So Gordon returns for a fifth series of the F Word, and what’s changed? Well, his mission in this series is to find Britain’s best restaurant – and one assumes he’s disqualified due to the potential for self-nepotism, if such a thing exists…

Anywho, last night we met chefs from Leeds and Bristol who had to do the good old telly fave, a cook-off. One of those chefs was Diego De Re, and he was more than a match for Gordon, which made his segments rather entertaining.

It was fun to watch Diego berating Gordon for his dearth of black bristled pastry brushes – so you can easily spot if a few fell out in your ravioli – and the irascible Gordon trying to keep a lid on his famous temper.

The major downside for me on last night’s new series opener was the presence of Katie Price, the world’s most non-biodegradable woman. Granted, she would go to the opening of an envelope, but I felt it devalued the show somewhat that Gordon and Katie felt behoved to resort to seriously unsubtle double entendre concerning breasts, of the chicken and silicone kind… Read more & comment »

Now that the nights are drawing in and it’s just too dang cold to go anywhere, why not cosy up with your telly and a duvet, because there are some great shows on this week.

And as it’s soon Halloween, we’ve got lots of scary recommendations that should make sure you need to sleep with the light on for a week or so! Read more & comment »

After sitting through one and a half hours of MasterChef, The Professionals, I’d begun to not only lose the will to live but I thought there was a very good possibility I was living in Groundhog Day…

Greg and Michael’s phrases are as worn as Dot Cotton’s mac and are equally as bland now that we’ve heard them sixty gazillion times.

And the trouble with MasterChef – and any number of other similar shows – is that once you’ve described how the judges described something as nutty or bolshy-sweet or said, “Here’s the smokiness coming through”, you’ve been there and done that… Read more & comment »

Virgin 1 offered up this lovechild of Come Dine With Me and Virgin Cooks, and I was fairly bored, fairly fast.

And I had some questions about hygiene and so on too… aren’t there rules and regulations about that kind of thing?

Apparently, each of the couples who feature on the show have undertaken a Level 2 Food Hygiene award via the internet, which takes about two hours from start to certificate. Mmm, I’m not entirely sure that’s sufficient. And what about the premises they’re cooking in? Aren’t they supposed to be inspected or something? Read more & comment »

As I sat down to watch this new Five show, I didn’t expect to like it at all. I thought it was going to be full of vapid, shallow women and a leering, sex starved farmer. And it was, which made it compulsive viewing.

I’d thought all those elements would put me off, but they were in fact what made it worth looking at. It was the TV equivalent of junk food and one of those ‘guilty pleasures’ shows. The ones you’d never admit to watching but would secretly record if you couldn’t watch it alone.

Of course dating shows are nothing new; there’ve been dozens of them, but this one is sort of a new concept in that it’s picked one profession – farming – and sifted through the applicants to find suitably eligible bachelor farmers with whom literally hundreds of women would like to get their hands, and other bits, dirty. Read more & comment »

If there was entertainment to be had in Running In Heels, I’m afraid I missed it. Likewise, I missed any hint of a new concept; it’s just yet another show of The Apprentice ilk, or even Jade’s PA, or in the really worst case scenario, Paris Hilton’s Best Friend bilge. And having watched episodes two and three last night, I’m afraid it definitely fell into the latter category.

Joanna Coles is editor-in-chief of Marie Claire in New York and as such, commands – apparently – much the same worship as God, but she has infinitely more clothes; up to five different outfits on any given day actually, according to the lady herself. She therefore has someone who attends to that for her and makes sure she has all the power outfits she needs to hand.

How nice for her. As a lowly TV critic, I must choose my own clothes and have nobody to hand to find my underwear for me, which, to be honest, sucks. Read more & comment »

Oh. My. God. Whoever brought this abject drivel onto our screens needs to be lined up and shot, but only with rubber bullets, merely to inflict pain equal to that to which they subjected us viewers.

During a bout of insomnia last night – I’m normally sound asleep before most toddlers – I was having a flick through the TV channels and happened upon the telly equivalent of horse dung, Clever v Stupid on BBC3.

I’m going to try to describe the hideousness that it was, but it’s not going to be easy to find suitable adjectives without resorting to using profanity… Read more & comment »

I’m so glad that Saturday night TV is picking up. Mind you, after the god-awful summer schedules for Saturday, it doesn’t take much.

That said, Walk On The Wild Side and The Cube both make excellent half-hour-each diversionary telly, and both are brilliant in their own way.

This weekend is the first time I’ve seen Walk On The Wild Side and having seen it, I’m going to catch-up on the previous episodes on iPlayer. In case you’ve never seen it, the concept uses footage of animals and Jason Manford – and a whole host of other folks – do voiceovers to provide very amusing ‘what they might be saying’ stuff. Read more & comment »

I cannot believe Danielle won the round the world trip and by default, was deemed to have been the person who’d most changed their attitude and who’d “grown up” more than the others.

There was absolutely no evidence of Danielle having done either of those things, either in the final show or indeed, the preceding shows. In the final show, she was still pretty much incapable of anything, still swearing her head off at anyone or anything that wouldn’t do what she wanted and still had a total inability to accept responsibility.

