Last night BBC2 got in early before all hell lets loose tonight on TV. We got to see Johnny Lee Miller in part one of Byron. I must admit that I lost a certain amount of interest as it went on, and the proof will be in tonight's pudding. We face The Deal on Channel 4 (Tony Blair and Gordon Brown's story dramatised), Boudica (Andrew Davies penned epic based on the Celtic leader) and part two of Byron. I'd be quite happy to watch all three, but I can't do that, so at least two must be committed to video. Why on earth Sunday evening is the only one we can get quality fare on is beyond me (well it's not, but we'll leave it for the time being). Tune in tomorrow for what I did end up watching!
Well the second season (as Five like to call it, as do the Americans) of The Shield finished last night, with some quite interesting developments. The Strike Squad seem to be made, Danielle's been fired, Aceveda's won his election, and Julien lies unconscious after a beating. Now I've got to wait another 9 months before it starts up again! Well maybe they'll be downloadable in January - have to wait and see.
Otherwise it was They Think It's All Over, Little Britain (good but not brilliant this week) and the Emmy award winning West Wing which improved a little this week.
There was a lot of TV clashing last night. The usual Monday comedies clashed - with the end of the most enjoyable Trevor's World of Sport clashing with the entertaining Grass. On a more serious note, Rageh Omaar's Huw Weldon Lecture clashed with Breaking the Silence: A Special Report by John Pilger. I saw the former, whilst taping the latter - I look forward to watching it tonight. Meanwhile, the cheaper part of me watched Living TV's coverage of the Emmy Awards. In actual fact I taped the whole thing, and fastforwarded through most of it. It's a strange ceremony, mixing the funny/political (Jon Stewart's analysis of TV news) with the simply unfunny (the Pop Idol thing about TV accountants). In between they handed out the awards, to a very select handful of programmes. Big winners included The Sopranos, and Everyone Loves Raymond. The worst category was one that simply seemed to give an award to the best coverage of a concert or awards ceremony! Yup - the coverage of The Oscars was up for an Emmy. How incestuous can you get? And while I'm sure that the coverage of the Cher show was wonderful, how far wrong can you go with something like that. The other exceptional award is for best guest star in either a comedy or series. Largely speaking, you got nominated for getting the biggest star name to participate in your show. Brilliant! I wouldn't mind catching some of the one-off dramas that were big winners or nominees, like to Door to Door, but we get pretty much everything else nominated (with maybe the exception of Raymond).
I only caught a moderate amount of telly this weekend. I caught up with the new team captains in They Think It's All Over, but they'll take time to settle down.
More interesting was Tony Robinson's Romans on Saturday. I'm not quite sure that giving Tony Robinson such presence in the title is a great thing. He's an intelligent man who I much admire and who's done good work throughout his career, but he's not a Roman historian to the best of my knowledge. Even Simon Schama's History of Britain did not integrate his name into the title of the programme, but I suppose it's ratings that count for more. In actual fact the programme was excellent, with very little unnecessary reconstruction or pointless computer graphics. Instead the present day countryside was presented and we were told that years ago this was a battlefield or whatever. I look forward to the rest of the series.
Otherwise, I still can't really like Lisa Rogers in Scrapheap Challenge, as I find her too cynical a TV presenter. And I would have loved to have seen more of Blunkett on Breakfast with Frost.
I've got to say that I'm not massively over-impressed with the current series of The West Wing. Maybe it'll pick up, and last night's episode, Swiss Diplomacy, was probably better than the previous one. I can see why Aaron Sorkin decided to call it a day. Still we've 14 more episodes in the fourth season, while in the States, the fifth season starts in a week or so. I could be downloading and storing.
Meanwhile, the story ramps up as the end of The Shield homes into view. Again in some respects the buzz that was there last series isn't there to same extent now. And Five have definitely hidden this series away a bit, airing it at 22.50. Last night I nearly forgot about it after the end of a poorish episode of The Agency.
Trevor's World of Sport appeared in it's new improved post news timeslot last night (apparently because it wasn't available to view for the key AB Men demographic). Fine as far as goes, because the laughtrack free comedy is probably not right for Friday evenings, even if does star Neil Pearson. It's just a shame that by the end of the inevitably over-running news, local news and weather, that it starts at about 10:40, meaning that it crashes over the start of Grass on BBC Three. Now quite why 11.00pm is thought to be a good time to run this programme with a spin-off Fast Show character is anyone's guess. There are a liberal number of "fucks" strewn about, but 11.00 is still not quite right. 10.00pm would be better (can't be done - that's Eastenders time), or even 9.30... on BBC2... in place of the risible Two Pints of Lager.
In the meantime, Hallmark are showing The Agency stripped across the week at 10.00pm. When it was launched on Friday, I thought that they might go for a weekly slot, however they're going to burn through the 44 episodes in nine weeks this way. Last night's episode, God's Work, was quite week I thought.