July 31st, 2009 by Lynn Rowlands-Connolly. Tags: BBC3, last night's TV, last night's TV reviews, We Are Klang

Is it just me or is Greg Davies – who plays Greg in this show and Mr Gilbert in the Inbetweeners – actually Rik Mayall’s twin or some kind of cloning doppelganger? He looks like Rik, talks like Rik, has the comedic slapstick thing and gurning going on like Rik… seriously, the man IS Rik Mayall! It’s positively spooky!
I realise this may be old news to people familiar with Greg, but as I never watch Inbetweeners, and have never seen him in anything else, it’s the first time I’ve encountered him and his resemblance to Rik.
Anyway, I’ll stop obsessing about that now and move on to a review of We Are Klang. Here’s what the BBC says of this new show; “Extremely clever at being stupid, if.comeddie award-nominees We Are Klang bring their unique brand of comedic high-jinks to television.
“Filmed in front of a live studio audience, their new show is the offspring of traditional sitcom and cutting-edge live comedy.”
Erm, I’d have to disagree a tad there. Are there funny scenes? Yes. Are there funny one liners? Yes. But somehow, despite having the right ingredients, the comedic cake that cooked in front of said live audience turned out rather flat… it just didn’t work. Read more & comment »
July 16th, 2009 by Lynn Rowlands-Connolly. Tags: BBC4, Getting On, Grey Expectations, last night's TV, last night's TV reviews

As part of BBC’s Grey Expectations – you see what they did there? Class – season of programmes about aging, the second part of Getting On was every bit as brilliant as the first episode.
On the geriatric ward, chaos is barely contained by Den and Kim – Joanna Scanlon and Jo Brand respectively – but last night, they had a male on their all female ward and Dr Pippa Moore – played by Vicki Pepperdine with utter believability – wasn’t happy…
“There’s the masturbation factor…” she told Sister Den, but Den pointed out the fact that as the young man had both arms in plaster attached to a frame, that probably wasn’t going to be an issue.
The writing of this show is awesome; dark, funny, satirical and incredibly relatable, it absolutely deserves a shed full of awards for Brand, Pepperdine and Scanlon who wrote it and of course, act the main parts.
All three of them are totally convincing in their roles and rib achingly funny. For instance, when manic depressive Ivy was brought onto the ward following a head injury, she soon displayed a plethora of unpleasant characteristics. She called Kim a “fat lezzer” to which she replied, “Well I’m fat but I’m not a lezzer”. Read more & comment »
July 13th, 2009 by Lisa McGarry. Tags: Eric McCormack, The New Adventures of Old Christine

Will and Grace’s Eric McCormack is returning to his sitcom roots and has signed up for CBS’s ‘The New Adventures of Old Christine’.
‘Old Christine’ (as it has been dubbed) is a comedy series starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus as a recently divorced single mother.
There is no hint as yet as to what Eric’s character will be, but according to Entertainment Weekly, he will hold a recurring role. He is also signed up for a guest appearance on Law and Order SVU, where he will play a handsome sugar daddy in episode two.
July 12th, 2009 by Lynn Rowlands-Connolly. Tags: coming up next week on tv, Primetime Picks, Primetime Picks of next week’s TV

Welcome to Primetime Picks where we offer you the best of the best Sir, in programme choices for the coming week.
There are some great documentaries in the coming week as well as films and new series, so click on the Read More link to take a look at our recommendations… Read more & comment »
July 3rd, 2009 by Lynn Rowlands-Connolly. Tags: Del Boy, John Sullivan, Only Fools and Horses

The BBC has announced that it has commissioned a new comedy which will feature Del Boy Trotter as a teenager.
The 90-minute show, Sex, Drugs And Rock ‘n’ Chips, will be all about the adventures of the Trotter family in the ‘60s and most especially about Del’s teenage years. It’ll also feature younger versions of some of Only Fools best loved characters such as Boycie, Trig and Denzil.
The new show is written by Fools and Horses writer John Sullivan who said of the new programme, “Sex, Drugs & Rock ‘n’ Chips will be set in the real Sixties, before The Beatles and Mary Quant made London the coolest place on the planet.
“The drama will feature south London at its least glamorous, where money was scarce, the staple diet was rock salmon and chips, and the flicks offer the only hint of glamour… Read more & comment »
July 2nd, 2009 by Lynn Rowlands-Connolly. Tags: Geoffrey Hughes, The Royle Family

Geoffrey Hughes, who played Twiggy in The Royle Family, has landed a new role with the real royal family.
65 year old Geoffrey has been appointed Deputy Lord Lieutenant for the Isle of Wight, which according to the Press Association makes him “the official link between the island and royalty at formal engagements.”
An Isle of Wight Council spokesman told the PA, “Mr Hughes, who lives near Newport, was a regular visitor to the island before moving here with his wife Susan in 2003… Read more & comment »
June 27th, 2009 by Lynn Rowlands-Connolly. Tags: BBC, Last Of The Summer Wine

Last Of The Summer Wine, the world’s longest-running sitcom, has been recommissioned for a further six half-hours of episodes the BBC announced today.
Filming will take place this summer, in and around the Yorkshire town of Holmfirth, for transmission in 2010. Read more & comment »
June 25th, 2009 by Lynn Rowlands-Connolly. Tags: Butterflies, Carla Lane, Wendy Craig

