TV Viewing Summary W/E 01/03/98
Well, quite a bit of new stuff on the box this week. First of all 2 Point 4 Children returns to BBC1, watched by 9.38 million, joined by another comedic “big gun” in Goodnight Sweetheart (8.85 million). Both of these programmes are in severe danger as they enter the hostile depths of ‘a series too far’.
2 Point 4 is just about able to keep its head above water, largely thanks to Bill’s excellent deadpan. Goodnight Sweetheart however, has always been dodgy at the best of times. This week’s episode surpassed itself with Gary’s 1940’s child being thrown into the future by a bomb blast, with a really corny plot sequence leading to a series of pathetic attempts at laughs with lines like, “I can’t take him to the hospital, according to his records he’ll be fifty years old”. Comedy and the questions of metaphysical paradox which are raised by time travel do not mix – not unless you actually make the script funny that is.
New drama finally appeared this week in the form of Real Women, chocca with stars Michelle Collins, Pauline Quirke, Gwyneth Strong (Cassandra from Only Fools), and watched by 11.07 million. It was, however, a little wayward at times to say the least. As you’d expect, there were sterling performances from all the cast, but this drama does seem to exist in a sort of uneven Men Behaving Badly world, where all men are dumb animals and the girls always have the knowing looks and the last laugh. Yes, I know it’s all part of the ‘gaining lost ground’ modus operandi, but it does leave one with the feeling that we’re watching ‘Unreal Women‘. Still, it only runs to three episodes so it should be able to hold the illusion for this length of time, and it certainly makes a welcome return to modern drama from the BBC.
In the absence of Heartbeat, Casualty now comes in as top drama of the chart with an audience of 15.74 million. Taggart continues to attract its hardcore audience, and still seems to be succeeding in attracting newcomers, watched by 11.41 million this week.
It was also a great week in the soaps with the usual results – Coronation Street came in with an average of 16.59 million, again demolishing Eastenders, which attracted an average of 14.50 million. Eastenders chugs along with the usual ups and downs, ‘Fill’ Mitchell loses it, nearly has a drink, grunts, grunts some more, acts hard, says ‘leave it’ a lot, nearly has a drink, grunts, and then finally gets totally trolleyed. At least they’ve given him a suitable henchman with Connor, the Irish relative of the Fowler’s. The two of them have been charging around the Eastend trying to make a bob or two collecting ‘rent/protection money’ yet they are hardly the Krays – more like the Teletubbie and Billy goats gruff.
Coronation Street is getting a bit bogged down in the whole does she/doesn’t she palaver with Sam, the current Street Stunner, and poor long suffering Geordie boy Des. Help this week was at hand from a great plot line involving Curly Watts, employee of Firmans Freezers (standard northern stereotype supermarket) being made to make a speech at the W.A.R.T.S meeting (that’s Weatherfield Association of Retail Traders). With a boss that gives Curly the option of “make the speech or collect your cards”, (reminiscent of Robert Duvall’s order in Apocalypse Now of “Soldier, you either surf or fight”) the poor chap has little choice but to bite the bullet. The speech is prepared by eco-warrior chum ‘Spider’, soon to be double crossed as Curly sells out from the environmental cause. He points out the dangers of fanatical devotion from the likes of Spider for his beloved supermarket and how Norman has changed from his days of quoting philosophers as he worked on the bins. Anyway, he received a standing ovation from the likes of Fred Elliot (a man clearly at the opposite end of the environmental scale when compared to the likes of Anita Roddick) and was all in all a classic piece of Coronation Street comic melodrama.
They saved the best till last of course, with Hayley revealing the true nature of her parts to Roy on Friday night. Poor Roy, you can’t help but love the kind hearted innocence that surrounds his life. On being confronted with the issues of cross dressing and transsexuals, he responded with “I can’t handle this, I spend my time making model aeroplanes…” Ahhhh. Still, his glue and modelling tools might just come in handy now………
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Reviewer: Jim Sparkes
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