My Week in Television: 13/04/09 – 18/04/09

Posted by Steven Cookson Apr 18, 2009

To cut right to the chase I started off this week still reeling from the disappointment of Red Dwarf by watching a bit of the new Hell’s Kitchen on ITV1. It’s not bad this year, mainly down to having the likes of Ade Edmondson rather than Jim Davidson. But putting it on at the same time as The Apprentice on Wednesday nights might be a problem. I can’t speak for everyone else but I prefer to watch vain business people being swore at by a bearded bloke over a bunch of vain celebs being sworn at by a grumpy chef.

As I’ve said before it’s a nice touch by the BBC to come up with something like The Speaker, in that teenagers are given the opportunity to show their public speaking talent and not just seen as mindless thugs. It’s not the best talent/reality show but I’d choose this over Piers Moron patronising 10-year-olds and old women on Britain’s Got Talent any day.

Being someone who doesn’t discriminate against most TV, except anything with the words celebrity or “Graham Norton” in the title, I decided to give the new CBBC series Horrible Histories a go. It wasn’t half bad actually and managed in 25 minutes to get more laughs than Horne & Corden or Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps have ever raised from me.

I was hoping to get to see In The Loop this weekend but as the only cinema in Chester isn’t even showing it but instead putting on crap such as Fast and Furious and Paul Blart I have to wait until Tuesday and make a trip over to Liverpool. A review will turn up next week and hopefully I’ll get to see State of Play too as I have a huge interest in it due to being a massive fan of the BBC series.

As well as the new series of Lost (great episode this week) I’ve also been checking out a series called Fringe, basically like The X-Files for the new generation. It’s ok, it has some mystery, but it’s formulaic and episodic and the chances are the answers will be a bit dull. I could be wrong but I’m hardly being blown away by “oh look someone died in the first five minutes in a strange way but it’s ok because our team will have it resolved by the end of the hour”.