What I’d give for a simple Bucks Fizz
IThey call it the beautiful game, but you can have too much of a good thing. For one, it’s not so beautiful as an endless documentary – the new fad from TV execs to make a series about any old club and their path to untold riches and Hollywood fame. If that doesn’t suit you, there are series about the bigger clubs too, with some of the most monosyllabic players and managers put before us, adding nothing to what we already know. You get the distinct feeling that no one really cares in some clubs, in which case, we don’t either.
T IS SAFE to open your eyes again... Eurovision (BBC1, last night) is over for another year. Now the nightmares begin. I write this after watching the first semi-final which, call me a prude, was like a night in the front row of an exotic dance club (so I’m told). Has “Euro-writhing” as a genre made it into dancing jargon yet? Because just about every act was doing it. Expect Euro-writhing Week on Strictly too as the BBC embraces this new dance craze.
I was so distracted I couldn’t concentrate on the singing – or is that the idea?
They just wouldn’t stop with contorting their bodies into all sorts of shapes merely for the sake of our entertainment.
Bucks Fizz’s famous skirt flourish now looks tame enough to open a Methodist harvest festival. The Finnish act, called Windows95man, went a step further.
He was intent on making himself visible to a global audience.
He must have had a sheltered upbringing. He’s come out of his shell now.
Incidentally, I recall Windows in 1995 and it was nothing like this performance.
I wonder if Microsoft will now do an adults-only special software release.
The song, No Rules, finally ended. Mercifully. Audiences breathed a sigh of relief when his shorts arrived on a stage fly. Alas, they had bought him the wrong ones, at least two sizes too small. No one even shouted, “It’s the wrong trousers!”
The show had taken a dark turn earlier in the evening with the Irish act, a duo who screamed at each other while indulging in a satanic ritual. My immediate thought was, we’ve got Midsomer Murders for that.
The scream fest was called “Bambi Thug”. Eurovision is a difficult family watch nowadays.
Our own act, Olly Alexander, eschewed the obvious writhing for some old-fashioned, manly changing room knockabout, his dance troupe jumping about all over each other in what looked like a prison cell in need of a good scrub.
A decent song but rather lost in the sweaty carry-on.
There was slightly less carry-on in Doctor Who (BBC1, Saturday), which has returned for a new run.
Ncuti Gatwa, the new Time Lord, and Millie Gibson’s Ruby, are getting on famously, just when she’s about to leave the show. Shame.
But there was still time for the good doctor to take requests. Ruby wanted to visit the Beatles at London’s Abbey Road studios.
But in 1963, all music had been “stolen” by a suitably scary evil alien, Maestro, styled by Ru Paul’s Drag Race. How do these things happen? I must keep up with modern trends. Gatwa’s Doctor is one of the best, as twinkly as Matt Smith and all-conquering as David Tennant. Perhaps he doesn’t even need a real-life “assistant” – maybe a virtual one!
Inside No 9 (BBC2, Wednesday) is saying goodbye in fine fashion.
Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith were at their darkest best in the opening episode of their final series as they marooned a carriage full of travellers on the London Underground. We’ve all been there, given the way the train services are currently, but none of us would wish life to proceed in the way that this pair would have it.
Pemberton and Shearsmith write mini-mysteries for us to solve in a neat half-hour, in the spirit of shows like The Twilight Zone, only more realistic and often more chilling.
Or is it just fine entertainment for fans who will undoubtedly miss their unique style of storytelling? Actors will miss the scripts too. The billing included Matthew Kelly, Mark Bonnar, Siobhan Finneran, and Charlie Cooper.
The story turned on the fine English notion of, “Don’t get involved, dear” – which is put to the test when a theft and assault occur on the train during an outage. Shearsmith played Gerald, a man who used to stand up for himself, but the most radical thing he does now is book tickets for Salad Days.
Stick to your guns, Gerald; you never know who you’re going to bump into on public transport.
The Responder (BBC1, Sunday) was a treat for fans of top acting. In one room in Liverpool, we had Martin Freeman and Bernard Hill, recently deceased.
Who was best? Hill, of course, as a gruff and unrepentant absent father to Freeman’s unpredictable Chris.
The addled cop went rogue by nicking cash from his dad’s biscuit barrel for his daughter’s communion dress.
Still, it’s probably in lieu of long forgotten child support.
Finally, chef Marcus Wareing, bless him, has a new show set in France, Marcus Wareing Simply Provence (BBC iplayer). In it, he stewed some tomatoes and cooked at a school.
But disappointingly, he barely showed us one of the most picturesque regions in the world. He also cooks sitting down.
It must be hard work swanning around the South of France.