And the shame was on the other side

I didn’t actually want to like Heroes. There are so many good American shows reaching our shores these days but each one demands over twenty hours a year of precious time. The vast majority have continuing narratives, so it’s not like you can dip and out like you could with the imported shows of yesteryear. They require commitment, though to be fair the better ones do manage to reward that level of dedication and it looks very much as though this latest kid on the block is going to be one of the better ones.

Apart from that, Neil has been banging the gong on this one for sometime over on Tube Talk so I sort of felt obliged to at least run the rule over it.

Actually that’s not true. I’ll come clean. As compelling as Neil’s recommendations seemed, it was actually the prospect of Final Destination’s Ali Larter playing an Internet stripper that actually aroused my interest. I know that’s shallow and sexist but hey, someone’s got to be now that Garry Bushell has thrown in the towel.

I was attempting to explain the concept behind the show to a pal the other day and “X-Men without the daft costumes” didn’t seem to cut it but this particular pal was a seventies child who seemed to peg it when he said that it sounded like a grown-up version of The Tomorrow People. He may have had a point. The truth may lie somewhere between the two.

What we have here is a disparate group of people who are developing strange and in many cases disturbing powers and having a really hard time coming to terms with it. As with Lost , though it also appears that something sinister is going on, not everyone is necessarily a good guy and there are a few odd coincidences to take into consideration along the way. The subtext is very much that all of these strange manifestations are somehow linked.

To be honest, despite some stand out stunts and the charms of Ms. Larter the opener seemed a little bogged down in setting the scene, so it was probably good idea to show it back to back with the second show where the pace was far livelier and the intrigue really began to take hold. The killer who takes his victims brains is a nice but graphically gory touch.

There are some smart ideas here and crucially some smart characterisations, which raise the thing way above its comic book roots. After the let down of Torchwood it’s good to see a sci-fi show that can be clever without sticking its tongue either in its cheek or somewhere more intimate. The downside is that there are so many strands to the story that it relies very much on the mood to make it seem cohesive. That approach works for me but it’s easy to see why some people won’t consider it the easiest watch in the world.

The major fly in the ointment for me is “lovable” time bending geek Hiro who is almost as annoying as “lovable” Rex is in Primeval.

Outpaced

It gets more and more difficult to write this column without chucking in the odd spoiler because so many of us are watching top shows at different paces. Tuesdays are a good example. If you’re having a water cooler chat about Life on Mars or Shameless on a Wednesday morning you can quickly find that you’re talking at cross purposes because many people stick with pace of the main channels and aren’t hip enough to have cottoned on to first look showings available further down the dial.

People without the Sci-Fi channel were actually putting their fingers in their ears to avoid Heroes talk ahead of an eventual appearance on the BBC, though it remains to be seen whether it’ll be scheduled anywhere it’s likely to pick up an audience.

Shame

As Shameless bowed out (E4 pace) with a feature length episode that seemed as concerned with setting up the next season as closing this one, I found myself pining for the days when this was really good, rather than the self parody it’s now descended into.

I suppose too many key characters have gone for us to expect the standard to stay as high but the descent of the Maguires from estate hard knocks to comic relief has been a difficult adjustment to take. The good news is that those departed cast members are spreading across the rest of our drama output and certainly enriching it.

We really have seen it all before

I suppose I’d have found Fear, Stress and Anger far funnier if it weren’t just the latest in a line of shows where a middle-aged man rails at life’s frustrations. It seems that Curb Your Enthusiasm has a lot to answer for.

To be fair, I did enjoy this – though nowhere nearly as much as Lead Balloon – but I think this came more for the playing than the actual script, with Peter Davison in quite a similar role to the one he played in a very similar ITV show recently, while Pippa Haywood always manages to make me laugh, no matter who dire the material is.

The problem is that I watch comedy so that I can forget about the pain of plumbers and car repair bills and aging relatives and all the other frustrating minutiae of life and this was hardly escapism.

Raving about Ravens

I’ve always had mixed feelings about Dead Ringers because I always admired the edgy work of Phil Cornwell but Jon Culshaw just gets right on my nerves. I’m not sure why but perhaps it’s the fact that when he appears on chat shows he seems to break into an impression of Tom Baker for no apparent reason.

My favourite though has to be Jan Ravens who was marvellous this week in the inspired skit in which our own dear Queen gets her own back on Helen Mirren by starring in Prime Suspect. It was a marvellous idea and executed with some wonderful disrespectful material.

