Going home

For the last couple of years or so, Ashes to Ashes has been the only must-watch programme on TV for me, and last night's final episode certainly lived up to its billing.

DCI Gene Hunt's world, it turned out, was a kind of purgatory for dead cops, with Gene as the guardian angel trying to usher them all into pub heaven while his nemesis Jim Keats, a thinly-disguised Satan, attempts to send them to hell/oblivion/a nightclub where Club Tropicana is playing on endless loop.

Some will no doubt think it's a bit of a cop-out but speaking personally, I find the idea of the afterlife a lot more believable than the idea of time travel. Then again, as a Christian, I suppose I would do.

Heaven is a concept which, like most people, I sometimes struggle to understand. Who can even begin to fathom what it is and what it might consist of? But in my limited human understanding - and at the risk of being slightly subversive - I find the idea of heaven as the inside of a warmly-lit pub as good a metaphor for paradise as anything...

Not cricket

I don't want to take away from England's now near-certain victory in the First Test against West Indies - "West Indies get first taste of Onions" was my favourite headline on the match - but I can't get excited about it, for two reasons.

Firstly, it's on Sky, and therefore watching it would entail giving money to the man who has done more to debase British journalism and politics over the past 30 years than any other single individual, but I've been here before.

The second reason it all leaves me rather cold, however, is that Test cricket really shouldn't be played at this time of the year at all in my view - at least, not in England.

Early May is surely a time for tying up the loose ends of the football season before the summer sports take over, and for cricketers to try to score 1,000 runs for their county in a bid to force their way into the Test team. Or am I beginning to sound like my dad?

Don't forget the Pogles

Okay, so I'm a bit late on this - I was in London yesterday for a day-long newspaper awards-judging session - but most of the well-deserved Oliver Postgate tributes this week have focused on his classic shows Bagpuss, Ivor the Engine, Noggin the Nog and The Clangers.

And yes, they were all brilliant - especially The Clangers which coincided with the Moon landings and briefly became terriby topical and zeitgeisty around about 1968/69. Despite this I was rarely allowed to watch it as my dad found the "swanee whistle" sound made by the knitted creatures intolerable and invariably switched channels if he came into the room while it was on.

But my own personal favourite Postgate show has received relatively little mention in the national press over the past couple of days. This was Pogles' Wood, the gentle tale of woodland folk that was screened between 1966 and 1968 as part of the Watch With Mother series.

Children today would probably find it too gentle, too uneventful when set against the delights of Me Too, Balamory and so on. To my four-year-old eyes, though, it was simply magical.

But those looking for an assessment of the political significance of Oliver Postgate should look no further than the increasingly must-read blog of Independent on Sunday political editor Jane Merrick.

With more and more MSM writers launching themselves on the blogospehere, Jane has carved out a notable niche for herself of late. Her blog may not necessarily always be the most authoritative to emerge from a national newspaper, but it is, by some considerable distance, the funniest.

Now give Sergeant a proper job

Ex political hack John Sergeant has doubtless provided the nation with much entertainment during his stint on Strictly Come Dancing, and his parting shot at those who persisted in taking the wretched programme far too seriously was as graceful as his dancing was grace-less, but perhaps the BBC should take this opportunity to give him a proper job.

Two possibilities spring to mind. He has been by far the best of the numerous temporary presenters used by Have I Got News For You since the demise of Angus Deayton, and his appointment as the permanent replacement could restore the show to its former glories. Alternatively, he could take over Question Time, which is badly in need of someone of Sergeant's political nous after more than a decade of Dimblebore.

Spot on, Gordon

I generally think Gordon Brown should steer clear of involving himself in English sporting matters. Although I am sure it is well-intended, the public seem to think it's rather insincere and I am not at all sure that the players appreciate it either.

I remember feeling desperately sorry for the Prime Minister when he attempted to shake hands with one of the England rugby team during last year's World Cup and was ignored. Although in my view the player in question displayed the height of rudeness, the truth is Brown would have been well-advised not to have put himself in that situation.

All that said, however, it is very hard to disagree with Brown's comments on the non-availability of terrestrial highlights of last night's England-Croatia game, in which the national side suddenly appeared to rediscover its self-confidence after months of dire performances.

Seven years ago, I watched England and Michael Owen demolish Germany 5-1 with Gill and an old university mate who was staying the night at our old house - a truly memorable evening. Last night, when we should have been watching England and Theo Walcott demolish Croatia, we were forced to make do with Ainsley Harriott on "Who Do You Think You Are?" instead. No disrespect to Ainsley, whose revelations about being descended from a white slave owner were indeed shocking and compelling, but it didn't quite compare.

Pay-TV station Setanta, which now inexplicably owns the rights to England matches despite having an audience of little over 1m, had apparently agreed beforehand that it would show highlights on its free-to-air channel. But they then went on to take the complete piss by showing highlights of the Wales and Scotland games first, and not showing the England highlights until well gone midnight.

