The Square-Eyed Couch Potato: March 2011

"Harry Hill's TV Burp" (ITV) has ended its latest series. I previously said that the shark was circling around the show, but Harry's managed to pull the show to safety in its latest run. Unfortunately the shows he features aren't so great now, but that probably says more about the state of television at the moment than anything else...anyway the last 'fiiiiight!" was a star-studded extravaganza with the return of Wagbo and the Knitted Character. Oh, and Nobby the Lady Gaga-horse just totally cracks me up. "Coronation Street" (ITV) has been going through a bit of a rubbish patch of late. Too many characters I couldn't care less about, too much Steve McDonald and his two facial expressions, and a ridiculous fake-marriage plot involving Graeme, who was one of the best things about this show, and whose character has now gone down the same road as all the other so-called 'men' in the show. Why so many overpowering women and weak men? There have never been so many food-related programmes on TV, and for the total obsessives there's the Good Food channel. Where you can find a nighly feast for the eyes called "Choccywoccydoodah": it's a fly-on-the-wall look at life in the Brighton cake shop of the same name. But these are not just cakes, these are works of art. I totally love this show. I'm not usually too keen on British TV drama these days, but a couple of recent series worth a mention - "Marchlands" (ITV) and "Mad Dogs" (Sky 1). "Marchlands" was a very original mystery thriller, set in one house, occupied by three different families from 1968 to the present day, and how the death of a child in 1968 went on to change the lives of the house's future inhabitants. It could have been a bit shorter though, as at times it was all a bit too slow. "Mad Dogs" meanwhile had a cracking cast - reuniting Life On Mars' John Simm and Philip Glenister in two very different roles, as two of a group of friends who are caught up in a bizarre chain of events whilst on holiday at their friend's villa in Spain. Parts of it were unmissable, but sometimes it drifted aimlessly...and the ending was a bit of a letdown. Still loving "Louie Spence's Showbusiness" (Sky 1): especially the understated Louie himself, Andrew Stone, David 'Rich and Famous' Van Day, and Colin Evans the talent agent....could do without the mega-annoying Tricia Walsh-Smith though. She totally pulls this show down, in the same way she did in "Pineapple Dance Studios". Bring back Black Lad!