The Herald - The Herald Magazine
TV review Twins put in double the effort to test for the best
TV EXTRA: ROBSON GREEN ON HIS RETURN TO GRANDCHESTER AND ALL THINGS ACTING
TELEVISION can be a grumpy old beggar at times. There you are, made it through Christmas and the regulation ten tons of Quality Street, and there’s an extra inch or three on the old waist to prove it. So what? It will come in handy for January. If it is good enough for bears to pile on the fat for winter ...
No, no, no, says television, wagging its bony finger in your face. It’s a new year, a new start, and 2019 must see a new, improved you, so spit spot and let’s be having you watching programmes that show how to go about it. Sigh.
First up was Tom Kerridge’s Fresh Start (BBC2, Wednesday, 8pm). Having lost 12 stones in the past five years, the Michelin-starred chef has both talked the talk and walked the walk on diets. He made a winning impression last year with his Lose Weight for Good series, and now he’s back, and going back to basics, showing families how to ditch convenience food and cook from scratch.
The eight families chosen, “my gang,” as he called them, were clearly in need of a hand. One lot had carrots in the fridge, but those were strictly for the guinea pigs. Kerridge took things slowly, starting the beginners off with bangers and mash and pasta with sauce, although blowtorching peppers for the latter seemed a tad advanced for newbies. If you were that raw at cooking, would you have a blowtorch in the kitchen?
Kerridge is a naturally matey sort, so well suited to this type of programme. His enthusiasm is infectious and he passes on his vast knowledge of food in an easy-osey way, as if he is just some bloke who has learned to throw a few things together. One would call him the new Jamie Oliver if the old one wasn’t still very much around; but you have competition, Jamie lad.
apparent motive, there is little for Sutton to go on. However, there has been a spate of similar violent attacks on women in the area, and the detective suspects there could be a link between this case and the murder of Marsha McDonnell in 2003.
Do the Right Thing with Eamonn & Ruth (C5, 9pm)
Ruth Langsford, Eamonn Holmes, Michael Underwood and Dame Esther Rantzen return for a second run of the live consumer series. The first episode sees Ruth checking out the latest trend for buffing in the buff with a team of naturist cleaners. Meanwhile Eamonn investigates holidays from hell, and visits an inspiring cafe that is dishing up a healthy serving of TLC. And the team have a timely
As does every popular science presenter from Chris and Xand van Tulleken. The greedy pair have not just one selling point but two: they are identical twins, and doctors to boot, making them the ideal presenters for The Twinstitute (BBC2, Wednesday, 8.30pm).
Using themselves, and 30 other pairs of identical twins as subjects, the two set out to test competing theories, including what would shift weight faster, diet or exercise, and was meditation a better way to cope with pain than swearing?
The duo tested the latter personally by having their feet tattooed, and my
word of warning for anyone running local fundraising and charity groups, who are at risk of losing hundreds of thousands of pounds in a nasty con.
SAS: Who Dares Wins (C4, 9pm)
The reality show in which volunteers are put through SAS recruitment tests returns for a fourth series, hosted by chief instructor Ant Middleton. In 2019, the Ministry of Defence will change its selection criteria for the SAS, allowing women to apply for the first time. To coincide with this, this series will feature male and female candidates competing against one another. The first round of tests comes from the Andes in central Chile, where the recruits must pull fully loaded sledges across high-altitude valleys and plunge into freezing waterfalls.