Unfortunately, we sold the pass on "Crown Jewels" sporting events such as World Cup matches being shown on terrestrial years back, largely as a result of pressure from Rupert Murdoch. Highlights are a different matter though. It should not be beyond the power of the regulators to ensure they are shown the same day.

As for England's great performance, and today's coverage of it in the national press, I think I can feel a Private Eye apology coming on....

"This newspaper, in common with all other newspapers, may have given the impression that Fabio Capello is a hapless buffoon who was leading English football into a new dark age. We now realise that Mr Capello is in fact a managerial genius who is worth every penny of his zillion-pound salary and is certain to win us the World Cup in 2010."

Rough justice

The BBC drama Criminal Justice completed its run last night after having me and around 4.8m other viewers on tenterhooks for most of this week. If this doesn't win Baftas galore next year, I'll be amazed.

Basically the premise behind the programme appeared to be that everyone in the criminal justice system is bent except the defendant, Ben Coulter, and his gorgeous, idealistic 26-year-old barrister Frances Kapoor, played by Vineeta Rishi. I for one find this premise entirely believable.

Some found it too hard to watch in its searing portrayal of prison life and the evil that men are capable of. Watching a prisoner trying to conceal a smuggled mobile phone up his arse during a low squat I could probably have done without, likewise the scene in which heroin is forcibly injected into Ben by the other prisoners.

This was one of the less believable aspects of the production. I'm no expert on smack, but I would have thought that directly injecting it into the veins of a first-time user would more than likely be fatal.

The highlight of the whole thing for me was the performance of that marvellous actor Pete Postlethwaite. His character Hooch was the real hero of the piece, and his ultimate decision to put himself on the line for Ben carried shades of Sydney Carton's "far, far better thing."

Ben's ultimate fate was left hanging in the air. Would he be able to move on with the rest of his life, or would his experiences inside leave him irreparably damaged? This programme was something of a mind-fuck, but it was Ben's mind that was being fucked with as well as ours.

The right man wins

No, I don't mean Gordon Brown and 42 days, I'm talking about Lee McQueen and The Apprentice. And here, for anyone who missed it, is that famous Reverse Pterodactyl impersonation.



Incidentally Charlie Brooker had an interesting take on this exchange between McQueen and Paul Kemsley in his Screenburn column last Saturday. I record this in full below as I agree with every word of it.

"While we're on the subject of Lee, there was a glaring example of the show unfairly setting him up to look like a prick the moment his interview kicked off, when Johnny Vegas asked him to impersonate a pterodactyl, then sneered at him for not taking the interview seriously as soon as he did so. What is this, Guantánamo Bay? Why not really dick with his mind by asking him to take a seat, then kicking it out from under him and calling him a subservient seat-taking imbecile?"

So anyway, that's The Apprentice over with for another year. Lee may have deserved his victory last night, but my favourite candidate over the whole of this year's series was Jennifer Maguire, the self-styled "best saleswoman in Europe" who was fired after ballsing up the Marrakesh bazaar task.

Irish Jennifer came over as a bit of an ice-maiden during the programme, but, judging by this report, that wasn't her true personality at all.

Boardroom farce

As someone who has followed every series of The Apprentice, it has been clear for some time that the quality of candidates in this year's competition leaves a little to be desired. They probably won't thank me for saying it, but I could look around my office and spot three or four people who would have made a better fist of it than the current lot.

So the fact that four of these no-hopers have been deemed worthy of a place in the final seems somewhat farcical to say the least.

A gruelling day-long series of interviews designed to eliminate three of the remaining five candidates succeeded only in revealing that £100,000-a-year business analyst Lucinda was "too zany" to work for Sir Alan, which, privately, most of us could have told him all along.

Then again, Sir Alan's decision-making in this series has been pretty idiosyncratic all around.

He fired pert Irishwoman Jennifer Maguire well before she had a chance to mess-up big time, got rid of nice-guy Rafe even though he won nearly every task, and kept the completely clueless Michael Sophocles in the contest until the third-from-last episode.

Of the remaining four, I hope Lee McQueen manages to win. Despite bullying Sara and lying on his CV, he deserves it. And apart from anything else, if he wins he might do his reverse pterodactyl impression again.

Well done Beeb

Credit to the BBC for joining in with the rest of us and having a laugh about Charlotte Green's giggling fit on the Today Programme this morning. I have to say I was in stitches myself as I listened to this in my car while driving to work, but it was coupled with a terrible fear, happily unfounded, that poor Charlotte was at that very moment being told to clear her desk by po-faced BBC bosses.

Anyone who has not already heard it can do so HERE.

Top marks also for Ashes to Ashes which ended its run last night with the dramatic revelation of...well, I won't spoil it for the benefit of those who want to watch it on i-player.

