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 »

Bradley tries to reason with Nick but is it going to blow up in his face?

It’s going to be a thrilling week as of Monday 1st June in EastEnders as Nick loses the plot when daughter Dotty reveals his dastardly plan to kill off Dot.

This sends Nick into an uncontrolled rage and he ends up taking several café patrons hostage before the place blows up… but will someone die or will they all escape?

Well, we’ll have to wait and see but in the meantime, here’s a sneeky peek at some of the scenes from the explosion at Ian’s caff… Read more & comment »

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 »

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 »

“He’s hoping that he’ll be able to conquer his inhibitions and get under the skin of people and cultures around the world.” These were some of the opening words of this show and were spoken of Stefan Gates who, for this episode, travelled to India to witness the feasts associated with a traditional Hindu wedding and the celebration of Onam, and both were extraordinary events to watch.

As a Westerner and therefore someone to whom these hugely extravagant ceremonies and celebrations are totally alien, this programme really was very interesting and Stefan Gates brought a pleasant, relaxed, sit-back-and-enjoy feel to the show. He didn’t attempt to be overly serious about the whole thing but he also wasn’t at all disrespectful to the cultural and religious sensitivities of the people he visited and spent time with in India. Read more & comment »

This was an extremely enlightening show for me because, like many of us, and especially like the six teenagers in last night’s show, I never gave much thought to where my food comes from – well, that’s not entirely true; I do give thought to which supermarket I’m going to buy it from, but its origins? Nope, I have to say, I’d never really thought about it overly much.

So the raison d’etre for last night’s show had the desired effect on me anyway as it graphically showed how one of Britain’s best-selling foods is produced, that food being tuna. And what it showed was far more important than the experiences of the six moody teenagers the BBC had sent packing to Indonesia to do the equivalent of work experience in a factory producing said tuna… Read more & comment »

Last night’s edition of Make My Body Younger featured Bianca Gascoigne who’s just 22 years old, so one might’ve assumed that she wouldn’t need making any younger, however, her partying lifestyle – including massive alcohol consumption – meant that her body was struggling to cope with all the stresses she was putting it through.

And of course, being the step-daughter of Paul Gascoigne, a notorious alcoholic, images of her staggering out of clubs at 3am, falling down drunk were manna from heaven for the press and Bianca wanted to change all that.

I was prepared to dislike Bianca when I began watching this show; I expected her to be something of a spoiled brat and a chav to boot, however, as the programme went on, what I actually saw was someone who, despite an outward façade – primarily created by media coverage of her – of being someone brash, loud and as I mentioned, a potential poster-girl for chavs everywhere, what she actually came across as being is an insecure young woman lacking direction… Read more & comment »

This wasn’t quite the ‘enlightening’ show I’d expected it to; I had thought that Professors Canter and Ekman would give us an in-depth ‘how to spot a liar’ sort of thing, but in fact, although they did discuss how body language often betrayed the lies of those featured telling them, I had, as I say, expected a somewhat more technical explanation.

Nonetheless, it was a very interesting programme and one that shows the gullibility of not only ‘us’, as in the public, but the police too, and even those closest to the supposed victim, who in these cases, turned out to be the perpetrator of a crime.

And of coursed, hindsight is 20/20 and when one looks back at footage of the crocodile tears invoked for the cameras by the likes of Karen Matthews and Tracie Andrews, one can see that there were of course ‘signs’ that even people with a rudimentary awareness of body language and its use in deception could see… Read more & comment »

Not without justification as it turned out, before it aired, this programme was said to be sure to attract “critical acclaim” and indeed it is.

Samantha Morton’s directorial debut was remarkable in that her direction ensured that the entirety of the film was seen from Lucy’s – the main character, excellently played by Molly Windsor – perspective. It was filled with symbolism which, if done without the personal affect that Morton brought to this drama, might have been clichéd, but as the film drew on her own experiences as a child as well as fictional elements, the balance was just right… Read more & comment »

As the very famous Andrew Sachs made his debut on the Street last night, we thought we might take a look back at which other famous actors have made guest appearances on Corrie, though it’s not only actors who’ve walked the Street’s famous cobbles; musicians, famous directors and even royals have also been spotted in Weatherfield!

So let’s take a look at who and when! Read more & comment »

Evan Williams

In yet another incredibly shocking documentary in the Unreported World series, reporter Evan Williams and his colleague Paul Kittel – director and cameraman – travelled to the Brazilian city of Recife, a beach paradise that’s visited by thousands of British tourists every year.

There, they uncovered allegations that the police are involved in ‘death squads’ which murder thousands of ‘undesirables’, including hundreds of street children, every year.

Within minutes of the programme beginning, Evan and Paul were taken to the scene of the murder of an 18-year-old boy at the side of a street. Police officers told Evan that the murder was “an execution” – a close-range shot to the head, typical of many of the city’s thousands of murders each year… Read more & comment »

As part of Britain’s Forgotten Children season on Channel 4, this moving documentary charted journalist Rachel Roberts’ attempts to trace some of the children with whom she was in a care home in Doncaster. She also wanted to find the matron of the home, Tina – of whom she had nothing but fond memories – and her husband Dennis. This particular sentiment was one that we were to discover was shared by all those she met who’d also been in Tina and Dennis’s care.

Rachel, who’s now 38, was just four years old when she and her sister Jenny were placed into the care of social services and – unlike many of the people we’ve encountered in this emotive series of documentaries – described her time in care “a positive experience” adding, “I was really happy there.” Read more & comment »