Monday, August 13, 2007

Quick summer TV review

I’m not missing this series of Big Brother at all. Having been an avid (addicted?) viewer of the first five series, I started to lose interest. (In my defence, I never liked the Celebrity Big Brother series.) Apparently people have been entering and leaving the house (and a caravan?), Davina has continued to wear black (is her interviewing any more robust this year?) and the red top tabloids have printed columns of stories that have a tenuous link to the truth.

So with any title containing Big Brother excluded from the Tivo’s To Do List, there’s been plenty of room for new series to accumulate over the summer months.

ITV’s The Commander, starring Amanda Burton, looked interesting but in the end it couldn’t deliver the contrast between light mood and dark crime that the previous series (featuring Dutch Detective Van Hauten) so successfully portrayed. Thumbs down.

Channel4’s Cape Wrath is a cross between a psychological thriller and a pot boiler. Terribly dark and wonderfully twisted, with great characters in a fear-ridden, close-knit community, making it very watchable. The series ends with a double bill on Tuesday night (14th).

BBC2’s Heroes is still a Thumbs Up. The last couple of episodes haven’t been as strong as the first, but it’s still got my attention. And if you’re obsessed (which I’m not), check out the podcast (or the Radio Show as Auntie likes to call it).

Channel 4’s The IT Crowd starts back on Friday 24th August at 9.30pm. Hopefully, The IT Crowd 2.0 will recapture the magic of the brilliant first series (that’s currently repeating late night on C4).

Failing that, there’s just a diet of property shows and the odd local documentary like The Bullseye Belles (BBC1 NI), A Pilgrim’s Progress (BBC2 NI) to catch up on, or failing that ITV’s Vicars’ Wives - neither of which merit a programme website.

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