Yes I know it's Friday, I know many of you will be champing at the bit to hotfoot into the pubs and bars of Great Britain to binge drink a toast to the end of another successful working week, but wait! ... Spare a moment for those poor souls among us who will spend this Friday night working: the paramedics, the policemen, the bar staff and doormen and nurses and doctors, the entertainers and actors, the prostitutes and taxi drivers and, most importantly, me.
Think of us as you plan your evening of high revelry and excitement with your pals out on the town, stuck in our jobs, noses to the grindstone, making life better Just For You. "Oh!" I hear you cry, "Is there some fund into which I can pay some monetary exclamation of gratitude to these poor unfortunates?" Sadly no - but perhaps, in sympathy, you can do this:
Don't go out. Stay in and watch telly. I tell you what, to encourage you join in the Mass Sit-In In Solidarity With Those Who Have Jobs Which Mean They Have To Work On A Friday Night (a movement hereafter refered to as MSIISWTWHJWMTHTWOAFN) here are the picks of tonight's TV from this week's Guide. See? It's not only socially responsible what you're doing? It's also fun!
Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky 9pm, BBC2 Sympathies switch this week from ruined Bob to the cause of his love-sickness, prostitute Jenny. Entitled The Siege Of Pleasure, the second part of Patrick Hamilton's bleak trilogy shows the beginnings of Jenny's demise: the point at which she was faced with a clear choice between virtuous living and sinful vice. It could all be mistaken for a simple morality tale, but there's much more bite in the deceptively simple dialogue, reminiscent of modern Mamet. Zoe Tapper, like all the main actors, is immensely watchable, and the recreation of 1930s Britain excellent.
Clare Birchall
Taggart: Cause And Effect 9pm, ITV1 This seems like a throwback: there's been a murder — orchestral stab! Orchestral stab! But it does remain bafflingly popular, so here we go with another series. When pretty young Margot Phelps is brutally murdered, her argumentative husband Todd is in the frame — but his alibi, a rich businessman called Archie, also wants him dead. And the body count begins mounting after a former policeman, the ex-husband of Todd's accountant Lucy, is found battered to death.
Ali Catterall
Swinging 10pm, Five Five's tumble towards late-night respectability takes an awkward, yet intermittently funny step with the second instalment of this sketch show concerning, well, just sex. There's a full range of squirm-inducing characters and comedic riffs, all playing fairly successfully upon Britain's varied peccadilloes — from the obligatory sketch concerning useless sex education ("Here's the mummy's tummy"), to a running gag about "that special treat you've been asking for", via homemade porno, and snobby doggers.
Joss Hutton
Joe Zawinul: A Musical Portrait 9pm, BBC4 Founder of Weather Report and a key collaborator in Miles Davis's fusion period that saw him create Bitches' Brew, Polish jazz legend Joe Zawinul may have ushered in an era of hideous, amplified noodling but he himself was, and remains, an exploratory figure superior to all of that. Now 71, Zawinul keeps himself limber with boxing workouts and recounts his upbringing when, as a young jazzman exposed to Dizzy Gillespie, he turned "racist — I didn't like white music, only black music". Budgetary considerations, however, hamstring this programme, over-padded with contemporary performance and desultory home footage, where archive film and analysis would have been more welcome.
David Stubbs
Taxi Zum Klo (Frank Riploh, 1981) 12midnight, FilmFour Mark Kermode introduces the first-ever uncut screening of this brave and much-banned autobiographical arty gay classic, a thoughtful and beautifully crafted film as well as an extremely explicit one. It covers the double life of its Berlin-based director: by day Frank is a popular, effective and committed teacher; by night he's a leather queen, cruising the bars and toilets of the city in search of promiscuity and adventure. He agonises over his inability to stay faithful to his boyfriend, helps stray junkies, and solves problems concerning his pupils and their parents. Those squeamish about looking at an inflamed rectum close up, however, might want to stay away.
Will Hodgkinson
Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers (Philip Kaufman, 1978) 10pm, Sky Cinema 1 Following in the footsteps of Don Siegel's 1956 sci-fi classic, Kaufman rings enough changes to keep the viewer interested, and jumpy. The pods from another planet which grow into replica people are transposed to a trendy San Francisco where neuroses are already at epidemic levels: who could spot an alien? Good nervy acting from Donald Sutherland and Jeff Goldblum.
Paul Howlett
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Actually - that lot wouldn't even persuade me, and I barely ever need persuading to sit in front of the tellybox ...
Oh go on then, go out - just don't tell the other members of the MSIISWTWHJWMTHTWOAFN extremist wing that I said you could. They'll sit on me.
