What To Watch On TV Tonight
Here’s our pick of the programmes gracing your screens this evening...
- Liberty Of London returns to Channel 4 at 9pm. We described it as a look at life in “London’s foremost mock Tudor-styled department store”, which is exactly what it is.
- Broadmoor (9pm, ITV) goes behind bars at the high-security psychiatric hospital tonight. In the second of a two-part series we see how patients cope with being transfered out of treatment in what’s sure to be a troubling hour of TV.
- Finally, Michael Portillo continues on his Great Continental Railway Journeys over on BBC2 at 9pm. In this episode he heads to Italy, travelling to Naples to find out about Italy’s first ever railway.
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Right Here, Wrong Mans
The trailer for series 2 of James Corden and Mathew Baynton’s excellent sitcom-slash-action-movie-parody is here.
In what seems like a pretty Christmassy teaser, it sees the pair banged up in a US jail, with the ever-exasperating Phil Bourne (played by Corden) ramping up the bathos by worrying about his Christmas shopping delivery needs.
If you’ve forgotten why on earth the pair are in this predicament (clue: it’s got something to do with a mysterious mobile phone and an office-hostage situation), then BBC2 are airing the entire first series again, beginning with a double-bill on Sunday at 10.30pm.
17 steps to understanding what this thing is
- James Franco has a band/art project with composer friend Tim O’Keefe named Daddy.
- They will soon be releasing an album called Let Me Get What I Want; and have just premiered the first single, This Charming Man, and its video on Vice (below).
- It’s not a cover of This Charming Man by The Smiths.
- Although it does feature former Smiths bassist Andy Rourke (and he plays on every track on the album).
- Instead, it’s inspired by a series of poems by Franco called ‘The Best of the Smiths: Side A and Side B’, which in turn were inspired by, yes, Smiths songs.
- Franco and O’Keefe have also made videos for all 10 tracks on the album.
- Which can be enjoyed separately or as an hour-long film.
- Although the film doesn’t have a beginning or an end, the whole thing technically being one big loop.
- Whichever way you view it, it’s about three characters: Tom, Erica and Sterling.
- James Franco’s mum recently ran a high school film class.
- Stay with me here.
- She got the students to write scripts based on Franco’s poetry series.
- The Let Me Get What I Want videos were then based on these scripts.
- But each video also opens with an artwork by Franco that he created at college.
- Said artworks were inspired by his 1993 high school yearbook.
- And some of the people in the pictures also appear in his poems.
- And that’s about it, really.
Julia Davis is in Morning; C4 gets Hunted
Channel 4 have commissioned a new sitcom from that mistress of misrule Julia Davis. Morning Has Broken stars Davis as a floundering breakfast TV host and may or may not be inspired by the current travails of Good Morning Britain. I’m doubly excited about this because a) Davis is absolutely ace in pretty much everything she does and b) the world of breakfast TV is bizarrely fascinating: one of my TV highlights of the year was BBC doc The Battle For Britain’s Breakfast, which told the story of the telly war between ITV’s haughty TV-AM and the Beeb’s rather more lowbrow Breakfast Time. It was full industry backstabbing, remarkable rises and falls, and Roland Rat. Hopefully we’ll get all that and more in Morning Has Broken (though perhaps not the rat):
In other C4 news, they’ve greenlit a new “part documentary, part thriller” called Hunted, which sees members of the public attempt to evade a team of expert Hunters who will surveil them using CCTV, the internet and various other nefarious means. It sounds a fair bit like 90s ‘hide and seek’ gameshow Wanted, but with an Edward Snowden-y twist:
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The long-awaited (and boy, do we mean long-awaited) return of the Wrens
Exciting news: brilliant but rarely seen indie mob The Wrens have signed a recording contract and have promised to release their long-awaited new album very soon. And when we say, long awaited, we mean it: only The Avalanches currently rival the Wrens in the ‘can you please release some new songs please?’ stakes, and they at least have that whole ‘sample clearance’ excuse to fall back on.
The Wrens’ last album, The Meadowlands, was released way back in 2003, and in my opinion is one of the best albums of the ‘00s, packed full of urgent, sad and wistful pop songs. They’re pretty spectacular live too: witness this Guardian 5-star review for their last UK tour in 2006.
Here’s a great Pitchfork feature on the band’s peculiar history. It’s good to have them back.
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Remember Me trailer: a spirited performance from Michael Palin
Here’s the trailer for BBC1’s Remember Me, in which Michael Palin swaps globe-trotting for ghost-spotting. It’s airing from Sunday 23rd, which means that Mark Addy will be owning your weekend for the next couple of weeks, seeing as Atlantis also returns this Saturday:
The day the Dapper laughter died
It’s over. Take down the banter bunting. There will be no more Dapper Laughs.
Following ITV2’s decision not to renew his series in the wake of allegations about the condoning of rape and sexual violence, ‘comedian’ Daniel O’Reilly officially retired his ‘character’ on last night’s Newsnight (video above).
Interestingly he did so dressed as The Day Today’s Jacques ‘Jacques’ Liverot:
Twitter had a lot of fun with O’Reilly’s appearance:
@stuheritage pic.twitter.com/87pCFjvVGG
— Patrick Lawless (@PatJ_83) November 12, 2014
Including an inevitable Too Many Cooks crossover:
I Too Many Cooksed last night’s interview pic.twitter.com/GuCHzDdEIe
— Stuart Heritage (@stuheritage) November 12, 2014
The interview itself was genuinely excruciating, with O’Reilly providing only the flimsiest of excuses for his concerted punching-down and Emily Maitlis ruthlessly exposing his general witlessness. Equally though there was a sense that this chump wasn’t the person we really needed to hear from. Why weren’t ITV called on to answer for this? After all, it was they who decided to give Dapper Laughs a national platform for his dated, end-of-the-pier lad humour. And it’s not as if that it wasn’t blindingly obvious that people would be outraged by Dapper Laughs On The Pull. Hell, we flagged it up as early as August:
Yet, even though Dapper Laughs is no more, the misogyny wagon trundles on, with some guy from a one hit wonder band that no one ever really liked taking the reins.
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