The Deep
Maybe, some reader is watching the mega made thriller The Deep on BBC1 and knows what it is about. The first episode puzzled me with its jerky edits from a mini-sub to a warehouse sized demon sub called The Orpheus. Orla Brady is lost in the mini-sub and James Nesbitt is looking for her in the bigger sub. Or it could be another sub. By the end of episode two Nesbitt, has something up his nose – bad sign in these so-called scary ones and he finds a battered yellow sign reading CASPER. But where is the friendly ghost? Sinead Cusack is minding his daughter and a surf board and Minnie Driver is a submarine driver who has the hots for a babe from ER Goran Visnjic. Oh and there are dead bodies on a slab but one of them might not be dead and has a bloody nose.
I tried, I reran the tape and it’s lost on me. Oh no! Not another Lost!
Mistresses and Mammy
I didn’t think that the BBC would go for a third series of Mistresses but with the success elsewhere of Desperate Housewives and the movie buzz of Sex and the City, it must have seemed a fair risk. So, the put it out in the dead season – August – but to improve their chances they added a Mammy and what a Mammy, with Joanna Lumley as Katie the doctor’s mammy who is full of mystery and marriage making plans. Trudi who bakes cakes has put cupcakes before marriage and the serial unfaithful Jess is trying IVF and Siobhan (the tasty Orla Brady) counts her diamonds before they are hatched. Nobody seems to care that none of the now five female leads are anybodies mistresses anymore.
O’Gorman
Paddy O’Gorman is back on RTE 1 early on Sunday nights with his easy manner, a dog on a lead and an amazing ability to get people to talk frankly to him as if the camera wasn’t there. He makes it look so easy. He had farmers in Ballyjamesduff talk about loneliness and the names of cattle. A man in a woman’s dress, a widower, who was organising a high-nelly bicycle rally for a cancer charity, spoke with sadness about how he missed his wife and there was a tear near to me as O’Gorman worked his caring magic. No doubt there must be lost of discarded takes before he gets these gems that make compelling television.
Monkhouse
There was a time as far back as black and white TV that the comedian Bob Monkhouse seemed a game show fixture in many houses. From the snowy screen of the Golden Shot to Celebrity Squares and his appearances in Carry on Dentist. He was always smiling, chatty and witty and parents retold his jokes as if they were his own.
UTV celebrated his life with The Unforgettable Bob Monkhouse and once again it was a different joke of a man who neglected to a certain extent his family with a relentless urge to be working and on television as often as possible. I never knew he did blue jokes at adult cabaret venues and that he had his fair (or unfair) share of personal tragedy. He even joked about his prostate cancer and made an advert for cancer care about his death. The applause was everything and soon he will be forgotten, relegated to a filler on an August Sunday.
Comedy
In the deadzone of August, all sorts of odd television material is used up as a change from repeats. So it is with dodgy edgy comedy put it out there and if it makes the numbers – what a clever phrase, making the numbers – give it as better slot, a repeat series and who knows. Thus BBC2 have Grandma’s House about a self-obsessed young man who stars in some sort of Never Mind the Buzzcocks show but he wants to be a Zen recluse. However, his scatty mum wants sex and the fame of having a famous son, as does his equally weird grandparents. The cast are recognisable from In the Thick of It and Benidorm.
Likewise BBC2 also have Dawn French and Alfred Molina in Roger and Val Have Just Got In. Nothing much happens in a funny way as they tried on clothes and bicker about humdrum things like looking for a guarantee slip for a broken vacuum or who should put what on what shelf in the fridge.
C4 have Rafe Spall as a lad-about-town who is feckless according to two older characters who comment and kinda narrate in a sports commentator jargon. But Pete Versus Life will have a harder time surviving even if the stag weekend in Amsterdam where the groom brings his bride-to-be along as they are bestest mates.
Lost Memory
More than Senator Callely has problems with mobile phones and bills. The BBC had to admit that since 2008 more that stg£240,000 – the equivalent of 1,656 TV Licences were lost or stolen in the last two years. BBC staff reported in that time that 146 laptops, 65 mobile phones and 17 Blackberries went missing. One staff member was investigated over the theft of a laptop but could not confirm whether any staff was disciplined. A BBC spokesperson said – crime prevention is promoted across the BBC but we are a large public organisation with thousands of visitors every week.
Perfection
The BBC were to launch a new game show in a daytime slot with the unfortunate title of Perfection, but after filming 26 episodes of the 30×45 minute series, they had to junk more than three quarters of its footage after it discovered that some contestants had had an unfair advantage during production. 12 Yard Productions an ITV indie who are making the series under contract to BBC2 will have to carry the considerable cost of the re-shoot.
