Survivors: Shaun Dingwall and Julie Graham spot a virus-free courgette

The BBC's new sci-fi chiller may be a reprise from the archives, but it's still a fresh take on a future gone wrong

Don't leave us this way ... John Sergeant. Photograph: Murdo Macleod

Much television news this week and - from my admittedly removed position- it all appears to have revolved around someone called John not being on television as much next week.

Therefore, in honour of a great entertainer and a really, really bad dancer, I decided our Friday list should be:

ALL KINDS OF JOHN THAT AREN'T ON TELEVISION ANY MORE OR AT SOME POINT HAVE BEEN NOT AS MUCH ON TELEVISION AS THEY PREVIOUSLY WERE AND EITHER NOW OR AT THAT POINT WERE THUSLY SORELY MISSED

Yes, the titles are still getting worse, sorry about that. Continue reading...

Chris Moyles in the studio. Photograph: Andy Butterton/PA

Zoo format radio began in California in the 70s. A welcome break from zonked-out stoners drawling about the Eagles and the Knack, it involved zany DJs with a cohort of sidekicks, usually in the breakfast slot. Presenters invented comedy personae, with the emphasis on wacky phone-ins and kerr-azy banter. The idea reached the UK with Steve Wright in the Afternoon and his posse of characters. Pretentious Music Journalist was as devastating for pompous scribes as Smashie and Nicey were for ageing DJs. Continue reading...

Nasty but nice ... Nick Bateman, the original reality TV villain. Photograph: William Conran/PA

Far be it from me to suggest that much of the Strictly-related sounding-off has been manipulated in response to The X Factor's Laryngitis-gate, but I can't help but hark back to a simpler time: a time when bad behaviour from contestants triggered genuine upset from their colleagues rather than media-friendly pontificating; a time when people reacted according to how they felt rather than what they thought the cameras wanted to see; a time when a series narrative wasn't constructed before the first episode even aired. Continue reading...

Channel 4's The Devil's Whore

The English civil war. Huh. Yeah. What was it good for? Absolutely nothing. Say it again. Or rather, don't. Because here is landmark C4 period drama The Devil's Whore with a wholly unique take on one of the 17th century's least comprehensible conflicts. For those whose civil war knowledge extends to the fact that it involved people with heads, some of which were round, last night's opener was unlikely to have provided much in the way of historical illumination.

It began, the caption announced, in "The Palace of Whitehall, London, 1638". To the twiddle of lutes and the twitter of giggling handmaidens, a lovely young lady is strapped into a corset. She has huge eyes, a be-ribboned stack of hair reminiscent of 1980s pop sensations Strawberry Switchblade, and the air of someone who probably goes like the clappers. She is Angelica Fanshawe (Andrea Riseborough) - young, fictional wife of a Cavalier, a passionate though troubled free spirit - and, for the next four weeks, she is to be our guide through the murky political highways and reeking bubonic byways of mid-17th century England. Continue reading...

Terry Christian and Dani Behr on The Word. Photograph: The Sunday Times/Rex Features

"In the beginning was The Word, and The Word was with God, and The Word was God"

Having cockroaches poured over your head and rubbing up against Robert Kilroy-Silk is bound to affect your judgment sooner or later. Dani Behr is apparently babbling crazy talk about reviving The Word, Channel 4's post-pub slot scandal magnet that made her as much a household name as Hufty and Amanda de Cadenet (yep, she was that famous). In its 90s heyday, The Word was appointment TV. Post-pub appointment TV, it's true, but still something people didn't like to miss and, with all due respect to Ms Behr, that was largely down to one man: Terry Christian. Continue reading...

Bloodbath on the horizon ... Michael Chiklis as Vic Mackey in The Shield

Pop quiz: which sprawling, ensemble cop show is coming to a close this month after a seven-year run? Surprisingly, it's not The Wire, but another just as important programme. Dirty cop drama The Shield comes to a climax in the US in less than a fortnight, and while HBO's cult hit may garner all the column inches, it's easy to forget that The Shield is the only one of the two to have been aired on terrestrial TV.
Continue reading...

Bad as ever ... Wendi Peters as Cilla in Coronation Street. Photograph: ITV

Cilla has sent for them. So Chesney and Kirk stock up on malaria pills and chocolate garibaldis and say goodbye to the friends and family. They touch down in South Africa, where the waiting Cilla hails them in a voice that can be heard across the veldt. Thus begins the hour-and-three-quarter-long soap spin-off - Coronation Street: Out of Africa, out now on DVD only. I mention the running length because you are sure to feel every single one of those 105 minutes.
Continue reading...

