It’s 2008 (just in case you hadn’t noticed!) and the new season’s TV is under way. What’s come bursting out of Santa’s telly-grotto and onto British TV?
Reality television is still around, but dear oh dear it’s beginning to get a bit limp, with Big Brother taking the celebs out of the house and getting them to boss around the inmates, sorry, housemates. Not many viewers cared much, and this new incarnation of an overtired format was relegated to one of Channel 4’s many digital channels after attracting the lowest figures for any previous BB show.
2008 sees more Dancing on Ice with the legendary Torvill and Dean (above), more musical theatre talent searches (this time looking for Oliver and Nancy), and The One and Only, a rather bizarre cross between The X-Factor and Stars in their Eyes, in which not very good “tribute” acts are battling it out for a contract in Las Vegas. When the best act is a white guy with ginger hair impersonating Lionel Richie, you know the format is heading for the pits.
The rest of the line-up looks like a rerun of 2007 – but with polished knobs on. Torchwood has got off to the sort of rollicking start we’d been hoping for in the first series. With many of the first year’s difficulties hopefully smoothed over, the first episodes of the series have been smart, witty, fast-paced and – something that was missing last year for much of the time – fun. In Jack’s absence as he caught up with The Doctor and rediscovered his mojo, the team have finally learned to get on with each other and even developed some professionalism. Which for the Torchwood team simply means, when they find an alien artifact they don’t press the big red button on the top that says “Danger! Don’t press this big red button!” Bringing in James Marsters as a Time Agent foil to Captain Jack in the first episode (with a return later in the series) is a stroke of smash-bang-wallop genius. The chemistry between Captains Jack and John is hotness personified and I’d be happy just to watch the two of them bitch-slap each other and snog their way through an entire episode. There is also a whole slew of other well-known and accomplished actors lining up for the rest of the series. Bring it on! If they manage to keep this up (oh dear – when the Captains are around, the innuendos abound!) and avoid the inconsistency of the first year, Torchwood could become the biggest hit of the year.
Primeval is back too. The first series was a fun sci-fi romp involving anomalies in time and space, a missing wife, CGI dinosaurs and a team of reasonably interesting characters. Let’s just hope Abby isn’t forced to spend quite as much time in just her undies this year. Poor girl could catch her death. And not from the beasties. Disappointingly, the second series has started off with some lacklustre “monster of the week” stories within a wider story arc that suggests there might be some annoying cosmic reset on it way towards the end of the series. Hopefully the writers will go in a smarter direction, but the second series has definitely lost some of the sparkle of the first.
The much anticipated spin-off from Life on Mars, Ashes to Ashes, brings the wonderful Gene Hunt back to the screen, but this time in 1981. The premise is similar, but this time round there’s a feisty female cop suffering a serious injury and travelling back to the eighties in her mind. After all the hype, expectations are high. If it’s half as good as Life on Mars, it should be fabulous.
© Carole Gordon 2008