Rio Olympics BBC1/2 | iPlayer
Flying to the Ends of the Earth C4 | All 4
First Dates C4 | All 4
Fleabag BBC3 | iPlayer
The most troubling sight of the week came courtesy of the Rio Olympics coverage, when Dutch cyclist and leader Annemiek van Vleuten was thrown from her bike during the women’s road race on the same course where male riders crashed previously. The cameras captured the instant that Van Vleuten crumpled against the concrete, and lay horribly still. Another Dutch rider, Anna van der Breggen, won (GB’s Lizzie Armitstead was fifth), but, for viewers, it might have been difficult to concentrate on anything other than the fact that they might have just witnessed the sporting equivalent of a snuff video. Within a day or so, Van Vleuten (who suffered spinal fractures) was tweeting pluckily from the hospital, but I agreed with former gold medallist Chris Boardman, interviewed after the race, who was angered by the safety issues with the course. The Olympics is supposed to be about sporting excellence, not turning athletes into piles of human Meccano.
In other Olympic news, medals rained down on British swimmers and divers, including Adam Peaty, Jazmin Carlin, Siobhan-Marie O’Connor, Jack Laugher and Chris Mears, and Tom Daley and Dan Goodfellow. Note to Daley – if those trunks get any tighter, we’re going to have to ask designer Stella McCartney to cut out the middle man and just tattoo them on.
With all the British achievements, pundit and former gold medallist Rebecca Adlington was permanently in a state of dizzy tearful pride – like a hip young auntie at a school sports day. Elsewhere, US swimming legend Michael Phelps, on his stated final Olympics, celebrated winning by crouching in the pool and flexing his arms like a water-bound Incredible Hulk. All he needed to do was growl: “You wouldn’t like me when I’m smelling strongly of chlorine.”
The series Flying to the Ends of the Earth is fronted by 2012 Paralympics presenter Arthur Williams. A former royal marine paralysed in a car accident in his early 20s, Williams learned to fly (“Why would you let a small thing like not being able to feel two-thirds of your body get in the way?”), and was shown travelling by small plane to some of the most isolated regions of the globe. Did I say “plane”? These were such worryingly flimsy structures that they could have been made of graph paper by a bored pupil in the back of a year 10 geometry class.
If your nerves could cope, it was fascinating to watch Williams plane-hopping around assorted South Pacific islands – one devastated by a cyclone, another turned into a luxurious holiday resort costing $2,600 a night, and so on. Among the people Williams met were a village elder-cum -volcano-whisperer (seen attempting to talk the volatile Mount Yasur out of erupting), and a flying bush doctor who extracted a tooth while the whole village avidly watched as though it were a dental-themed West End show.
There was a difficult moment when a village woman told Williams that she could cure his paralysis. (“Intense,” he admitted softly). However, Williams is such an engaging, upbeat presenter that half the time you forget he’s paralysed. It’s a sharp reminder to see his wheelchair dragging laboriously through soil or sand.
First Dates has returned, and enthusiasts like myself know the drill by now. One of the prospective singletons purposefully walks to reception towards either true love, or, failing that, a half-decent chocolate bombe. The other person sits at the creepy chrome bar reminiscent of The Shining, nervously over-ordering mojitos. Then there are the words of schmaltzy love-voodoo from maître d’, Fred Sirieix – the self-anointed Cupid of the bread basket. The now-obligatory half-time phone call in the loos where the date is either eulogised or shredded. The tricky scrabble over the bill. The devastating “moment of truth” in the post-dinner interview (a trapdoor beneath rejected participants might be more humane?). The awkward hailing of two taxis for the disenchanted, or the triumphant “shared cab” for the lovebirds, all concluding with potted updates that tell you how the couples have fared since.
First Dates is reality television simmered gently, with wonderful results. Like actual first dates, it can be the stuff of dreams, a slow dance of the damned, and everything in between. On this edition, a podiatrist and her date demonstrated that banter has ramped up a notch during the Tinder-era (“Tell me something you wouldn’t tell your parents?” “My bum is out of bounds”). Meanwhile, older couple, Joe and Dee flirted up a storm. Dee had foxy lilac glasses and a spritz of glamour. Joe, studying for a history degree, wanted Dee to know that he didn’t “always” need Viagra. Elsewhere, gay Irish Tourette’s sufferer Damian kept shouting “Ginger!” at his beautiful black date, Kai. Both men had suffered from depression, and were as careful, truthful and tender with each other as you could hope for. “I’d be excited to introduce you to my friends,” declared Kai, and, according to the update, he did. Lovely.
A few episodes in, there’s still time to catch up with the strange, bleak, hilarious Fleabag, lurking on iPlayer. Written by and starring Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Crashing), the eponymous heroine speaks straight to camera, and is, by turns, cynical, playful, impulsive, bitter, haunted and vulnerable, as she has casual sex with inadequate men, masturbates to Obama speeches, worries that her anus is super-sized, runs her financially ludicrous cafe business (Fleabag has the least realistic sitcom lifestyle since the cast of Friends), sponges from her uptight sister (Sian Clifford), and steals stuff from her odious stepmother (Olivia Colman, dripping passive-aggressive).
There are inevitable comparisons with Sharon Horgan and Lena Dunham, but Waller-Bridge seems determined to plough her own eldritch and mischievous furrow. Last week Fleabag attended a ghastly “Female-only ‘Breath of Silence’” retreat, coming across her bank manager (Hugh Dennis) at his own grisly “Better-Man” event (“I’m just a very disappointing man”).
At times, Fleabag, still grieving, flashes back to her dead best friend, at which point she’s exposed as the walking, talking weeping sore she truly is. Fleabag isn’t perfect (this episode was the lightest on belly laughs so far) but it’s witty, textured, poignant and offbeat – a hidden gem it would be a pity to miss.
