Well it’s been a while since Mrs Angry had a good rant so it’s overdue, and there’s plenty to rant about right now, including Saturday night programming, pants storylines, inappropriate use of props and putting good stuff on late…

If aliens landed on a Saturday night and tuned into our TV channels to see what constituted entertainment for us earth dwellers, on the terrestrial channels they’d see we were watching shows like Totally Saturday and the new ITV offering, Anonymous. And then they’d think we were less intelligent than plankton and either decide to take us over or bog off again looking for folks with more than one brain cell.

Just what is it that makes programme makers assume that anyone who’s home on a Saturday night is going to just love slapstick, clichéd practical jokes, what amounts to ritual humiliation and all presented in an oh so tired format? Read more & comment »

“Freefall tackles head on the extraordinary financial crisis we are currently living through. Written and directed by multiple-Bafta Award-winning Dominic Savage, the film dives into the events that have caused turmoil in so many people’s lives.

“Tautly and delicately interwoven, the film follows the lives of three men with everything on the line. Gus (Aidan Gillen) is the high-flying city exec who packages and sells bundles of mortgages for extortionate profit.

“Dave (Dominic Cooper) is the mortgage broker who can make anything happen, and when Dave offers Jim (Joseph Mawle), his old school friend, a way out of the council flat he and his family have been stuck in for years, it’s an offer that is too good to refuse.”

This was the BBC’s own description of Freefall and actually – for once – it did exactly what it said on the tin. The addition of Sarah Harding from Girls Aloud was quite interesting too; I enjoy seeing a famous face outside of their usual context – like Angela Rippon that time on Morecambe and Wise – and the girl done good. Read more & comment »

This was a gastronomic horror story, with Tom Heap and Simon Boazman providing the metaphor for a culinary Freddie Kruger and the Candyman as they presented us with horror upon horror in last night’s show. And as it came on, I’d just eaten fish and chips… or had I??

I came away from this programme thinking that nothing’s as it seems in the world of food trading. I thought I was eating cod and spuds, but in actuality, it could’ve been Korean Catfish and stuff injected with water, and all washed in anti-freeze. I kid you not.

Also, I’m not vegetarian and have always felt vaguely guilty about that fact, therefore I avoid veal like the plague and look for meat products which state that the original animals that my pork chops were, at least had a relatively decent life before becoming my dinner. But it seems that cosy notion of self-righteous meat eating was wrong.

Apparently, when the label says ‘Outdoor Bred’, it should more accurately read, ‘We Showed This Pig A Field For About Five Minutes’. What the labelling doesn’t tell you, according to this show, is that Outdoor Bred can equate to animals being outdoors for as little as four weeks, so there goes my guilt-free meat eating… again. Read more & comment »

I have to start this piece by admitting that I don’t like Madonna; I never have. She’s always struck me as being supremely arrogant and the acquisition of vast amounts of money has, in my opinion, effectively reinforced her narcissism. Nobody says no to someone who can buy Africa in its entirety if she wants to. And sure enough, nobody did say no to her – ultimately – over the adoption of Mercy James.

Jacques Peretti’s documentary last night added more weight to that theory for me, and despite his protestations at points in the film that he didn’t know “what to think” regarding the controversy, I would argue that he had very clear views on it. I suspect that he, like me, believes that Madonna’s involvement in the country is tantamount to colonialism stemming from egocentricity and her adoption of African children is analogous to a form of exotic pet collecting, which in turn is no different in motivation than a philatelist’s desire to acquire stamps. Read more & comment »

Rick Stein takes the viewer on an epic culinary journey by sea, down rivers and overland to explore the Far East’s diverse food cultures, which have soared to the heights of popularity the world over.

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Valentine Warner sets his sights on the culinary delights of summer as he continues his journey through the seasons for a second series. Summer cooking is all about lighter dishes and fabulous natural pairings; from plump tomatoes with succulent prawns, to tasty raspberry, peach and almond tart.

Read more & comment »

Both Channel Five and Sky1 have this morning announced that they will be airing tributes to singer Michael Jackson tribute tonight following the shock news of his sudden death late yesterday.

Beginning at 8pm, Five are to broadcast Michael Jackson: King Of Pop which will be presented by Natasha Kaplinsky and Sky1 will also be airing The Real Michael Jackson at the same time. Both shows will take a look back over Jackson’s extensive and influential career. Read more & comment »

Mistresses star Sarah Parish and her husband James Murray have been speaking to The Sun about the tragic death of her baby girl, Ella-Jayen who died in January.

Ella-Jayne was born with a hole in her heart and despite this being a condition that can often be treated successfully, Ella failed to recover fully from two emergency operations. She died aged just eight months.

Sarah, who’s 41, told the newspaper, “It is terrifying when you have a baby and she is taken away ill.