It seems that there’s a very good chance that the hugely successful sitcom Butterflies, written by Carla Lane and starring Wendy Craig and Geoffrey Palmer, could be aired again in an updated where-are-they-now series.
Carla Lane and Wendy Craig have apparently expressed an interest in reforming for a new version of the sitcom with Carla telling the Daily Mail, “I always loved Butterflies and I have an idea for how Ria and her husband Ben might have changed over the years.”
Wendy added, “I would love to find out what happened to Ria 25 years on. It would be great to get back together with Geoffrey Palmer, Nicholas Lyndhurst and the others.” Read more & comment »
June 22nd, 2009 by Lynn Rowlands-Connolly. Tags: Scrubs, season 9, Zach Braff

Scrubs writer and creator Bill Lawrence has revealed that season 9 will be set entirely at a medical school rather than at Sacred Heart, the fictional setting for all previous series of the show.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Lawrence said, “It’s going to be a different show. It’ll still be life-and-death stakes, but if the show is just Scrubs again in the hospital with a different person’s voiceover, it would be a disaster and people would be mad”
This decision to take the show in a new direction was possibly prompted by the departures of Zach Braff who played JD and Sarah Chalke who played his on-off love interest, Elliot Reid. Read more & comment »
June 15th, 2009 by Lynn Rowlands-Connolly. Tags: ITV, Kingdom, last night's TV, last night's TV reviews

This was the first time I’d watched Kingdom and I have to say, I won’t be watching it again. Comedically speaking, it doesn’t seem to know where it’s at; is it highbrow? Is it slapstick? No, it’s neither. Rather, it falls through the cracks somewhere inbetween and while it’s mildly amusing, it’s rather too reliant on obvious comedy.
Take for instance when the sci-fi obsessed Terry explained the intricacies of the crop circles that had been discovered in Geraldine’s (Sandi Toksvig) field; he realised they combined all sorts of elements from physics and maths but then – this clearly intelligent man – didn’t recognise that Fry as Kingdom was quoting from Shakespeare when he said, “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio” and Terry predictably replied, “It’s Terry Mr Kingdom” Read more & comment »
June 12th, 2009 by Lynn Rowlands-Connolly. Tags: ITV, last night's TV, last night's TV reviews, May Contain Nuts

Yep, and so does squirrel poo, and this show was the TV equivalent of several bags of it…
The premise for this two part drama is that David and Alice Chaplin, along with their three children, have just moved to a posh residential area of Clapham. There, they soon meet their new neighbours Ffion and Phillip; she’s a snooty but psychopathically social-ladder-climbing Hooray Henry while he’s “acerbic but emasculated.”
In a nutshell – pardon the pun – the Chaplin mater and pater want their daughter Molly to attend the private and prestigious Clapham School for Girls, but they rather quickly realise that she’s just too thick to pass the entrance exam, so amid exceptionally hammy acting of the horror at the alternative prospect – the local comprehensive school – Alice decides to take drastic measures and dress herself up/down as an 11 year old in order to sit the exam in Molly’s place… Read more & comment »
June 1st, 2009 by Lynn Rowlands-Connolly. Tags: Benidorm, Benidorm Summer Special, last night's TV, last night's TV reviews

Ah the absolute bliss; the Brits in Benidorm were back last night for a special episode which transcended the giddy heights of humourous excellence and made it to the roof of the high rise apartment block, the Solana… as did half the gang of our beloved holidaymakers who were being held hostage there by a murderer with a gun, but nonetheless, it was a nice day for it and luckily, the inside bar was still open.
If you missed this last night, it should be made law that you watch it on ITV’s catch-up Player – it’s for your own good because to not watch it would leave a huge humour shaped hole in your life, it was just that good. Read more & comment »
May 31st, 2009 by Lynn Rowlands-Connolly. Tags: ITV, last night's TV, last night's TV reviews, Mumbai Calling

From the makers of TV classics such as Birds of a Feather, Auf Wiedersehen Pet and Lovejoy, comes this new seven-part comedy series, Mumbai Calling which, on first glance, was very funny; not hysterical, but funny enough to make me want to watch it again.
The best part was played by EastEnders actor Nitin Ganatra as Dev – he also plays Masood in ‘Enders – who, in his attempts to first find his depressed boss Kenny, then delay the arrival of an assessor from London’s head office of Teknobable and to hire a new ‘bendy’ PA for his boss gave him some hilarious lines and scenes. Read more & comment »
May 27th, 2009 by Lynn Rowlands-Connolly. Tags: new series, Pauline McLynn, Shameless

Fans of Father Ted will undoubtedly recognise Pauline McLynn as Mrs Doyle, housekeeper of Craggy Island’s Parochial House however, we’re about to see the brilliant Pauline in a very different role as a librarian who’s set to become Frank Gallagher’s new love interest in Shameless.

Pauline will portray Libby the librarian who’s passion for romantic literature is said to be going to “awake something in Frank” or perhaps more precisely, little Frank, who, as we know, has been responsible for quite a lot of the population of the Chatsworth Estate… Read more & comment »
May 24th, 2009 by Lynn Rowlands-Connolly. Tags: next week's TV, Primetime Picks of next week’s TV

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 »