AE on Telly News (NEW CONCEPTS)

[Mick Harper]

Did you spot both Nick Watt and his interviewee were wearing North Face anoraks last night in the biting cold of a Westminster winter? You were supposed to. The BBC wants to go into product placement in a big way and they are trying it out first on Newsnight because (a) nobody watches it and (b) anyone who counts watches it. If there is no outcry they will start to roll the policy out. Tardis equipment with discreet Tag Heuer branding, that sort of thing.

I have written to the Culture, Media & Sports Committee on your behalf, saying we're all in favour.

[Grant]

Went to North Face once. It was four hundred quid for a jacket! And not a swanky jacket, but one that makes you look like a ten year old.

[Mick Harper]

That's quite enough North Face product placement here, thank you. The BBC have moved swiftly after reading my comments. They have just announced that 'as part of £400 million savings' Newsnight is to be reduced to thirty minutes and its 'specialist reporters' redeployed elsewhere. From now on the BBC's flagship news'n'comment programme will be limited to 'studio-based discussions'.

This is good or bad news depending what they mean by this. If it means no more Ben Chu et al at the Newsnight wall, it is thoroughly bad news. If it means no more Nick Watt bursting through the door with an update on the latest Westminster shenanigans, it's bad news. If it is an end to those ridiculous excursions to this constituency or that industrial wasteland to interview the locals selected to support the editorial line of Newsnight producers, it's the best news I've heard all day.

Still, when all's said and done, it's the end of an era.

[Mick Harper]

Anti-Social (BBC R$)

Take a look at my previous comment on the last airing of this because it pales in the light of this next one. Following a dust-up between a white man and a black woman on I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here, the dude tells us it's on how black women get given a hard time on line...

[Wile E. Coyote]

[Wile E. Coyote]

The Wild West Chronicles (Freevee, Prime)

This is the best TV I have watched since I was seven. This is because they have hit on the neat idea of creating mini westerns lasting 20 minutes each. There are no boring bits, you don't have to wait an hour before they decide to rob a stagecoach, rustle, or have a shoot out.

Each episode so far has featured Bat Masterson, a former Sheriff who has turned in his badge to become a newspaper reporter. Bat travels out to the wild west to interview witnesses to the ruthless outlaws and also the fearless lawman who have tried to hunt these critters down. It contains some of the best moustaches since Tom Sellick appeared in Magnum PI. It also has really valuable life lessons for wannabe outlaws.

"So your biggest mistake was not to tie up the horses close to the two banks you were intending to rob?"

"No, sir, that was a mistake, but the biggest mistake was to rob two banks in our home town"

The feared Dalton gang (with the exception of the youngest, who lives to tell the tale to Bat) get recognised and shot to pieces after a double bank robbery.... just short of reaching their horses.

It's a bit like Tales of the Unexpected, only predictable.

[Mick Harper]

I have been minorly captivated by this. It just goes to show that one great mind and another mind think alike.

[Mick Harper]

The Sketch Artist (Walter Presents to Channel 4+)

It's Canadian. Goodoh, at last! Something in English from Walter Presents. It's French Canadian. And Frogs, wherever they hang out, speak so fast you can hardly keep up with the subtitles.

It's got all your favourite tropes. The strong women (one in a wheelchair which counts double towards your quota), the old curmudgeon with the heart of gold, the black dude. How do you operate affirmative action in French Canada, I thought they were all disadvantaged to start with? How do you find a black actor fluent in French-Canadian? Darkish Muslims count.

How the hell do you get funding for a high production values crime series for the French-Canadian market? Ya think Channel 4C is a one-off? But is it worth watching for us Anglos? Yes, just about. It's pacey and the sketch artist bit is reasonably novel. Everyone in sight is so damaged it puts your own problems in perspective. I recommend it but not very warmly. Say, on a par with the Irish mob series on BBC-1. I mean, come on, organised crime in Ireland? They couldn't organise a field of potatoes.

[Mick Harper]

Sandbaggers (London Live)

This is a short-lived British spy series from the 1970's starring Roy Marsden. That tells you everything you need to know because he's an unprepossessive actor guaranteed to have no-one off his or her seat. In other words it's about real spies. Fifty-five minutes of jaded people running unrealistic schemes past jaded but more senior people before there is five minutes of action when it is shown that, yes, it was an unrealistic scheme. Highly recommended.

PS Look out for all the cups of tea being drunk from patently empty cups, and actors who can smoke realistically.

[Mick Harper]

The Three Musketeers (Netflix)

One always checks out a new production but, for me, this ended when, two minutes in, D'Artagnan took on lots of ruffians to defend Milady de Winter, watched by a crowd of people outside the local hostelry sheltering under twenty-first century umbrellas. Come on, chaps, you don't include the crew in the shot.

Actually I might have stuck with it a bit longer but currently I have to devote all my available TV-time to getting my digibox back down to 100%. I even forbore to watch the first West Indies v England ODI to the same end when I saw we've put out our second eleven. It's come to this, I'm afraid. In fact there will, as the government keeps saying, have to be further cuts. There are no sacred cows when needs must.

[Hatty]

Roy seems to have been a popular name for a particular generation but went out of fashion for some reason. My younger son was named for Roy Marsden who'd been on TV as the likeable if somewhat mournful detective, Adam Dalgliesh, in a series based on P.D. James' novels. The landlady of the first place we rented told me her late husband used to work alongside P.D. James (aka Baroness James of Holland Park) at the Home Office. She was on friendly terms with the widow of Roy Plumley who lived next-door.

[Mick Harper]

A remarkable piece of serendipity. Did you know that PD James would become the baroness of your local park? Not à propos in any way but I can commend without hesitation a novel by another lady-authoress, D E Stevenson's Miss Buncle's Book read here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001stzs

[Hatty]

It sounds like 'Miss Buncle' was cast in the same mould as our landlady, an unworldly and thoroughly kind lady. We had to move after Adam was born because the sound of a baby crying brought unwelcome memories as she explained apologetically.

[Wile E. Coyote]

Dr Who....(BBC/ Disney)

It's back, and wokier than a Bishop's sermon.

Wiley liked the game of Dodgeball at the end, it's just a shame that the super-inventive Celestial Toymaker lost.

Why do folks like the vain preening arrogant types like Roadrunner and Who?

[Mick Harper]

I'm not always up to Russian classics -- all them patronymics --and when I am they seem charming but vacuous. However I have to make an exception for and recommend to you Dostoevsky's The Double here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0010nn9 Possibly because it's been redramatised and given a modern setting. The bastard's only working for the FSB! Or both of them are, I didn't quite crack that part.