The one thing that BBC2′s Wonderland series does so well is to highlight the eccentricities of us Brits, as well as to focus on some very interesting characters all of whom have something in common. The latest film comes from renowned documentary maker Vanessa Engle, who most recently made the 2011 series Money, as she spends almost a year on Hampstead Heath meeting people walking their dogs. As Engle goes about making her film she meets a lot of disparate characters all of whom have a close bond with their canine companions as she asks a simple question why do people have dogs?

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Nowadays the only TV broadcasts that would get an audience in excess of 20 million would be royal weddings, Olympic opening ceremonies and um.. the final of Britain’s Got Talent however back in the 1970s the crowning of the annual Miss Great Britain would often attract that sort of huge audience.

The latest programme in the Wonderland documentary thread looks at five ladies who either won the Miss Great Britain or Miss United Kingdom crown and how this accolade changed their lives. It also looks back at when the BBC televised the event, something that last happened 30 years ago, and how big the craze was with even Terry Wogan taking on hosting duties!

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For the majority of us a university life consists of numerous out-of-control parties, a lot of ‘experimenting’ and maybe going to a lecture now and then however if you’re an aspiring politician then things are a little bit different for you. BBC2′s Wonderland strand demonstrates this with their latest documentary Young, Bright and On the Right focusing on two young men, one at Cambridge and the other at Oxford, both of whom one day hope to one day be part of the Conservative cabinet. The young conservatives still have the parties but in their world they’re quite controlled plus they always seem to involve an inordinate amount of port while the biggest problem is deciding where to get the biscuits for the cheese from rather than cleaning up after whoever was sick in the toilets.

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Apologies for no preview last week but I’ve been very busy and as the Olympics are still dominating the schedules we have a rather thin selection of shows however I still have my five picks which I believe will be suitable for those who have no interest in sports.

The Road to Coronation Street (BBC4, Sun, 9pm)
First up is a welcome re-showing of this 2010 drama which shows how the nation’s longest running TV soap opera was conceived and how it was bought to life by its legendary three lead actresses. Written by long-time Corrie archivist Daran Little The Road to Coronation Street sees David Dawson play Tony Warren the soap’s creator and writer who struggled to get his show off the ground only succeeding when producer Harry Elton saw that the programme would appeal to the working classes.

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This episode was, regrettably, the last of BBC2’s Wonderland series, and what a worthy series it’s been, with it’s curtain call one of the most moving documentaries I’ve seen in a long time.

Alzheimer’s surely has to be one of the cruelest of diseases; it robs the sufferer of everything familiar and robs the sufferers’ families of the person they’ve known and loved.

As one remarkable man said of his wife Hilda during this film – succinctly and poetically summing up the hideous effects of Alzheimer’s – “I can’t reach her. She’s gone, disappeared. She’s a lovely little stranger, but that’s all she is now.” Read more & comment »

The latest Wonderland series offering was no less quirky and odd than its predecessors, and last night, we saw the six-degrees-of-separation like stories of the paths taken by seven Staffordshire Bull Terrier pups, their subsequent owners, as well as their original breeder.

Born of Uggs, whose owner Jackie wanted to make money from selling her pups, the seven puppies were destined for very different lives, but more or less to a man, or pup, their futures weren’t looking especially bright.

That said, one of them did fare very well; Jackie’s sister-in-law Maria bought one of the pups to help her children to get over the grief of losing their dad, and of all the puppies, this one seemed the most suited to getting along with fragile children. Read more & comment »

As part of BBC’s Wonderland series, this odd little film was idiosyncratic and edifying to watch. And I must say, I hadn’t expected to like it much, but I did…

It seemed an odd concept, having couples talk about their lives together while sitting in their beds, but what it unearthed was a plethora of deeply moving emotion and revelation, as well as gratifyingly sweet and loving relationships.

And with hindsight, perhaps various beds were in fact a good setting for this film, even though it was often perhaps more of a Jeremy Kyle-esque show in some ways. For instance, young Tariro couldn’t tell his partner Khadijah that he loves her, even though this terribly young couple are expecting twins.

If it had been a Jeremy Kyle show, the programme’s title might’ve been ‘You’re Having My Babies But I Don’t Know If I Love You’. However, I think his admission was refreshingly truthful; teenagers mostly don’t truly understand the meaning of the word ‘love’ in relationship terms, and at least Tariro was honest enough to admit that. Read more & comment »