Today's Why Go Out? was going to be all about the Queen, bless her. See, I was going on the assumption that today was the birthday of her maj, seeing as there was all this television on tonight about her. But then I realised that it's not today, it's tomorrow. Her birthday, I mean. Tomorrow, and on some random date in June. Tut.
It makes sense, I suppose - if you're a TV channel and you're going to air knicker-nosing documentaries about the royals, you don't really want to do it on a Friday night, when they're all out on family pheasant-shooting expeditions to lapdance establishments. No, you want to do it when they're able to sit at home, slippered feet resting on a footman, eating posh crisps out of tupperware boxes, and they can properly enjoy watching the television programmes about how nice they are.
So I was going to be nice and say happy birthday to Mrs Queen, but now I won't, because she's being all awkward and deciding to have been born on a different day. So instead I say only this - Happy National High Five Day, everyone! Here are the picks for tonight's TV, taken from this week's guide. High five!
Vital Signs 9pm, ITV1 Tamzin Outhwaite, much better cast here than in the recent "style over content" Hotel Babylon, plays a working class mother with a passion for self-improvement. Rhoda Bradley, frustrated with her McJob as a checkout girl, applies as a mature student to medical school. Obstacles present themselves along the way -- a curmudgeonly doctor who's got it in for Rhoda, her sporadically supportive husband (Steven Waddington), and her three children in need of attention. It's an unremarkable yet surprisingly convincing drama that relies on us rooting for Rhoda all the way.
Clare Birchall
Ten Days That Made The Queen 9pm, C4 Long-winded trawl through our monarch's history, stopping off at 10 significant dates which have shaped her reign. Former aides and royal commentators are wheeled out again. Much is made of the time she cried when her big boat was taken away from her, thus proving to us that she is human and does have feelings. As with all royal documentaries, this has limited appeal. And it does go on.
Julia Raeside
Murder Squad 10pm, ITV1 Junkie kills old lady for cash sounds like a frothing Evening Standard hoarding, but that's the set up for this new fly-waller focusing on South London's homicide division. They have car chases, they call each other "Guv", and you can almost taste the methadone and Brut wafting from the screen. "Nothing like that ever happens round here!" exclaims a local, stopping short of "He was such a quiet smackhead, always kept himself to himself."
Ali Catterall
The 'Burbs (Joe Dante, 1989) 8pm, ITV2 Anarchic comedy that peeks through the window of suburban insecurities. A group of normal middle-class guys grow increasingly suspicious of the reclusive Klopeks, the Addams Family-lookalikes whose ghastly mansion is lowering the tone of the neighbourhood. But it's this motley collection of American manhood, including wide-eyed Tom Hanks and gun totin', beady-eyed Bruce Dern that seems really crazy. Slapstick humour with hidden barbs.
Phil Howlett
Hard Times (Walter Hill, 1975) 8pm, Sky Cinema 1 Hill's debut as a director is a tough, taut tale set in Depression-era New Orleans, where men are making a hard living in illegal bareknuckle boxing bouts. Hill's style is impressively economical, but he was helped too by the presence of two former members of The Magnificent Seven in a no-nonsense pairing -- Charles Bronson as the near-silent, impassive fighter and James Coburn as his gabby manager.
Phil Howlett
Hard Labour 10pm, Discovery It's another reality TV conceit, but this one has more merit than most: three seemingly unemployable young men get a kick up the backside by joining the crew of a Scottish trawler for a two-week journey on which they sleep for two or three hours a night, survive in freezing conditions, and gut a lot of fish. True colours are quickly revealed: the previously lackadaisical Anthony proves himself to be an excellent trawlerman, while the bragging, tough-talking Steven is totally pathetic. Somewhere between the two is Michael, who claims to have been holding down three jobs prior to the journey: "Pimping, drug-dealing, and telesales." The real fishermen look on the three hapless youths with rough good humour.
Will Hodgkinson
_____________________________________________
And, as always, and I know I'm dull about this - but Thursday night is House night. Yay! I couldn't love Channel Five - sorry, Five - more for their dedication to this quality US drama. It brightens my midweek considerably. I now regularly find myself standing up for the good name of Five at parties. Honestly. People say bad things, wrong things, and I'd just like to take this opportunity, this day to say - high five, Five. High five.