Suffice to say that, for me, the best bits of Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes have always been the dovetailing of the plot with musical references, and the use of Supertramp's 1979 classic Take the Long Way Home to emphasise that Keeley Hawes' Dr Alex Drake would not be getting back to 2008 in this series at least was inspired.

The egos have landed

Readers of this blog from way back will already be aware of my obsession with The Apprentice which returned to our screens last night.

First to be fired was toffee-nosed barrister Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, who appears to have changed his name from plain Nick Brown, although personally I think he was rather hard done-by.

More deserving candidates for the chop might have included hard-faced Irishwoman Jennifer Maguire, who informed us in complete seriousness that she was "probably the best saleswoman in Europe," baby-faced Kevin, who reckoned that fish have breasts, and whichever pillock it was who tried to cut up a fish-head with the knife the wrong way round.

It promises to be compulsive viewing as ever....

Five go adventuring again

Yes, they're back....but presumably without the lashings of ginger beer, farmers' wives who rustle up a whole picnic in five seconds' flat without expecting payment, scary black faces staring in at the window, and horrible smelly gipsies who haven't had a bath for weeks.

Battle of the bloggers

Tonight's Question Time Extra on News 24 will see Tory blogfather Iain Dale going head to head with Labour Home's Alex Hilton, the man who once claimed that the raison d'etre of the Conservative Party was "lining up the entire British working class and buggering them one by one."

Should be compulsive viewing.

Woss a waste of money

I frequently find Jonathan Ross's Friday night chatshow required viewing, but as a BBC licence-payer who presumably contributes to Wossie's huge £18m salary, last night's dreadful interview with Ashes to Ashes star Keeley Hawes left me feeling distinctly shortchanged.

Hawes is one of the most talented young actresses this country posesses yet Ross chose to treat her with utter disdain. I don't blame Ross for the fact that he clearly fancies the arse off her - so do half the men in Britain between the ages of 30 and 45 as far I can work out - but as a professional interviewer, he perhaps could have made it a little less obvious.

The sum total of his interview was basically as follows: Do you and Philip Glenister end up getting it on in Ashes to Ashes, what was that "lesbo thing" you were in a few years ago (it was Tipping the Velvet), and do you feel any differently about enacting lesbian sex scenes as straight sex scenes - a crass question since Hawes is on the record as saying she is bisexual.

"We learned absolutely nothing about her," was my wife's comment afterwards. What we did learn was that Jonathan Ross, apart from being an overpaid oaf, clearly gets off a bit on the girl-on-girl stuff.

QT review

Actually, for once Question Time wasn't the best thing on telly last night - that was Ashes to Ashes, the follow-up to Life on Mars with Keeley Hawes' Alix Drake replacing John Simm's Sam Tyler in the role of present-day cop who travels back in time to an era where the policing may be less enlightened but the music is just ace. Doubtless Paul Burgin will have a more in-depth review on his blog by tomorrow morning.

So what of QT? Well, new Culture Secretary Andy Burnham had the job of keeping the government's end up and he was deeply unimpressive. He particularly struggled when asked to defend Caroline Flint's bonkers idea to chuck the unemployed out of their council homes - a suggestion which seemed to have little support in the Liverpool audience - and also when put on the spot about Labour's potty plan to expel the four MPs who are demanding a referendum on the EU Treaty. Burnham does at least seem to have a bit of passion about him, as well as an element of Northern grit, but the overall impression is of an intellectual lightweight. I was left wondering what on earth Telegraph pol ed Andy Porter sees in him.

By contrast, Tory Chris Grayling did nothing to offset the view that he is one of his party's rising stars, helpfully pointing out that Ms Flint's housing proposal would actually be illegal in most cases in that local authorities have a duty to house children.

Liberal Democrat Julia Goldsworthy also impressed, answering each question with calm authority and common sense. She has an extremely useful personality for a politician - high intellect and natural authority combined with accessibility and warmth. I am convinced that barring accidents she will lead her party one day.

Businessman Duncan Bannatyne took a while to get into his stride. At the beginning he was stumbling over his words so much I wondered if he was pissed, but relaxed a bit after some playful banter with Dimbleby over his past donations to the Labour Party. He came over as an instinctive socialist, especially on the council housing issue, but took issue with his party over the EU referendum, posing the question whether they would chuck him out as well.

The real star, though, was Shami Chakrabarti who once again showed why she is Britain's favourite campaigner. Seemingly despairing of Labour over the "surveillance state" issue, she saved her best flourish till last, declaring that the job of EU president was probably "not grand enough" for Tony Blair. I think it was probably her diplomatic way of saying that she wishes the former Prime Minister would simply f-f-f-ade away.

Apparently Caroline Flint herself is on next week...