“You were expecting cards and balloons and suddenly you are dropped into a nightmare…” Read more & comment »

Screen icon Farrah Fawcett has lost her battle with cancer today. She was just 62 and had been fighting anal cancer for three years. She died shortly after 9:30am local time in a Santa Monica hospital.

The news of her death comes just days after she and long-term partner Ryan O’Neal announced their intention to marry. O’Neal recently told the US chat show host Barbara Walters that he and Farrah would wed as soon as she was well enough, but sadly, that was not to be.

“We will, as soon as she can say ‘yes’ – maybe she can just nod her head” he told Walters. Read more & comment »

For this film, Alan Yentob met the inspiring ‘Company of Elders’ in the first of the new series of BBC One’s Imagine strand, which aims to “capture the power of the arts and the people who have changed our way of looking at the world”.

The said Elders are just that with the performers in the group ranging in ages from a youthful 61 to a slightly less youthful but no less determined 85. We followed the intrepid pensioners through some of their eight weeks of practice as they built up to a performance at world-famous dance venue Sadler’s Wells.

Without doubt, the most obvious thing from the get go about these ladies and gentlemen was that they’re all committed and determined, even if they forget they are every now and again and need the occasional gentle reminder… Read more & comment »

I think there’s a new form of addict inspired TV and it involves celebrities who’re addicted to a) food and b) diet shows.

Last night saw the first of two Tonight specials in which Cheryl Baker, Linda Robson, Darren Gough and Carole Malone embarked on a journey around the world’s cuisine hotspots to find out which is most likely to induce the most weight loss.

Cheryl and Carole – and possibly Linda though I couldn’t swear to it – have both been on Celebrity Fit Club in a bid to lose weight. Evidently, it didn’t work so maybe they’ll find dieting nirvana via this show and if not, I’m guessing they’ll turn up on another at some point. Read more & comment »

Last night’s Real Crime, presented by Mark Austin, reexamined the horrifying case of the murder of Rachel Nickell on Wimbledon Common in 1992 and recapped on the equally horrifying events which saw an innocent man imprisoned for her murder. It also demonstrated how the blinkered reactions of the Metropolitan Police in their dealings with the case – and their determination that the wrongly accused man, Colin Stagg, was the killer – arguably cost another woman and her child their lives.

I remember the case vividly as I’m sure many of us do; how Rachel was murdered in front of her son who was only two years old at the time was one of the most shocking things about it. That it happened in such a public place in broad daylight was also mortifying but, what we didn’t know at the time was how the case was being mishandled by the authorities. Read more & comment »

Bully by Marc Pye was the second of five individual contemporary dramas in the Moving On series, and, despite the dodgy theme tune, this was a really well crafted piece. The only criticism I had of it is that the drama unfolded and ultimately resolved rather quickly, but tempus fugit ruled in that regard; it needed to be fast paced to fit such a ‘big’ story into 42 minutes.

However, it was a truly compelling film which showed how quickly small dramas can turn into infinitely larger ones with potentially devastating consequences. In case you missed it, the story revolved around two families who were neighbours and best friends. They’d all just been on holiday to Spain together however there’d been tension between the sons of the families, Ryan and Andrew… Read more & comment »

Last night’s Tonight programme revisited a group of bingo workers in Oldham twelve months on from their original cash for weight loss incentive experiment. In the original programme, the workers were divided into two teams – blue and red – with the red team being offered the incentive of £10 for every 1% of their body weight lost and the blue team having no incentive other than achieving weight loss for themselves.

In the recap of the original show, we saw how the red team originally lost more weight than the blue team, however, throughout last night’s show, we saw how Professor Paul Gatley – who oversaw the experiment – spent a lot of time with the red team and encouraged them into doing various forms of exercise while the blue team seemed to have just been getting on with it on their own… Read more & comment »

Putting a price on someone’s life is and always will be a contentious issue, but in last night’s documentary, The Price of Life, filmmaker Adam Wishart guided us through the process of how NICE (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence) must do exactly that. And somewhat shockingly, we heard how NICE have a ceiling – or rather, had, before that ceiling increased recently – of £30,000 per person per extra year of life.

In this case, the subject of contention was the cancer drug Revlimid. It’s an expensive drug which, the manufacturer of it claims, can potentially increase the life expectancy of some patients by anything from months to a few years. For the individuals who would benefit from that, it is of course invaluable, however, with unprecedented access to the process of NICE’s decision making on whether to grant funding for this drug or not, we saw how difficult making the decision is.

However, one of the first things that occurred to me on hearing about the financial limits placed on the value of a year of life is that in the wake of the MPs expenses scandal being revealed in full, we know that millions of taxpayers’ pounds have been blithely paid out, seemingly without any checks on the validity of the claims, yet people were dying while awaiting approval by NICE for this drug. For some, approval came too late and one person who Wishart interviewed for the film, Julia, sadly died before she could take advantage of NICE’s ultimate decision to green light the drug. Read more & comment »