How great is TV? It encompasses many different things for many different people. It can be the only friend to an elderly person, or the sole teacher for parents who can't be bothered with children. But more often than not, TV is generally what normal people like us at the hecklerspray bedsit and you use to while away the hours until you need to return to work.
It's a grim old life isn't it, but for those few hours a week, where characters prance around for our entertainment, every problem seems less important, and can be dealt with tomorrow. It's one of the reasons that Glee was so popular; the dancing and brightly arranged songs were a happy alternative to credit card bills and that Patricia in Human Resources.
Sometimes TV fails us, just look at Something For The Week, although people may say they like it, if it was popular it would still be commissioned and not destined to TV limbo. It traversed the popular hangover slot that June Sarpong ruled with her filthy laugh and iron grip, introduced the more successful elements of Jamie Oliver's career and folded it over to keep the air in. Like a meringue. And sometimes TV can be better than what that girl did behind the loos at Download Festival. There's countless light hearted police procedural shows that should be held in the annals of history as 'great', and a list of comedies that are so 'loltastic' that they'll probably be timeless. You can see yourself watching Friends in twenty years time. We all can. Although it'd be between shifts stacking shelves at Tesco for £2.56 an hour, it'll still be fantastic.
Recently, TV has definitely failed us; there's been some shining gems that have been incredibly entertaining, like BBC Four's Disco night two weeks ago, and most things that JJ Abrams are entertaining for a couple of weeks before it takes a degree in astrophysics and Stephen Hawking's phone number to understand what's going on.
The listings have been full of two-bit documentaries that want to "expose" a hidden agenda, or are just pointing out that The Queen has achieved a monumental amount in 60 years.
And then there's Cleverdicks. But be it bad or good, TV is a constant that has kept us all entertained for decades, so on that grandiose note, let's see what this week has in store for us.
Saturday
I'm A Pop Star! – BBC 2, 9:00pm
Slightly predictably, the star in Saturday's TV crown is the final part of the I'm In A… series that has already looked at Boy Bands and Girl Groups. This week it's inevitably the turn of solo artists; the lone wolves that stand their own against the numerous ranks of groups of pop pipsqueaks and their evil management teams. From the squeaky clean stars of the fifties like Cliff Richard and Bobby Vee through to modern day stars like Will Young, via Adam Ant and Kelly Clarkson, you're bound to learn something new or have that epiphany that some songs that Adam Ant were absolutely fantastic and can't quite type it into iTunes fast enough.
Sunday
The Boys From Brazil – Channel 5, 11:10pm
Any past reader of WATCH THIS! will know that Sunday nights are put together with such a lazy aplomb that even the production staff filming Maggie Smith or Alex Kingston saying cutting barbs doze off slightly. It's why there's a sleeping corner on most period drama sets. So this film, starring a hunky looking Steve Guttenberg, will blow your slanket straight off you. The premise is simple: Laurence Olivier is a Nazi hunter that uncovers a dastardly plot helmed by famous Nazi torturer Josef Mengele and sets about thwarting him from cloning Hitler's DNA. Thrilling, right? Now lets get a Nazi Hunter on BBC Sunday nights. Stick Judi Dench in the main role. Have Freema Agyeman as the double bluffing agent working for her. Great, right?
Monday
Scott and Bailey – ITV1, 9:00pm
Detective duos are the bestest: Cagney and Lacey, Batman and Robin, Jennifer and Jonathan Hart, Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis from Moonlighting, Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers, they each bring a great relationship to the grubby World of seedy prostitutes and fraud (austerity tells us that we should mention Jessica Fletcher and her typewriter), always seeing through the tough times by supporting each other. Like The Golden Girls with police warrants and regular periods. Scott and Bailey is ITV's newest attempt at capturing the delight that female orientated police procedurals have on ratings. If you missed the last series, fret not! Because you've not missed much. To quote the eponymous Disney detectives, "There's no case too big, no case too small, when you need help just call, Sc-Sc-Scott and Bailey, Rescue Ladies."