Just say no it ain't so

Bugger Super Tuesday, and even the supercasino decision...the story that's got me going today is the demise of Grange Hill after 30 glorious years.

I suppose deciding when to end a successful series is always a difficult call to make. Brookside clearly went on a few years' too long - the final episode was one of the most surreal experiences in the history of TV soap, but by then the producers were clearly taking the piss. And Eastenders, in my view, should have finished about five years ago when it still maintained a modicum of artistic credibility, before they started resorting to Dallas-style stunts like bringing people back from the dead.

If I'm honest, Grange Hill has probably passed its sell-by date too. The saddest and yet posibly most perceptive comment I have seen on its demise came from a commenter on the BBC website who said:

"Things have changed too much in both education and society. If Grange Hill were to reflect the lives of teenagers today it would need to be shown after the watershed and not during children's prime viewing slots."

Be that as it may, as a "first generation" viewer from the late 70s, nothing for me can sully the memories of Tucker, Cathy, Gripper, Duane, Suzanne and of course Messrs Bronson and Baxter, the kind of old-school teachers who simply wouldn't exist in today's education system.

Kylie in X-factor fix

I'm glad I'm not the only political blogger who watched the X-Factor, and I agree that young Leon Jackson probably couldn't lose after a skimpily-dressed Kylie Minogue took to the stage to duet with him in a smooth jazz version of her summer 1990 classic Better the Devil You Know.

Meanwhile, here (according to a poster on runner-up Rhydian Roberts' fan blog) is how the conversation between Kylie and X-factor judge sister Dannii might have gone....

Dannii: "Kylie we want you to sing with Leon"
Kylie: "Isn't he the one that you said almost wets himself on stage and sings flat?"
Dannii: "Yes, but...well Simon says he can do something with my career if you agree"
Kylie:" Hmmm"
Dannii: "Oh, and don't bother with clothing, just wear your underwear"

Tony Holland RIP

I'm a bit late in the day with this, but Tony Holland was in my view one of the foremost television figures of the last 30 years. He not only created EastEnders and most of its core characters (the Beales and Fowlers were based on his own family), he was the programme's creative driving force in the days when it was worth watching.

His contribution to British television over the last half century is matched only by that of another Tony - Tony Warren, the creator of Coronation Street when it, too, was a ground-breaking drama. Interestingly both men were gay, which may or may not have made it easier for them to write for what have always been primarily female audiences.

Stephen Poliakoff: Genius, or overrated?

Like Paul Burgin I am a huge fan of Stephen Poliakoff, and would rate his 2006 dramas Friends and Crocodiles and Gideon's Daughter among the best things I've seen on the telly since the 70s golden age of I Claudius, Bouquet of Barbed Wire and The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin.

But I couldn't help but feel a little let-down by the two more recent films, Joe's Palace, which was shown a week ago on Sunday, and Capturing Mary which had its first airing last night.

While both were brilliantly well-acted, as you might expect from an ensemble cast including the likes of Dame Maggie Smith, Sir Michael Gambon, Rupert Penry Jones, Ruth Wilson and Kelly Reilly, the storylines were exceptionally thin and at times downright unconvincing - for instance when, in Joe's Palace, Sir Michael's character enlists the help of a girl from the local deli (played by Rebecca Hall) to uncover a secret from his father's papers that has eluded scores of professional historians.

I personally think Joe's Palace and Capturing Mary would have worked better as a single film, with the latter shown as flashbacks as Mary unburdens herself to Joe in between the requisite bonking sessions involving Penry Jones and Reilly. It would probably have had to be about three hours long, but would, in my view, have had a much more substantial feel to it.

Poliakoff is of course being commissioned by the BBC to come up with this stuff, but I do wonder whether they are in danger of killing the goose that laid the golden egg, and whether the corporation might be better advised to cast its net a little wider when it comes to showcasing new drama.

Meanwhile, for anyone who loved Friends and Crocodiles and is also a fan of the seminal 1990s artpop duo Mono, here's a special treat.

Has House of Cards had a few lines cut?

Great to see House of Cards again on the box (BBC4) this week - but I had an odd feeling watching last night's concluding episode that the Roger O'Neill death scene in a service station toilet off the M27 had been cut.

My memory may be playing tricks on me, but in the original I seem to recall O'Neill staggering about for a while with a rather surprised look on his face after the mixture of coke and rat poison disappeared up his nose. Has good old Auntie decided that such scenes are now unsuitable for adult viewing, even on a digital channel after the 9 o'clock watershed?

The true story behind The Kipper and the Corpse

I have always been a huge fan of Fawlty Towers and The Kipper and the Corpse has always been one of my favourite episodes. But I never realised until I was subbing this tribute to Andrew Leeman on the national obituaries site I currently manage that the recently-deceased restaurateur was in fact the inspiration for the episode in question, and that John Cleese had named the "corpse" Leeman in his honour. You learn something new every day...