Last night’s BBC2 documentary, Going Postal, looked at the horrible multiplicity of high school, campus and workplace shootings which have happened with alarming frequency in America since the late 80s when the term Going Postal was adopted in the wake of massacres committed by – primarily – postal workers.

These killers were, so we heard, prompted to do what they did in response to a number of factors; socio-economics, the availability of guns and feeling marginalised by the society within which they lived.

The film was part of BBC2’s ‘The Violence Season’ which, “explores the social, historical and psychological causes of violence” and this documentary was not only interesting – albeit somewhat morbidly – but it was produced in a non-biased, non-judgemental format by British film maker Paul Tickell who avoided many of the ‘norms’ when making films about similar subject matter… Read more & comment »

So what did you think of watching surgeon Mr Francis Wells and his team performing open heart surgery on patient David Payne last night? Was it horrible voyeurism or informative viewing? Well, I’m still not sure…

I had a personal interest in watching the operation because a mitral valve repair may be part of a larger operation that I’ll be having; my mitral valve repair will be undergone simultaneously while my aortic valve is replaced with a mechanical one. If my mitral valve can’t be repaired, it too will be replaced with a mechanical valve, so as I say, I had a particular reason to watch last night.

And it was very interesting from that regard; seeing part of what may be happening to me was useful to watch but was it interesting for anyone who isn’t imminently due to have open heart surgery or who knows someone who is? I suspect not… Read more & comment »

Dan Snow blows the lid on the traditional, Anglo-centric view of history and reveals how the Irish saved Britain from cultural oblivion during the Dark Ages, in this provocative, two-part documentary.

Travelling back in time to some of the remotest corners of the British Isles, Dan unravels the mystery of the lost years of 400-800 AD, when the collapse of the Roman Empire left Britain in tatters.

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This new four-part Channel 4 series kicks off tonight with an open heart surgery procedure in which the patient – who has a leaking mitral valve – will undergo an operation to repair it, live on air. This leads me to ask one main and obvious question… What if he/she dies on the table? Then there are other issues such as, how is this person’s family going to feel if something goes horrendously wrong and millions of people are watching?

Additionally, we’re told that viewers can “interact with the surgeons” in real-time via microblogging site Twitter as well as by phone and email, live and as the operation is carried out. Viewers will even be able to speak to surgeons by phone at “appropriate points” but surely, with someone’s life in their hands, shouldn’t the surgeons be concentrating on that rather than answering viewers’ questions and possibly coping with stage fright? Read more & comment »

This man is, I suspect, clinically insane. I’ve seen bits of episodes of Born Survivor in passing before but I’ve never watch one all the way through - I don’t know why - so on Saturday, I decided to sit down and check him out on Channel 4.

Bear is a former Special Forces soldier and in this series of daring/lunatic shows, he demonstrates how to survive “in the world’s most extreme environments”. For this episode, Bear ventured into the unforgiving and decidedly human unfriendly forests of Transylvania, where he negotiated steep ravines, cavernous underground water systems and encountered a potentially deadly brown bear. Read more & comment »

With millions of CCTV cameras, a growing network of number-plate recognition cameras and one of the largest DNA databases, the UK has become one of the most watched places in the world.

In a new series on BBC Two, Richard Bilton explores the hidden world of surveillance to find out why, increasingly, we are all being watched and why some people think we have already become a surveillance society.

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Going Postal looks at the high school, campus and workplace shootings which have cast a shadow over American society since the late Eighties. April 2009 was the 10th anniversary of the Columbine Massacre but this is a phenomenon which is twice as old.

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Springwatch returns to BBC Two for another three-week celebration of UK wildlife and wildlife people – live and interactive from across the country. Simon King, Kate Humble, Chris Packham, Gordon Buchanan and Martin Hughes-Games form the new presenter line-up as they deliver unique views into the private lives of some of the UK’s best-loved animals.

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In the summer of 1940, Winston Churchill faced a terrible dilemma. France had just surrendered and Germany was poised to seize the entire French fleet. Churchill had to make a choice: to either trust that the French government would never hand over their ships to Hitler; or destroy them himself. This documentary tells the story of what Churchill did next, and why 1,300 French sailors died as a result. The film interviews French survivors, and also a British war veteran, a sailor who opened fire on his former allies. Historians also trace the chain of events and their consequences for those involved.

Monday 25 May 2009
9:20pm

Yippee! It’s a long weekend and most of us are having some lovely sunshine, but, with the weather due to deteriorate next week, we might be forced indoors and what better way to pass the time than watching some great telly? Here’s what we recommend you take a look at on TV this week… Read more & comment »

Last night’s episode of EastEnders turned in one of the best performances from a child actor that I’ve seen in a long time; Jamie Borthwick who plays Jay played such a convincing and moving part last night when he found out about Billy’s betrayal, I actually cried as he wept on Dawn’s shoulder. I suspect he may be in for an award for that performance, just as he won Best Dramatic Young Actor/Actress at the British Soap Awards in 2008… Read more & comment »

If Gordon Ramsay’s on a show, I’ll watch it. I’d watch the man if he posed as the test card for that matter, but it’s not just because he’s a total babe who gets all macho all over the shop and makes me go weak at the knees, it’s also because he actually really does turn businesses around.

One of the things that drives me nuts though – despite the fact that it makes for great watching – is that so many of the restaurateurs who call him in to save their businesses take absolutely no notice of what he says and/or have a pop at him! This was the case in last night’s episode of Kitchen Nightmares USA: The Secret Garden, and it was epic! Read more & comment »

On nearly every high street from Penzance to London and Glasgow to Belfast, there’s a new “must-have” accessory for some young men. Not the latest trainers or mobile phone, but fierce, snarling dogs.

Rickie Haywood-Williams explores the hip-hop and peer-pressure culture that has led to this growth in aggressive dogs in his hometown of London – on the streets and abandoned in shelters. He discovers that dogs are bred, bought, sold and given away with incredible ease.

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This amazing and intensely moving documentary followed two women who were both pregnant with identical twin boys. Sarah’s babies, Conner and Cody, and Natalie’s babies, George and Casper, all had the potentially fatal illness TTTS, Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome, which basically meant that one of the twins of both pregnancies was haemorrhaging into the other.

This resulted in one twin being very tiny and ‘stuck’ to the wall of the womb while the other twin produced such excessive amounts of fluid – due to the increased workload on his heart – that in Sarah’s case meant that at 21 weeks, she looked more like she was full-term and she was in a great deal of pain. Read more & comment »

I was eagerly anticipating this show on Five last night; I love Simon Cowell and have had a crush/major attraction on/to him for years, yes, even through the 80s when his trademark V necks and high waisted pants were in fact fashionable, but this was one of THE dullest presentations of a TV biography that I’ve ever, ever seen.

It had the makings of a fascinating show about this giant of the popworld, what with contributions from his mum Julie, his brother Nicholas, old teachers, his well-known acts and so on, but all without exception contributed to an exceptionally tedious show… Read more & comment »