Tuesday
The Hairy Bikers' Bakeation – BBC2, 8:00pm
If there's one thing that the BBC seem to love its giving a chef a number of series that become more and more elaborate as time goes on. Rumour has it that in 2013 Nigella Lawson will be the first chef blasted into space, which will probably prompt Channel 4 to counter with sending Heston Blumenthal to the Mariana Trench where he can make helium filled glow-in-the-dark fish balloons. Until then though we have The Hairy Bikers, the World's least convincing homosexual couple travelling around Europe sampling the delights of what bread means to different countries. Don't ask us what you'll learn from this programme because we probably have no need to know what the Dutch call bread, or what Norwegians put in bread to make it gundundebrot. It's only our pick because there's nothing else on. Maybe you could repeatedly slam your head into the side of your dining table instead?
Wednesday
Superscrimpers: Top 10 Money-Saving Tips – Channel 4, 8:00pm
With the economy needing it's EpiPen and unemployment reaching staggering levels, everyone is literally full of doom and gloom about Britain's prospects. But do you know what we say? Screw Britain. It's just Olympics and Jubilees. Thats what we say. Who looks after the little people like the filthy inhabitants of the 'spray hovel? Or the families who can't afford a mortgage and a child? Well Mrs Moneypenny (we don't think that's her real name) thinks that she's is the fictitious character come to live to save our ailing bank balances and self esteem issues. She is going to show all of us some top tips to save some cash when we need it most. Financial gurus are ten a penny, so maybe we should turn Mrs Moneypenny and Martin Lewis and all those incredibly affluent financial gurus into something that we can use; lets melt them down and use as petrol.
Thursday
Mary's Bottom Line – Channel 4, 9:00pm
Just as we say goodbye to Alex Polizzi for a few months, what should we see on the horizon barreling towards in some elbow length leather gloves and that dress which she thinks is the best dress ever made, but obviously behind the one Elizabeth Perkins wore in The Flintstones Movie? Why it's the ginger bowl cut on legs, Mary Portas. Here to save our economy again. This time Portas is setting her beady sights on underwear. Yep. Underwear. She wants to reinvigorate Britain's failing manufacturing industry by setting up her own knicker maker machine, staffed by actual people with actual talents. Excellent. She plans to open a sewing room at an old Manchester factory and getting the seamstress who used to work there to teach her new apprentices to sew. Sounds awfully like a Coronation Street plot doesn't it? Let's hope that Tony Gordon doesn't blow it up like what he did with Underworld. That would be… awful.
Friday
Castle – Channel 5, 10:00pm
If you haven't seen Castle before, don't worry. We'll recap it for you so you don't feel left out.
There's this man, he's called Richard Castle. He writes crime books for a living, like Jessica Fletcher. One day he was asked to help the police with a case that was particularly baffling because it matches the plot of one of Richard's books. A bit like Jessica Fletcher. The chemistry that Castle and Beckett, a member of the police, has is the on again, off again type that American execs think will keep people entertained, even though it only worked that one time on Friends and didn't do Bruce Willis and Cybil Shepherd any good (two Moonlighting references in one article. Wow.). So Castle is basically Jessica Fletcher meets Friends. Which should be enough information to turn you into a zombie drawling "Caaaaaaastle" instead of brains.
This week there's some subterfuge surrounding a man who's shot dead on his webcam in the Arctic, except, get this, he's not even left Manhattan. The story can be as weak as a witch's breastmilk, because it gives you a chance to see hecklerspray's winner of 'The Hottest Man Who's Had More TV Shows Cancelled On Him Than Hot Dinners' Nathan Fillion before he has this one yanked out from under him. He was in Firefly and should definitely get our sympathy.
And that is, as they say, that. Is there anything that we've missed? Because if there is, perhaps you should tell someone who gives a toot.
N.B. It isn't us.
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