Richard Lutz on the week’s best TV.
I have perused. I have surveyed. I have investigated. I have…well, you get the gist. There is zip, nada, zilch that sparks my mojo except, maybe Jason and The Argonauts (Thurs, BBC2) or a heavyweight The Conformist (Thurs, 1am)
So I will break with tradition and direct you to something interminably, happily, British….whether you like it or not.
As I cast my eye over the desert of this week’s schedules, and as a seasoned professional cast those orbs a second time over the scant gems appearing on page after page, I saw something unusual, freakish, actually decorated with a modicum of interest.
For there amid the dross of films and the beginning of the last ever series of Mad Men and more Games of Thrones and even more footage of something organ-curling called The Big Allotment Challenge, is a full 12 hours straight of British content on ITV3. It begins at 8.45 am on Friday morning with Agatha Christie’s Marple and finishes with a flourish half a day later with the end of Agatha Christie’s Poirot.
So, if you’re an AC fan, it is all bookended and tied up nice and neat for you. If you can’t stand her stuff, the meat in the sandwich, for the rest of the 12 hours, is a surfeit of Carry On movies and, if you are so inclined, George and Mildred: The Movie.
Now, this onslaught of vapid Blightiness may just drive you to slit your wrists with a rusty remote control gadget. But at least it is made somewhere in this sceptred isle without Yank money, Yank stars or Yank production values.
It is British from the moment that Geraldine McEwan tries to solve a crime at 8.45 in the AM right through all the oooohs and aaaahs of yet another unfunny brainless Carry On episode of double entendres and Kenneth Williams’ nostrils.
As an exercise, I tried to pile through the listings trying to find some kind of channel that did this without a bow to Hollywood, American studios or even that high value provider, HBO.
Unfortunately if you like mid-table British fare, even if you don’t vote UKIP, it is only on ITV3….god bless its Union Jack socks.
So, c’mon, get out the bunting, wave a flag for Prince George, support your local football team of mean spirited millionaires…and cor blimey, buy and watch British.