Friday, October 11, 2013
Regardless of the fact that the TV schedules are already rammed with the damned things, all sharing near-identical formats, television continues to spew out comedy panel shows. Channel 4’s…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 03:05AMFriday, October 4, 2013
For a civilization lost in the mists of time, Atlantis proved surprisingly easy to locate. All our hero Jason (Jack Donnelly) had to do was head straight down in a one-man submarine, turn le…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 03:35AMMonday, September 30, 2013
Watching Downton Abbey, it occurred to me that it is basically Boardwalk Empire but without the violence. Or sex. Or drama. ITV’s ratings juggernaut returned for a fourth series with a fea…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 06:08AMFriday, September 20, 2013
Jason Byrne has a very endearing quality about him, which is just as well, as his new sitcom Father Figure has precious little else going for it. Byrne plays a house husband attending to the…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 03:53AMFriday, September 13, 2013
I love BBC4. I truly, madly, deeply love it so much that when my brother-in-law recently suggested, in all seriousness, that it be replaced by a channel devoted exclusively to Formula 1 moto…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 03:43AMFriday, September 6, 2013
Sharon Osbourne has returned to The X Factor, and the show’s producers are not about to let anybody forget it. In the absence of Simon Cowell, Osbourne brings some much-needed star quality…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 04:00AMTuesday, August 27, 2013
Is everyone who took part in the First World War dead? Good, let’s desecrate their sufferings and sacrifices with a rubbish sitcom. I was really looking forward to Chickens, Sky1’s take …
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 04:30AMFriday, August 16, 2013
Primarily a comedy panel show, with elements of The Generation Game thrown in for good measure, I Love My Country stretches out over an arse-numbing 45 minutes, each more dismal than the las…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 03:50AMFriday, August 9, 2013
There is a great deal to like and admire about BBC Scotland’s two-part conspiracy thriller The Field of Blood. It has a feisty, likeable and vulnerable heroine in idealistic young journali…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 03:15AMFriday, August 2, 2013
I first saw ITV’s You Saw Them Here First, narrated by snarky Robert Webb, over on BBC1 when it was called Before They Were Famous, narrated by snarky Angus Deayton. The format, showing mi…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 03:57AMFriday, July 26, 2013
The Typhleotris is a freshwater fish that lives in Madagascar’s limestone caves, a habitat of such consummate darkness that nature has not bothered to provide it with eyes. But even the Ty…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 03:35AMFriday, July 19, 2013
Broadcast over consecutive evenings, Run followed the stories of four disparate and desperate characters in crisis on a south London housing estate, whose lives, and fates, are tentatively c…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 07:22AMFriday, July 12, 2013
Count Arthur Strong, the award-winning jewel in BBC Radio 4’s comedy crown, has moved to television, prompting much rejoicing and eager anticipation across the social networks. It would se…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 03:51AMFriday, July 5, 2013
Your Face Sounds Familiar is a terrible title for a terrible show in which not particularly famous celebrities get to perform not very accurate impersonations of pop stars. Remind you of any…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 04:17AMFriday, June 28, 2013
Congratulations to Andrea Begley for winning The Voice UK – The Live Final, defeating Leah McFall by popular vote. Not only was McFall the bookies’ hot favourite, but judges Jessie J and…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 04:00AMFriday, June 21, 2013
The actor’s life, it has been observed more than once, is full of swings and roundabouts. Take Max Irons, for example, currently cutting a dash as Edward IV in BBC1’s historical drama Th…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 04:00AMFriday, June 14, 2013
With the average age of Britain’s Got Talent contestants plummeting with each passing year, it will be only a matter of time before Ant and Dec won’t be able to move backstage for chaper…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 04:46AMFriday, June 7, 2013
“Secrets in a marriage are like dry rot in a house,” opines newly retired lollipop lady Pauline Paradise (Alison Steadman) to an off-screen interviewer. Her husband Ken (Duncan Preston),…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 05:23AMFriday, May 31, 2013
The award-winning Horrible Histories has returned for a triumphant fifth series, putting its distinct comic twist upon epochs long gone, plus a few that are, disconcertingly, more recent. In…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 04:38AMThursday, May 23, 2013
Like a cold car on a cold morning, Bonnie Tyler’s Eurovision Song Contest performance took a while to get started, but once she had left behind the vocal constraints of Believe in Me’s l…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 01:11PMFriday, May 17, 2013
Woody Allen once famously declared Nazis in shiny boots as being beyond satire. For esteemed comic musician Tom Lehrer, it was the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Henry Kissinger. For t…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 11:00AMMonday, May 13, 2013
“Those bastards have bombed my crime scene,” exclaims maverick police pathologist Dr Lennox Collins (Patrick Kennedy). The bastards in question being the Luftwaffe, the crime scene being…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 04:00AMFriday, May 3, 2013
Rape offers such a rich vein of comic potential that I am bewildered as to why the world of sitcom has overlooked the subject for so long. But not to worry, because Vicious remedies the...
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 04:00AMFriday, April 26, 2013
Comedy duo Watson and Oliver are back with a second series of sketches, despite the somewhat lacklustre reception their first outing received. So all credit to BBC Comedy for keeping faith w…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 04:30AMFriday, April 19, 2013
Britain’s Got Talent returned to serve up more of the same meticulously stage-managed emotional manipulation disguised as a talent show, with Simon Cowell, David Walliams, Alesha Dixon and…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 04:00AMMonday, April 15, 2013
God forbid I am ever diagnosed as terminally ill, but if it happens I shall be buying the complete series of Off Their Rockers and watching it on an endless loop. It wouldn’t actually …
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 04:01AMFriday, April 5, 2013
You’d think that after 16 years and 28 episodes, Jonathan Creek might itself creak a little – how many more variations on the locked-room mystery can there possibly be? – but nothing c…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 01:47PMThursday, March 28, 2013
“He doesn’t have the background knowledge to be a traitor. He was just trying to be funny,” protests Ethel Wodehouse (Zoe Wanamaker) on behalf of her husband, the world renowned writer…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 11:31AMFriday, March 22, 2013
If the prospect of yet another zombie thriller makes you want to dig your own grave, lie in it and pull a duvet of earth over your head, let me immediately reassure you that BBC3’s...
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 05:13AMFriday, March 15, 2013
Shetland. I ask you. What a mind-numbingly boring and unimaginative title for a drama. It would be dull enough if the subject matter were a pony or a pullover, but naming a police procedural…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 05:13AMFriday, March 8, 2013
I should like to declare a moratorium on all TV dramas concerning the devastating effect the death/disappearance of a young person has upon a small, close-knit and invariably photogenic comm…
SOURCE: The Stage Registration at 04:23AM 
