new man is an atheist, a fact revealed during an impromptu confession on the roof of St Peter’s.
Poor Voiello — he might have picked up on this, if he hadn’t been mesmerised by a pornographic sculpture in the Pope’s office.
it’s frustrating that The Young Pope is locked away on a pay-perview channel. We’ve all coughed up our licence fee, and it’s galling to be told that we’ll have to pay some more if we want to watch the real rubbish. But you can’t put a price on drivel as delirious as this.
Fortunately, some guilty pleasures cost next to nothing. Paul o’Grady has been introducing us to a parade of pooches down on their luck, in For The Love Of Dogs (iTV). This was the last of the series, but we can be sure it won’t be long before he’s back, because this is television that warms your heart, for the price of a handful of biscuits.
He was training an old english sheepdog puppy called Dudley, who was deaf, and looking for a home for Beryl, an elderly english bull terrier with a face as scuffed and battered as an old boot.
every time i watch this show, it makes me feel better. it’s not just the lovable dogs — it’s Paul’s unfeigned joy, as he gets another slobbery cuddle from a new friend. This is happy telly.
DEATH KNELL OF THE WEEK: ‘I really love the ITV News At Ten,’ says channel boss Kevin Lygo. Uh-oh... that’s like a football chairman saying he has every faith in his manager. Sure enough, Lygo is ready to swap the news slot for a chatshow next year. Say goodbye to ‘the bongs’.