'More ha-ha-ha than cha-cha-cha': John Sergeant with Kristina Rihanoff on Strictly Come Dancing. Photograph: PR

It was only when I was having tea with a friend who's been abroad for a while (OK, and does not own a television) that I realised the extent to which Britain has gone mad. What is this thing, enquired my friend, called Strictly Come Dancing? And why is it all over the newspapers? Continue reading...

A voodoo puppet in the image of French president Nicolas Sarkozy. Photograph: Franck Fife/AFP/Getty images

You know you've really made it as a supermegastar when someone fashions a small doll in your likeness. Just ask Snoop Dogg, the late Steve Irwin or the entire cast of Saved by the Bell (yes, even the skinny weirdo, whose Brillo-pad hair looked more unnatural on him, eerily, than on the doll).

Great must have been the relief, therefore, of grindingly mediocre tune-molesters Boyzone, who were pictured fondling their little selves in China. Any doubts they may have had about the success of their reunion were surely laid to rest on being presented with miniature plastic versions of themselves. Continue reading...

Laura Mackie, controller of drama at ITV. Photograph: Martin Godwin

What a weekend for good news. Dead Wife has been kicked off The X-Factor and Phoo Action has been cancelled. After the all-singing, all-dancing, all-mindboggling EastEnders extravaganza on Children in Need, you may be forgiven for thinking Christmas has come early.

According to The Herald, Phoo Action – piloted on BBC3 earlier in the year and commissioned as a series alongside Being Human - has been axed because "during the course of pre-production, it became clear that, creatively, Phoo Action was struggling to fulfil its ambitions as a television drama."

Which is code for: it was an appalling pile of crap. Continue reading...

Reg Varney and Bob Grant in Mutiny on the Buses from 1972. Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive

To a generation of long-suffering comedy lovers, Reg Varney represents an all too familiar bane, as Mum-loving lothario Stan Butler in ITV's long running On the Buses, a byword for 70s sitcom mediocrity, all too accurately parodied in a recent Harry and Paul sketch. However, his long life does throw up some eyebrow-raising factual gems. He was, for example, the first person ever to use a cashpoint, for a Barclay's Bank publicity shot in 1967. He started his working life immediately after the second world war in a revue innocently called Gaytime, in which his straight man was, of all people, Benny Hill. Even more astonishing is the fact that Hill got the part over, of all people, Peter Sellers. Continue reading...

When they pitched 'CSI: Hull', I don't think this is what they had in mind ... British telly favourites of yesteryear, Rod Hull and Emu. Photograph: PA

Soon we will see the end of Boston Legal. On the other hand, Law & Order: London is now in pre-production. While they may yin and yang each other out, they do both share an important quality: they both have a place name in the title. This got me thinking.

Not long into my musings, I realised it was going to be difficult to come up with a balanced and truly international list, as while some countries (like the US, for example) are very keen on creating endless amounts of series with a City or Area name in the title, other countries (UK-kind-of-ones) don't do that quite so much.

So this week I thought we would do a list of:

POSSIBLE UK ADAPTATIONS OF AMERICAN PLACE-NAME SHOWS THAT HAVEN'T BEEN MADE YET

Another cracking title there, me, well done! For reference, by the way, links to the original can be found in the asterisks. You're welcome. Continue reading...

PR

Does anyone else get cinema anxiety? With the weekend upon us, the possibility of being asked if I want to go to the cinema looms large and already I can feel my nerves jangling. I have been honing my excuses ("My legs have fallen off" or "I'm protesting outside Strictly HQ demanding that John Sergeant go now") and practising swift exits. I have also been wondering what it is about the cinema that so unnerves me.

I wasn't fiddled with in the back row at any point and I've never been beaten up by bullies in a foyer while waiting to see Police Academy 4; so what explains my reluctance? Continue reading...

Three weeks after L'affaire Manuel and the Daily Mail's still digging around for sharp sticks with which to poke Russell Brand. Today's story attacks his appearance on the David Letterman show this week and even deploys the word "misogynistic"; perhaps a first in the paper's history.

But are they right? Why don't you watch the contentious clip and make your own mind up? (Clue: you probably won't have to spend too much time thinking about it.)