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Back to spooky

It’s Halloween this weekend which, in TV?terms, usually means a weekend of nothing in particular with a semi-horror film hidden among the dregs on ITV2 at 4am. I have long lamented the television schedulers for ignoring Halloween as an opportunity for getting out and dusting off those old screamers. It shouldn’t cost too much, they used to show them all the time, but for some reason the last weekend in October would go unmolested by screams, machetes and killers that just refuse to die. Hurrah for 2011 Halloween!

Saturday’s TV starts off pretty softy with Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past (Channel 4, 9pm), a romantic comedy turning Dickens’ Christmas Carol onto a rom-com tilt. For something more trash-embracing switch over to the much-abused Lesbian Vampire Killers (BBC4) for some Brit vamp camp com. Really quite recent and with a release date of 2009, this was absolutely trashed by the critics so perhaps perfect for those wanting something on in the background to set the mood while they get ready for an evening’s trick or treating. Read the rest of this article »

Smash hits

There’s something quite stomach-churning about watching a well-written drama, well-acted and thought-provoking, as told in the first person by a character that you don’t like. This is what I found when I watched the first episode of this eight-part adaptation of the bestselling novel The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas.

An Australian adaptation with a pretty star-studded cast featuring Jonathan LaPaglia from Cold Case, Sophie Okonedo from Hotel Rwanda, Melissa George from Grey’s Anatomy, and Alex Dimitriades from Neighbours (plus Heartbreak High, which was a distraction as I tried to place him), this initial opening episode sets the scene for the following seven and is told from the perspective of LaPaglia’s Hector. Read the rest of this article »

Play money

There’s a thin line between game show host and reality chat show host. Both take the line of a detached observer, but you’re pretty sure they still reckon they’d do a better job of the task in hand than the actual ‘real’ people struggling through. A live studio audience doesn’t help matters either, whether they’re shouting “higher” and “lower” or “get the DNA test!”.

With this in mind it’s hardly a surprise to see the shark of daytime TV,?Jeremy Kyle, has stepped forward to host a brand new big money quiz show. Read the rest of this article »

Golden Brown

T he signs were all there – a new series of Downton Abbey, brand new thriller on a weeknight Hidden starting, and some supernatural thriller getting into full pelt over on BBC3 (The Tides). Who needs leaves to turn a different colour to know that the seasons were changing, let alone Mavis at the water cooler harping on about how we’ve only had one hot day this year and called it ‘summer’? But here’s the real clincher that the nights are drawing in and those vest tops may be used as vests rather than simply tops before too long. Autumnwatch is back. Read the rest of this article »