Best of all though was Raven’s merciless sending up of Breakfast’s Kate Silverton, which encapsulated everything I can’t stand about the woman. The next morning, Silverton did a pre-Oscars interview with Helen Mirren that we found impossible to take seriously in our house in the wake of Raven’s wickedly on target performance.

The Robin Hood send up was particularly vicious. Cornwell did a great Keith Allen but then they were part of the same comedy gang once upon a time.

Great stuff.

Getting more lost by the minute

Just when I think I’m handle on the goings on in Lost, those pesky producers throw in another curveball, not that I’m complaining.

Deranged yachtsman Desmond, - you know, the Scottish one who insists on calling everyone brother – seemed to living his life over again – a bit like Groundhog Day. This experience has apparently left him with the ability to see snatches of the future, but it turns out than in a complete rip off of Final Destination death can’t be cheated.

It was good to have an episode away from “The Others” who’ve dominated this season a tad too much for my taste and it’s good that the show still has the capacity to surprise, even if it’s not being particularly original.

Mug punters

If you feel ripped off by Richard and Judy’s You Say We Pay then you really shouldn’t. It not as if you had much of a chance of winning even if they had stuck to the rules. At least if you did get through on that show, there was a modicum of skill involved in actually winning the cash, though our “lovable” hosts did tend to cheat like mad if someone is struggling. When they struggled though – they failed to identify Kiefer Sutherland the other day, even after cheating – you’d really had your chips.

At least the whole scandal has given them the opportunity to look apologetic and indignant at the same time and given Richard a chance to over emote, not that he ever needed an excuse.

So the good news is that refunds are on the way, the bad that most people will probably just spend them trying to win on GMTV or something. We are only in February and yet Channel 4 shows refunding phone money seems to be becoming a regular event. With debacle after debacle surely it’s time someone at what is after all a public corporation carried the can?

Back doing what he’s good at

I think it’s fair to say that the BBC has been squandering Graham Norton’s talents since his big money move. Some of the Saturday night dross he’s been asked to present would have far more suited to a Shane Ritchie type performer. I could tell you what I think of When Will I Be Famous but I’d struggle to do it without using really offensive language.

Now at last in the imaginatively titled The Graham Norton Show he’s back doing what he does best in an irreverent chat show that looks and feels very similar to his Channel 4 stuff, thank goodness. Norton’s easily at the top of his game when not shackled by the watershed and in this much looser format than the disappointment that was The Bigger Picture he’s back to his naughtiest and heavens be praised, funniest.

Now that he’s been given full rein again he seems far more relaxed and far more entertaining and even managed to squeeze interesting titbits from his rather bland American actor guests, Kim Cattrall and Elijah Wood, who somewhat refreshingly didn’t seem to be there just to plug something.

My only gripe is that the show seems a bit on the short side at half an hour. Maybe we could have an uncut or extended version on BBC Three and get a bit more value out of him.

Disappearing Sky

It seems that Sky News and Sky Sports News are about to become a rare species if they - as currently looks likely – vanish from many cable and Freeview homes.

I’ve got two Sky boxes, but I’ve got Freeview as well and most often use the free boxes for watching the news, though at least there an alternative available, and the sports news which I really will be irked about when it vanishes off my boxes; indeed I bought one of the boxes specifically so I could receive that service.

I’m really worried that as the animosity between Virgin Media and Sky gets ever more heated, it’s us poor viewers in the middle that are going to suffer. Cable viewers may soon be denied Sky One and hit shows like 24 and Lost. Let’s hope Virgin’s bouquet of channels isn’t similarly removed from the Sky service if things get really ugly.

I’m sure that spats like this go on all the time but the very public way this one is being conducted makes both parties look less than great and it's certainly undermining consumer confidence. That should be concerning Ofcom but frankly at the moment my 91-year-old granny seems less toothless.

This volatility in the digital market couldn’t have come at a worse time with digital switchover looming, leaving people new to digital worried and confused as to which service to take. I can’t help thinking that while Virgin and Sky battle it out so fiercely, they maybe shooting themselves in the foot at the same time as each other. No doubt new players like BT are watching the situation with interest.

Snippets

Yvette Fielding and Most Haunted were packed off to Transylvania this week. Sadly not on a one way ticket.

Judging by Jack Bauer’s efforts on 24 disarming a nuclear bomb is far far easier than say, setting up a wireless router. Of course he had Chloe to guide him through, we’d have to spend twenty minutes pressing the hash key and choosing option 4 before we got to speak to any one.

Does Chloe have to play every scene like she’s about to burst into tears?

I’ve been to the London Dungeon and can confirm that there’s nothing in there as scary as Ben off EastEnders.