I’m not sure that the BBC’s attempt at ‘humour’ – or tongue-in-cheek anyway – in billing this film as a Halloween episode was entirely appropriate. Especially given that the main protagonist of the film, Donald Angus Maclean, died while making it.

Granted the story told by Donald was all about ghosts on Skye, but despite some levity – primarily though only proffered by filmmaker Alison McAlpine – there was little to laugh at in this quirky film.

But as interesting and fascinating as the ghost stories were, equally as captivating were the residents of Skye. But perhaps the subliminal direction – in the form of haunting music and ‘creepy’ mist rolling in – affected my opinion, it felt as though Skye was a hybrid of The Wicker Man and Deliverance. Read more & comment »

I don’t know how I’ve managed to miss the previous series of The Thick of It, but I’ve employed someone to kick me up the backside for it. Just twice a day – it’s a part time position – but enough to remind me that TV critics need to be more on the ball.

However, having now watched the opener of the new series on Saturday night, the DVDs of episodes gone will be on my Christmas list.

And perhaps it’s not the worst thing in the world that I came at it with ‘new’ eyes because of course that way, I can’t mourn the passing of some of the characters but can celebrate the introduction of Nicola Murray – giftedly played by Rebecca Front. Read more & comment »

What a moving and emotional interview this was, and for once, Piers was somewhat gentle with his interviewee, Cilla Black.

His notorious terseness was thankfully largely absent, and rightly so because Cilla is a national treasure and I might’ve had to go down to the ITV studios and beat him up with his own shoes if he’d been mean to her.

Especially in light of her open and frank discussion with Piers about the death of her baby girl, Ellen, in 1975. Ellen was born prematurely we heard, and suffered from breathing and lung problems that led to her death just two hours after her birth. Read more & comment »

Friday night’s TV was an embarrassment of riches, such was the quality of shows on offer, but it was also an annoying toss-up between watching the final instalment of Criminal Justice or Benidorm. As I don’t have Sky+, I decided to watch Benidorm and catch-up on Criminal Justice on BBC’s iPlayer, which is without doubt a superior on-demand service to ITV’s.

So which was better? Well, they were both equally brilliant, but I’ll start with the last part of Criminal Justice. When I first watched it and Juliet got sentenced to five years for manslaughter – to serve two-and-a-half years before consideration of parole – I felt it was a bit of an anti-climax, however, having thought about it, I can now see why Moffat wrote the ending that way… Read more & comment »

Saturday night scheduling on telly has traditionally appealed to those of us who don’t go out, and for ‘don’t go out’, read, ‘have no life’, and Piers Morgan’s ITV natter with the fairy-princess-esque Cliff Richard appealed strongly to that demographic.

I grew up listening to my mum singing along to Cliff’s songs and watching her positively swoon – yes, people swooned in those days – whenever Hank Marvin was on TV, which, I might add, had newly become colour.

But if she were alive today, I’m not sure that she’d be happy to see Cliff in a bright pink jacket or inexplicable amounts of lime green. I suspect she might’ve longed for the days of monochrome telly as her retinas would have remained undamaged by watching Cliffy going about his long-standing and unbreakable career. Read more & comment »

Coming as it does, so close to the anniversary of 9/11, Oliver Stone’s film – shown last night on Channel 4 – was sure to evoke a plethora of memories, and it didn’t disappoint in that regard.

The attacks on the World Trade Centers are still vividly etched in the minds of those of us who watched the horrendous events unfolding on TV, but what this film did was to tell the story from the point of view of those most directly involved, including of course, the two Port Authority police officers who were trapped in the rubble and around whom the majority of the film centred. 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 »

This week’s episode of Rock ‘n’ Roll Hotel was the last, and I miss it already. I might have to go and stay in Sanctum for a night or two just to see what’s going on there now the cameras have left.

But it was, as ever, a nail biter in as much as deadlines were yet again looming – not to mention paying guests – and the hotel was far from finished… again.

But, refusing to be daunted by the enormity of the crisis, Mark carried on making preparations for when – and at that point, if – the hotel opened, such as hiring a manager. Read more & comment »

This week’s episode was every bit as good as last week’s, if not better in fact. One of the major high points for me was a brief appearance by Huey Morgan from Fun Lovin’ Criminals, with whom I’d happily get whacked on Scooby snacks any old time. However, I digress…

The saga of the Hotel That May Never Be Finished continued and as Christmas faded away and the New Year dawned, the hotel doors were somewhere in Europe, as were the beds, and Mick, second in command of the project, looked like he wished he was likewise.

Kevin on the other hand, the overall boss of the building work, was cooler than a polar bear’s dangly bits, despite the fact that the hotel was still nowhere near completion and Mark was on the brink of tearing someone a new one. And I doubt any court in the land would’ve convicted him if they’d seen for themselves the agony of trying to achieve even one deadline… Read more & comment »

Lenny Henry, looking rather sexy with a goatee, presented this light hearted and irreverent look back at the Open University which brought education to the great unwashed. It didn’t matter who you were, if you had the drive and commitment to study for a degree, the OU made it possible, and still does…

From prisoners to pensioners, the OU revolutionised learning, and did so via men and women who may or may not have just smoked a joint before recording their lectures which were aired in the bowels of the night. I recall well watching men with dreadful comb-overs and women with tight polo necks and checked skirts delivering knowledge late at night, aided/hampered by uncooperative props and appalling lighting.

So in this show, Lenny – a graduate of the OU himself – guided us through its history, right from its inception to present day, and it’s an interesting story that’s full of anecdotes and fond reminiscences. One of my favourites of those was when David Attenborough – who was controller of BBC2 donkey’s years ago – told Lenny how he met Jennie Lee, the Labour minister who doggedly pushed forward the idea of the OU… Read more & comment »

When I started watching this BBC show on Friday, I thought it was going to be something like Grand Designs infused with elements of The Apprentice; big ideas and much hiring, firing and yelling. And it was all those things, but there was something else – some magical component that made me actually interested to see how this all works out…

And I suspect it’s because of the charisma of the man at the centre of the whole shebang, Mark Fuller.

The programme follows Mark as he oversees – and in large part, finances – the building of a luxury hotel in London’s Soho. It’s to be a rock ‘n’ roll themed hotel for which no expense is to be spared in kitting every nook and cranny out with luxury and contemporary fixtures and fittings. And in Friday’s first outing of this show, the build was months behind schedule and the only light at the end of the tunnel was in fact a financial oncoming train… 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 »