Millennium: The Musical

Being a Bob Godfrey fan can be a thankless task. Read more

Pig Heart Boy

At a time when the rural/fantasy axis of children’s drama is ever more dependent on co-productions (enjoyable though they may often be) and the urban/contemporary/realist axis has largely been brought down to a soapified Grange Hill and Byker Grove, with no identifiable beginnings or endings, the arrival of this adaptation of Malorie Blackman’s novel, a runner-up for the 1998 Carnegie Medal, was welcome. Read more

How Do You Want Me?

The second series of Simon Nye’s rural sitcom ended last night with something resembling a bang. Yet this is a series that seems to have gone largely unnoticed. Certainly is not one that has passed into bar-prop parlance. Read more

Modern Times

Like its predecessor 40 Minutes, Modern Times has always found space for a rather charming, old-fashioned view of “Englishness”. Read more

Sports Personality of the Century

The importance of sport in our society is rarely properly scrutinised. It is without question that we believe sporting stories are appropriate subject matter for our news vessels, sitting without incongruity beside matters of life and death. But then again, we often view our sport in Bill Shankly terms. Read more

Have I Got News For You

To the best of my knowledge, no one talks about Have I Got News For You anymore. Read more

Doomwatch

Channel 5 isn’t where you would expect to encounter challenging, quality TV. Doomwatch proved an unsuccessful attempt at subverting that assumption. It’s not that this programme was intrinsically bad, there was the essence of some fine aspirations faintly palpable somewhere within the thing, but ultimately it proved an ugly, uncomfortable spectacle. Let’s go back to the ’70s, again. Read more

Jonathan Creek

We all remember Saturday nights on BBC1 in the ’70s. Brilliant weren’t they? Saturday night was alright for Basil Brush, Tom Baker, Brucie and Parkie. Saturday night was BBC1 Night from Grandstand through to Match of the Day. Read more

Doctor Who Night

It was a cold wet night in November and what splendid entertainment. Read more

The Magician’s House

This one will sort out the men from the boys. Read more

Shockers: Déjà Vu

Billed as the first in a series of modern day thrillers, Marie Sullivan’s “Déjà Vu” served as an accurate roadsign of troubled ’90s one-off TV dramas. Read more

Scrapheap Challenge

Scrapheap Challenge is an inspired piece of television. I’ve never met anybody else who watches it or has heard of it. And they do not know what they are missing. Read more

Python Night

Well it was nice to see the boys again. Read more

The Big Breakfast

“Natural raconteurs” are invariably old and disappointing. No one is quite as sustainably off-the-cuff funny as perhaps you feel you have the right to expect, and certainly the description of The Big Breakfast’s Johnny Vaughan as a “razor-sharp wit” (as mentioned in a recent addition of The Big Issue) would seem to condemn that commentator to a life of unruly facial hair. Read more

Manhunt: The Search for the Yorkshire Ripper

This morning at approximately 2am, a gust of wind forced wide open my ajar bedroom window and closed – with a slam – my door. I started awake, and closed and bolted the window, and then checked my sitting room too. Read more

The Mark Thomas Project

Mark Thomas has stated in the past that he is the reason C4 is able to put out so many American comedies. Read more

Eureka Street

Eureka Street boasts an evocative score (like an elongated preamble into Blur’s Caramel) and fluid camera work. But is there anything else to it? Read more

The 100 Greatest TV Moments

It could have been worse for JFK. His assassination 36 years ago at least secured him a top 10 entry in The 100 Greatest TV Moments. Read more

Who Wants to be a Millionaire

This could be your last chance to catch an empty-the-pubs television programme. Who Wants to be a Millionaire is event-telly, it’s on the agenda of workplace and playground conversation, Chris Tarrant is the Bernard Quatermass of the ’90s whether you like it or not. And you probably don’t. Read more

The Living Soap

Two television genres collided on Friday night, with the welcome chance to revisit The Living Soap as part of BBC Choice’s theme week Manchester Revealed. Read more

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