Radio Times

‘hugh laurie in a perfect storm of joy’

HUGH LAURIE APPEARING in a comedy written by Armando Iannucci is a perfect storm of joy, so we should look forward to Avenue 5, starting on Sky 1 on Wednesday because, heaven knows, we all need something to laugh at in this dreary month. It’s a kind of Poseidon Adventure in space, with a luxury liner orbiting Saturn that careers off course leaving the passengers with no imminent prospect of returning home. It’s packed with one-liners and Laurie is just grand being where he is meant to be – fronting a comedy. Week on week I have become more taken by the slow-burning Deadwater Fell (Friday C4), which is notable for many things, including great writing from Daisy Coulam and a tight plot that mesh to form a picture of a small…

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WINDRUSH SCANDAL ON SCREEN There’s plenty of good drama to look forward to in 2020. One highlight is BBC1’s feature-length Sitting in Limbo, from Left Bank Pictures, producer of hit Netflix series The Crown. Written by Stephen S Thompson, it tells the story of his brother Anthony Bryan and his personal struggle to be accepted as a British citizen during the Windrush immigration scandal. Patrick Robinson plays Anthony, with Nadine Marshall (Save Me, The Innocents) taking the role of Anthony’s wife Janet. JUSTICE ON TRIAL Another drama in the pipeline is Showtrial, a BBC1 six-parter from World Productions, the company behind Line of Duty and Bodyguard, and written by Ben Richards (Strike, The Tunnel). It focuses on the trial and media storm that follows when Talitha, the arrogant daughter of a wealthy entrepreneur,…

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It’s almost certainly the craziest stunt ever attempted on Top Gear. It’s without doubt the most nerve-shredding. Take one fearless presenter, Freddie Flintoff (inset), strap him into a red Rover Metro Cabriolet and drop both car and ex-cricketer over the side of a 500ft-high dam in Switzerland, with just a heavily strengthened bungee rope separating him from certain death. “The starting point for the challenge was ‘Is it possible to scare Freddie?’ says executive producer Clare Pizey. “He is a man with no fear and who will give anything a go. When I asked him, would he bungee jump off a dam inside a car, he just said ‘yeah’. But quite clearly, as anyone watching the film will see, it did cause him, let’s say, some anxiety on the day.” And…

‘we’re an easy, juicy target’

FOR POSSIBLY THE ninth time in my 53 years with the BBC, a British government is limbering up to launch a major attack on us. It happened a couple of times under Harold Wilson (Labour), various times under Margaret Thatcher (Conservative), twice under Tony Blair (Labour), and now it’s happening under Boris Johnson. It’s not a left/right thing, though people on Twitter assume it is; it’s a government/opposition thing. Governments want the BBC to back them, and get hugely affronted because it doesn’t. Opposition parties love the BBC, because it gives them a voice when the newspapers mostly don’t. So even though Labour and the Lib Dems had endless complaints about the BBC’s coverage during the election, they’ll line up behind the BBC if they think its independence is under attack. Overall,…

from the rt archive… 22—28 january 1994

WHAT WE WATCHED It was time to crack open the bolly for a second series of Absolutely Fabulous, Jennifer Saunders’s comedy masterpiece. “I did worry about whether or not it would appeal beyond the boundaries of Soho,” said Saunders of series one, but she needn’t have been concerned: its debut run won about every award going. Co-star Joanna Lumley used her RT interview to have a pop at the press. “I can’t bear the pathetic words journalists use, reducing a quite larky answer to pedestrian bilge,” she said. “If you wonder what the public is fed about you, you’d be ill because it’s a complete lie. None of it is me.” WHAT YOU SAID A plane crash on Emmerdale that dispatched four regular characters gripped 18 million viewers, marking a creative turning point…

‘i’m not a baby person’

Chris Packham: 7.7 Billion People and Counting Tuesday 9.00pm BBC2 IT WON’T BE long now, and we’ll never know who she is, but a baby girl soon to be born, probably somewhere south of the Sahara, is destined to give birth to the ten billionth living human on the planet. According to the UN, that demographic landmark is just a generation away; it will happen around 2050. According to Chris Packham, it’s less a landmark than a signpost to the apocalypse. We’re breeding ourselves to death or, at least, famine, war and global catastrophe, he says. The animals he adores are sliding headlong towards extinction. He thinks much of the planet he loves could soon be inaccessible because of conflicts and natural disasters brought about by population pressure. He’s taken his stepdaughter, Megan,…