Merseybeat BBC1
A Life of Grime BBC1
Cutting Edge: Love C4
V Graham Norton C4
That the BBC doesn't easily admit defeat must be the only plausible explanation as to why Merseybeat is back for a second series, despite the fact that nobody (other than perhaps the actors and crew) wanted the first one very much.
Naturally, given the anaesthetically deadening effect of the series's first run (on second thoughts make that a jog), there needed to be a swift and probably quite cynical ratings-oriented rethink in the production office of CasualHeart, which is why we find that the dull wrinklies' workload has been cut back and the nubile totty-count upped, with the result that within the first few minutes of the New Improved Super-Saucy MerseyBill, luscious blonde graduate recruit Jackie Brown (Joanna Taylor) was to be seen sitting in nowt but her bra in the front seat of a police car - while by the end of the show Haydn Gwynne's Supt Susan Blake was in the process of being assaulted by her pantomime-horrible (boo-hiss, beeeehind-yooo) ex-husband in the back of her own motor. It was EastEnders-meets-Panic Mechanics-via-The Gentle Touch.
With sudsquib dialogue ('She's a manipulative flirt': Jodie, played by former yoof telly presenter Josephine D'Arby, on Jackie. 'Well I did screw her boyfriend!': Jackie on Jodie) plus an implausible number of storylines deftly and creatively interwoven in much the same way as the macramé pot holder created by a learning-impaired lifer in a secure mental unit might be considered to be both deft and creative, the result is yet another desperate British plodrama with no ideas above its station, just a green light.
Other than TV critics, who have enjoyed a cheap and easy way to dispense with the services of a few hundred lazy good-for-nothing layabout old words, who else would honestly notice or care if LiverPigs disappeared from the schedules this week?
Another return last week for BBC1's extremely likeable A Life of Grime, which followed Merseybeat. I love A Life of Grime and the fact that there were two episodes of this peculiarly gripping grubdoc on consecutive nights proves that lots of others do, too. For some reason the work of 'drain surgeons' Mike and Roy and 30 minutes of relentless primetime rotting filth and excremental vileness being tackled with Heath Robinsonesque machines (with something I swear was labelled a 'snifter valve') make me giggle rather than gag - and I write as woman nine months pregnant, nesting as if possessed and who has, in the last few days, been reduced almost to tears by the endless small tumbleweeds of white dog fur that drift across the high plains of my floorboards (admittedly very much as they ever have, yet now appearing both sinister and dangerously provocative). But bubbling oozefuls of mutant poo floating in the gardens of the good burghers of Salford? Oddly, I've no problem laughing at that at all. Just keep it the hell out of my garden, all right?
Perhaps it is John Peel's typically lugubrious Home Truths-ish voiceover ('Mike is unperturbed by the stench of festering faeces... a close encounter of the turd kind') or the gently amused and delicate direction (pest controllers Byron's and Steve's explanation of why their collection of pets acquired on the job - including lovebirds, fish and a tarantula - are all named Charlie was practically a Pete'n'Dud sketch), but A Life Of Grime proves that, at its most focused, the docusoap genre still has legs and - blimey! - can even teach you stuff: for example, did you know that a single flea can produce 20,000 offspring a month? I fear the dear dog may suffer intense and potentially invasive scrutiny over next few weeks.
C4's usually reliable reality strand, Cutting Edge, hardly bothered to live up to its title but was still highly watchable, even when tackling a big, unwieldy subject such as 'Love'. Two of these tales of wide-eyed love-blindness were dark and had unhappy endings - even though one of the protagonists, Wendy, was that blind she clearly mistook her own unhappy ending for a potentially happy one: 'We're going through a bad spot at the moment but it won't be forever. And then everyone's going to be really jealous of me because I'm going to be the happiest person in the world!' Don't count on it, Wendy.
Wendy's husband, David, appeared to have hired a hit-man to bump her off (at least if that damning tape recording - 'Make sure she's dead. I don't want to be looking after a fucking vegetable' - was anything to go by) until he was banged to rights for eight years. And Wendy, two marriages behind her and in her fifties when she married David, was probably old enough to know better than to carry on trusting him, even after she'd found out the worst. Well, at least her grown-up kids, from whom she is currently estranged, think so.
It took poor sweet stoopid Joanne many months to smell the caffeine after she had fallen heavily for 'undercover cop'-cum-Walter Mitty fantasist Martin. But even after she'd jacked in her job and the happy couple had moved into a nasty house with no furniture, fridge or cooker ('I'd expected somewhere quite nice. Upper-class, maybe. Clean and tidy. I was shocked because where we were was almost like a council estate'), Joannne refused to accept that her true love might be anything other than what he claimed to be: a cop so deeply undercover that he had to live like an unemployed loser on income support. Which is, of course, precisely what he turned out to be. Unsurprisingly, this experience has shattered Joanne's faith in romance - she's still picking up the pieces of the messy rebound relationship which has left her with twins.
But the most unlikely love story was that of Jon and Stephanie. For two years, Jon, a nice if unprepossessing sort of chap, pursued the ravishing beauty he'd first laid eyes on in a London café. Despite the fact that she refused to talk about her background, introduce him to her family or, indeed, spend very much time with him at all, Jon, somehow, eventually, felt he'd got to a point where it was appropriate to propose. Undeterred by the fact that Stephanie turned him down, he carried on wooing her and proposed again. At which point it was revealed that Stephanie was not only a member of one of the richest families in Ghana, but actually a princess destined to be a queen, though happy to renounce her throne for suburban domestic bliss with the ever-so-ordinary Jon. This quite deliciously unlikely couple (she really is very glamorous) have now been together for 12 years and have five kids. Still, Stephanie misses some of the perks of royalty: 'I'm a better mother than I am a cleaner,' she admitted endearingly.
In the event I'm glad Brazil made it to the final (where it is, of course, their duty to trounce the opposition), but Ronaldo - what a geek! How can he wear those twinkling silver boots and that absurd half-moon haircut but not want to get a brace on those teeth? If Tom Cruise can face it, surely Ron can? But, then, sportswise (and yes, Ronaldo's dentistry counts as sports coverage as far as I'm concerned) it's been a shocking week all round: McEnroe may be back to thrill us with bullshit-free commentary, but to lose both Agassi and Sampras on the third day of Wimbledon in such ignominious style was a bummer. Still, there's a perfectly logical explanation - they must both have had a lot of shares in WorldCom.
And finally: the surreal, hilarious This-Can't-Be-Happening telly moment of the week was Graham Norton's Apocalypse Now playlet on Wednesday night, featuring Norton as Martin Sheen, the lovely Betty as Brando, some bloke from the audience called Daffyd as a Gook (and that's not to be confused with Ronaldo), two people on Space Hoppers as two people on Space Hoppers and... Dennis Hopper as Dennis Hopper, asking Norton if he'd like to be 'taken from the front or behind'. I'm not sure top quality trash telly can get much funnier than this, unless, of course, it's Norton's increasingly wicked top-of-the-show observations about Big Brother's resident moron, Jade: almost worth tuning into even if you can't stomach BB. I laughed at Norton so much last week I thought I'd go into labour.
On the subject of which (she segued neatly)... this is my last TV review of 2002 because there's an awful lot of Cif to be deployed in the ongoing fight against domestic grime - and a baby to get born too, I guess, if I can ever stop cleaning long enough.
