TV Pick of the Week
Southcliffe, Channel 4's new four-part drama about a spree killing in an English village, was always going to be too relentlessly bleak for some tastes. However, if you could stomach the storyline, the first two episodes of the series (oddly scheduled on successive evenings) were utterly captivating television.
Unflinching, bold and harrowing, it posed uncomfortable questions and didn't hold back or censor the experience for viewers.
Sean Harris's performance as local outsider 'The Commander' was pitch perfect and scarily real, while Rory Kinnear as homecoming TV reporter and Anatol Yusef as sleazy cheat Paul, who loses his family in the tragedy, are also worthy of special note in a series that is overflowing with stunning actors and gut-wrenching moments.
Yes, the lingering camera shots were possibly a bit over-egged. And, yes, the regular jumping backwards and forwards in time was slightly frustrating. However, both these minor quibbles are easily forgiven because there hasn't been and won't be a scarier TV show all year.
There wasn't violence, blood or chills. Instead, Southcliffe captured the imagination with a script that played on a fear that everyone must have had after watching shooting tragedies from around the world in recent years - what if that was me? Or what if it was a member of my family?
What to Read Next
How the show follows up the tragedy and deals with the grief and mourning of the victims' families is going to be must-watch TV over the next two weeks.
Grim TV? Definitely. But is it any good? Yes - it's bloody brilliant.
Southcliffe continues on Sunday nights on Channel 4.
TV Turkey of the Week
From the opening shot of famous-five-years-ago popstar Jamelia warbling her way through Queen's 'One Vision', while Micky Flanagan and Frank Skinner shuffled from foot to foot and clapped their hands like drunk uncles at a wedding, it was pretty obvious how big a disaster the BBC's new Saturday night show I Love My Country was going to end up being.
More harrowing than anything in Southcliffe, the panel show (I think that's what it was supposed to be) mixed dire gags, dull games and a Butlins Redcoat-style presentation to create a toxic cocktail of TV garbage.
Putting a Yorkshire pudding on a map to locate Peterborough, puns about guest Charlotte Salt's not particularly unusual or amusing surname, Fatboy from EastEnders thinking the spoon was invented in 1967 and the first ever (and hopefully last) game of pass the parcel on primetime telly were just a few of the lowlights. Did the laughs ever stop? They never bloody arrived.
Created by someone moronic in the BBC who believed the highlight of last year's Olympics was the flag-waving and jingoism rather than the sport, the only public service that this series can possibly provide is persuading a few BNP goons to hand back their membership out of shame.
I Love My Country continues on Saturday nights on BBC One.
Strictly Got The Who Factor
The BBC's decision to reveal the identity of the 12th Doctor on a surprise last minute TV show was a PR masterstroke. The hiring of the sublime Peter Capaldi was also a masterstroke ("You Daleks are as much use as a marzipan dildo!").
Unfortunately, the execution of it all, with a 'glitzy' studio production hosted by Zoe Ball, varied between being butt-clenchingly awful and cheap and ropey.
You get 5th Doctor Peter Davison in the studio, but you then squeeze him out of the conversation and avoid any interesting discussion by whacking Lisa Tarbuck and the kid from Outnumbered alongside him on the sofa.
You invite former companions, Steven Moffat, Matt Smith and Colin Baker to provide VT interviews, and then you throw in Bruno Tonioli, a kid from EastEnders and Jo Whiley. Even after 50 years of success, the BBC still clearly doesn't believe in or trust sci-fi as a genre.
People having intelligent discussion about a popular show on one of the biggest nights in its history? No, people won't like that. Let's chuck in some references about Harry Styles being the next Doctor, a bucket of ticker tape and the former host of Live and Kicking.
The only relief for Doctor Who fans was that this was a clear reminder of how bad things could have got for the series in the '90s if the show hadn't been axed.
We'd have had Noel Edmonds revealing Jim Davidson and John Virgo as the new Doctor and assistant, while Mr Blobby danced around and hurled gunge at everyone. I'd better stop now before I give the BBC any ideas about Doctor number 13.
What has been your TV highlight or TV turkey from the last week? Let us know below.