The parents in the last show were annoying too. During the segment where we saw them discussing the final task – which had been making-over three flats with the ‘kids’ as project managers – pretty much everyone agreed that making teenagers project managers was too tall an order. So why do it then? Read more & comment »

In the first few minutes, I thought this show was going to be… well, I can’t utilise handy swear words – what with this being a family site and all – so I’ll put something that rhymes with what I was thinking; absolute ‘trucking plight’.

Phillip Schofield was presiding and let’s face it, he’s the thinking woman’s totty is our Phil, so I was already sold there, but as he introduced the rules and ‘The Cube’, I thought the whole thing was the rather sad lovechild of Crystal Maze and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. And there was a little nod to Top Gear thrown in for good measure in the form of the anonymous ‘Body’ who demonstrates the games in a Stig-like outfit, complete with concealing mask.

So, prepared to be bored witless, it was with some surprise that within minutes, and by the time the first ever contestant, Dean, got to playing for £20,000, my underwear was making it’s way to a place where the sun don’t shine and I was yelling at my telly while groaning when Dean lost a life, of which he had nine by the way. Read more & comment »

Well, well! Who’da thunked? A – relatively – new concept in reality TV shows. I say ‘relatively’ because there were some possible comparisons in this show with Blood, Sweat and Takeaways and any number of macho-orientated challenge shows, but I don’t think Aunty Beeb has ever before offered us a show that’s quite like this one.

Five British lads, Reuben Feldt, Ross Edgley, Ben Roper, Nick Barratt and Easton Woodburn – in that order as pictured above – have been sent off around the world to face some of nature’s toughest fighters and battles to prove which of them is indeed, Tough Guy or Chicken.

They also needed to prove who had a strong stomach, as some fairly grisly scenes ably demonstrated. However, there was a cracking sound track which included Kings of Leon and Blur, so that was ok then. Read more & comment »

I missed the latest episode of this positively addictive show when it was originally on BBC, so I’ve caught up with it on BBC iPlayer, and I’m so glad I did, because the latest offering was every bit as entertaining as they’ve all been.

Last week, Nicky got the boot – thankfully – so this week, just four remained in the House of Large Lazy Gits. They are, Dogan, Dina, Sean and Danielle. And a bombshell was dropped on them within minutes of the show opening; this week, they were only given the equivalent of dole money to live on.

The news was greeted with mostly stunned silence as the four began to realise just how little they had to live on, in fact, it equated to about £7 a day. Oh dear. So, they set off looking for job, somewhat half-heartedly, as of course we’ve come to expect from them. If they’d put in any actual effort, I think we’d have all dropped down dead. Read more & comment »

There’s a new Gordon on the chef block – Gordon Jones, a 26 year old who’s the head chef of a swanky restaurant in Bath.

He’s Scottish, he’s no nonsense and he swears, though not nearly as much as the other Gordon. He’s more a “cra*” man than an F man. Well, he was on the BBC so there are certain standards to adhere to when your show’s hosted by Aunty Beeb.

And a very nice man he is too; unassuming, personable, pleasant, but does he have the X factor that turns bog standard chefs into TV stars? Well, time will tell, but I’d have to say that on first glance, he doesn’t have the charisma of the other Gordon, but his laid back approach isn’t without charm. Nor is his just-tumbled-out-of-bed look… Read more & comment »

What an odd concept; pair up a DIY programme presenter, Nick Knowles, with a wildlife film-maker, James Honeyborne, and then get eight people who aspire to be the next David Attenborough. Then, drop them all off in Africa so the eight contestants can compete for a job with the BBC ‘s Natural History unit while Nick takes the p*** and James sighs like a testy grandad.

It’s a bit like the format of The Apprentice but instead of just getting a tongue lashing from Sir Alan, these folks have to face storms of Armageddon proportions and/or getting eaten by something. They all had to strive to prove themselves capable of spending hour upon hour in dangerous and rough territory for those precious few seconds of wildlife footage.

Words of wisdom were legion including, “Don’t run; think about this, out here, food runs.” Truly the dictionary definition of ‘fast food’. Read more & comment »

This was one of those programmes that anyone with blood pressure problems really shouldn’t watch because it’ll wind you up so badly. I personally can’t watch Supernanny because it just makes my blood boil at the ludicrousness of watching grown adults cowed and weeping because of a despot three year old. Well this show was rather similar except it demonstrated what’ll happen in twenty years or so if you spoil your kids rotten when they’re little.

The show took eight young people between the ages of 17 and 25 – who’d never done a day’s work and lived off their parents – and plonked them in a house. Dina, Orion, Danielle, Sean, Nicola, Jay, Rachel and Dogan – pronounced Dohan – varied in the degree of their obnoxiousness. Coming top for me in the obnoxiousness stakes were Nicola – who looks like a demonic Spaniel – Danielle, Dina and Dogan, in that order, for reasons pertaining to their total lack of respect for anything or anyone… Read more & comment »