TV: BBC At Edinburgh: Limmy
One of this year’s greatest pleasures has been watching the transformation of Brian Limond from little-known cult oddity to polymath man of letters. In this Edinburgh show he milks his new status for all it’s worth, offering amusingly derisory hat-tips to some old favourites from Limmy’s Show (Falconhoof, Raymond Day, Dee-Dee) before getting down to the serious business of flogging his book, Daft Wee Stories. The tales he treats us to are indeed both daft and wee; happily, they’re funny, peculiar and original, too. And Limmy’s a likable and natural stage presence.
Video: Questionable Science
What if Matthew McConaughey could fly? It’s a question we’ve probably all asked ourselves at one time or another. And it’s posed again in the latest of these Rich Fulcher comedy shorts. Fulcher takes on the persona of a needy science professor, theoretically there to interrogate the burning issues of the day (see also What If Sneezing Were Racist?) but essentially to goof around in his singularly absurd style. Good fun.
TV: Pop Art Season
“It can be as deep or as shallow as you want it to be.” That was Alastair Sooke’s verdict on pop art in the centrepiece documentary of BBC4’s enjoyable recent season. But it works as a decent summation of the season as a whole, which encompassed a quirky exploration of Andy Warhol’s daily routine, a thoughtful examination of graffiti through the ages and a look of British pop art mainstay Peter Blake at work. It’s worth checking out BBC Radio’s offerings too – they included celebrations of the movement’s major figures and Fifteen Minutes, a play about the last days of Warhol’s Factory.
TV: Critical
Jed Mercurio’s medical drama starring Lennie James delivered frantic, cheerfully overwrought entertainment. The premise was a real-time white-knuckle ride through the “golden hour” during which the majority of trauma victims can be saved. It did, however, extract a high price from the squeamish in the shape of several fearsomely realistic medical set-pieces in every episode. Sadly the show’s been cancelled, so these episodes will have to stand alone.
Sky On Demand
TV: The Scandalous Lady W
This year’s “event” BBC costume drama (to date) saw Natalie Dormer star in a rendering of the remarkable life of inadvertent sexual pioneer Lady Seymour Worsley who, in 1781, risked financial and reputational ruin for love. A traditional period piece with very modern resonances.
